In the first line of his book, Planning for Freedom, Ludwig von Mises, the famed Austrian economist, observed “Planning is socialism.” I will admit that my first acquaintance with government planners was a planning class in my Master’s program, where I was given the party line about how important it was to plan for growth.
The Free Market 26, no. 10 (October 2005)
The fifteenth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, signed into law by President Bush I on July 26, 1990, has come and gone, but it has not been a success. It has cost untold billions, increased the pestilence of labor disputes, and even increased the ranks of the unemployed among the disabled population (because it made them more expensive to hire).
[William Peterson is the winner of the 2005 Gary G. Schlarbaum Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Cause of Liberty, awarded by the Mises Institute. He has served a crucial role as a leading public intellectual, elaborating on the insights of Mises through teaching, writing, and speaking on the relationship between free enterprise and human liberty.]
Supply and demand have been allowed to work—at least in a limited way—in energy markets, resulting in ups and downs in gasoline prices. Strong demand coupled with regulatory supply restrictions that were worsened by several hurricanes caused gasoline prices to go up. Then as hurricane-damaged refineries were repaired, gas prices began to plummet.
Ludwig von Mises didn’t like references to the “miracle” of the marketplace or the “magic” of production or other terms that suggest that economic systems depend on some force that is beyond human comprehension. In his view, we are better off coming to a rational understanding of why markets are responsible for astounding levels of productivity that can support exponential increases in population and ever higher living standards.
On October 24 President Bush nominated Ben S. Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In response, Wall Street became very excited and pushed the Dow Industrial average up by almost 1.7 percent. The media and the pundit class were overjoyed too.
Most experts regard this successor to Greenspan as one of the greatest monetary economists of our times. So if anyone can step into the big shoes of Alan Greenspan it is Bernanke.
The free market is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents. These two individuals (or agents) exchange two economic goods, either tangible commodities or nontangible services.
Most of the commentary on the ongoing propaganda campaign against Wal- Mart ignores what is probably the most important aspect of it: It is primarily a labor-union-inspired campaign against Wal-Mart employees, as well as the company in general. This is the essential truth of all union organizing campaigns. Historically, all of the violence, libel, and intimidation that goes along with “organizing campaigns” has been directed at competing, nonunion labor, not management. The Wal-Mart campaign is no different.
This essay is excerpted from Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow, newly published by the Mises Institute.
Murray Newton Rothbard (1926–1995) was one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. I choose the somewhat vague term thinker because Rothbard’s interests were so diverse that they defy conventional classification.
