The Free Market 23, no. ( 2003)

The Free Market 23, no. 12 (December 2003)

It is not a short step from poverty to prosperity, and the transition itself has long been exploited by opponents of the market economy. Even today, the myth survives that the Industrial Revolution was characterized by worsening living standards, when it in fact marked a new age of mass prosperity, a time when people were liberated from old methods of production to move and work in newly developing sectors.

The Free Market 23, no. 12 (December 2003)

The Economist magazine asked in a recent issue: “Why on earth can’t the world’s richest country ensure that Baghdad has water and electricity?” One might think that a publication dedicated to covering the world of markets would already know the answer. The US government is trying to solve economic problems in Iraq, including the provision of essentials like utilities, through military means. If guns and force could provide the essentials of life, the Soviet Union would have been a utopia.

The Free Market 24, no. 12 (2004)

The democracy of the market is not the democracy that Plato spoke of in his Republic (c. 370 BC) as “a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a kind of equality to equals and unequals alike,” nor that Aristotle in his Rhetoric (c.

Volume 24, Number 1
January 2004

“The world is in permanent monetary crisis,” Murray N. Rothbard once observed, “but once in a while, the crisis flares up acutely, and we noisily shift gears from one flawed monetary system to another.” Monetary systems built on floating fiat currencies are fragile things. Most of the world currently operates under this arrangement.

The Free Market 24, no. 1 (January 2004)

The “Coalition Provisional Authority” (the US government) in Iraq has instituted a 15 percent tax in Iraq based on the view that “these collections are for the benefit of the Iraqi people.” The US will tax income, the transfer of “real property,” car sales, and gasoline. The US claims that this is a lower tax than Saddam had, but this is only true in the most technical legal sense.

With the passage of time, the nature of post-Saddam Iraq becomes clearer, as does the Bush administration’s lack of commitment to free-market principles. One example of this exists in the new Iraqi communications industry. The Iraqi communications ministry, headed by Haider Jawad al-Aubadi, has granted licenses to three mobile phone companies in Iraq. Asia Cell consortium will supply mobile phone services in northern Iraq. Orascom and Atheer Tel will supply these services in central and southern Iraq respectively.

The Free Market 24, no. 1 (January 2004)

“Deep in Debt, Caught in a Net.”

This old English proverb concisely describes the financial condition of many Americans. Household debt is rising at an 8.8 percent annual rate, home mortgage debt at 14.2 percent. Total debt in the United States doubled from 1998 to 2002, from $16 trillion to $32 trillion and may double again in the next five years.

The Free Market 24, no. 2 (February 2004)

There is a fly in the ointment of economic recovery: a dollar that just won’t seem to stop its fall. The impression that this trend portends something ominous is bolstered by the inverse relationship of the dollar’s value on international exchange and the price of gold. As the dollar has fallen in the last year, gold has risen. Meanwhile, US government officials repeat the refrain that they support a strong dollar. It seems that market forces have other ideas in mind.

The Free Market 24, no. 2 (February 2004)

I write this dutifully and joylessly in the manner of someone taking out the garbage or performing some other unpleasant task that’s been done before but which must be done once more.

The Republicans have done it again. With their new Medicare bill, they’ve made government even bigger. This is not new to us here. We’ve been saying that for years. The Republicans have been expanding the size, scope, and power of government ever since they first got their mitts on power in 1861.