The death of Fidel Castro has brought to light the catastrophic failure of Cuban socialism.

Where the state is, there is the power to tax; for rulers cannot rule without taxation. As Ludwig von Mises wrote: “The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation.” Or as Murray Rothbard put it: “All state actions rest on the fundamental binary intervention of taxes.”

This article is a transcript of the interview conducted on Mises Weekends.

Jeff Deist: James, thanks a million for joining us. I’m going to go out on a limb and say your new book The Road to Ruin: the Global Elite’s Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis is a “big-picture” book.

With the media attention focused largely on the president-elect’s antics going on in Trump Tower, the lame duck Congress pushes on largely overlooked. Unfortunately that’s when the legislature can be most dangerous.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has announced his plans to resign in the wake of the resounding defeat suffered on Sunday as exit polls revealed a No victory with a 20% margin. Right up to election day, as he was busy traveling around the country promising new new gifts to voters — the most recent of which involved an increase in state worker’s salaries by 85 euros - he was oddly being described as the “pro-market” candidate!

There is almost complete unanimity among economists and various commentators that inflation is about general increases in the prices of goods and services. From this it is established that anything that contributes to price increases sets in motion inflation.

A fall in unemployment or a rise in economic activity is seen as a potential inflationary trigger. Some other triggers, such as rises in commodity prices or workers’ wages, are also regarded as potential threats.

Last month, Uber announced that it would begin to accept drivers with criminal records. Specifically, as the Hartford Courant reports: 

Uber’s change in policy, which goes into effect early next year, will allow people with convictions for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses such as passing a bad check, resisting arrest, petty theft, prostitution, harassment and causing minor property damage to drive for the company.

In the midst of the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy, Trump’s transition team has suggested that it may pursue efforts to “privatize” Indian reservation lands as a way of circumventing regulatory hurdles that stand in the way of Tribal oversight of operations such as drilling and other types of resource extraction. 

The new gig-economy seems to struggle with the ancien world’s regulations. Uber lost a first judicial battle in the United Kingdom. The California-based firm has been ordered to change the legal nature of its relationships with its drivers who claim the right to be considered as workers rather than independent contractors.