As in many other towns all over the country, the college town of Columbia, MO, was “plagued” with on-demand, inexpensive rides through the Uber network. Uber is, simply put, an app for one’s smartphone that connects those interested in getting a ride with those interested in driving, and provides for simple payment of service. In this sense, the app serves as an arbitrageur in the person transportation market - a Kirznerian pure entrepreneur. Prices are adjusted toward equilibrium as supply meets effective demand. No harm done, right?

Joe Gillis: You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.

Norma Desmond: I am big. It’s the pictures that got small. —Sunset Boulevard (1950)

If you examine the attached graph one factor that might jump out at you is that the current “recovery” has been the worst one since WWII in terms of the percentage job losses and the time necessary for a full recovery in the job market making it, already, the most expensive since WWII.

The most recent job report appears, on the surface, encouraging news for the U. S. economy. While the Federal Reserve and/or the President may, with support from much of the press, claim credit, the Wall Street Journal provides a more credible explanation, a minor change personnel of the ruling elite has created a “growth opening”.

Jim Grant recently appeared on Yahoo Finance. He was critical of central bankers and economists who fear deflation and argue for unorthodox monetary policy to present deflation. He says that deflation is natural in a modern economy and that falling prices should not be feared and should be called progress.

[Originally published in The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal on 25 February 1972. Thanks to J. Michael Oliver (The New Libertarian: Anarcho-Capitalism) for sending it to the Mises Institute. Thanks also to W. Robert Black III, of the New Banner Institute.]