Suppose you bring a fur coat to a dry cleaner and later discover that the owner allowed his wife to wear it before cleaning it (an episode from Seinfeld). Or suppose you gave your car keys to a hotel valet and was told he lent your car to teenagers who took it for a joyride while you were sleeping at the hotel. You would not be too happy and for good reason. When you surrendered your clothes or your car keys, it was a bailment. You retained ownership and gave the clothes or car keys for safekeeping.

Followers of the Austrian school of economics know that the term inflation refers to increasing the quantity of money or money substitutes. The result being a rise in the price of goods and services or a fall in the value of money. But, in the modern era, this rise in prices is called inflation and as Ludwig von Mises wrote, “This semantic innovation is by no means harmless.” The semantic change has people looking everywhere but where they should to blame for higher prices.

If we look long enough and hard enough, we might find an example of something in the US is not by the state, of the state and for the state.  But it’s becoming more difficult.

Abundance, Generosity, and the State: An Inquiry into Economic Principles
by Jörg Guido Hülsmann
Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2024; 452 pp.

It is rare to encounter a book that has the potential to reshape the way we look at economics, but Guido Hülsmann has done exactly that in Abundance, Generosity, and the State. Hülsmann is one of the leading theorists of the Austrian School, but he has always looked at issues in an original way, and that quality is manifested “abundantly” in this outstanding book.

Yeah, the other night I laid sleeping

 And I woke from a terrible dream

 So I caught up my pal Jack Daniel’s

 And his partner Jimmy Beam

 And we drank alone, yeah

 With nobody else

 Yeah, you know when I drink alone

In its usual form, the case for privatizing public parking invokes the basic economic principles of supply and demand. This case is usually restricted to private parking lots and garages. For example, Walter Block discusses how market incentives can drive parking rates to rise to eliminate shortages here. A more radical proposal is the privatization of public parking altogether.

Last month, New York City homeowner Adele Andaloro was arrested after changing the locks on a house that had been seized by squatters. According to The New York Post: “Andaloro was charged with unlawful eviction because she had changed the locks and hadn’t provided a new key to the residents. The residents, however, are squatters.

Per Bylund has called for a new Methodenstreit in economics. He’s referring to the late-nineteenth-century debate between Carl Menger, representing the newly dubbed “Austrian School,” and Gustav Schmoller, representing the German Historical School. The Historicists derided Menger’s causal realism, in which the laws of economics are derived from the fundamental character of human choice.