[Anything That’s Peaceful (1964)]
The practice of committees, boards, or councils presuming to represent the views of vast constituencies occurs in educational and religious associations, in trade and commercial organizations — indeed, in any segment of society where there is the propensity to organize.
The libertarian movement has been chided by William F. Buckley, Jr., for failing to use its “strategic intelligence” in facing the major problems of our time. We have, indeed, been too often prone to “pursue our busy little seminars on whether or not to demunicipalize the garbage collectors” (as Buckley has contemptuously written), while ignoring and failing to apply libertarian theory to the most vital problem of our time: war and peace.
The public loves the fall of a ruthless and greedy financial titan — this, of course, is what made Oliver Stone’s original Wall Street such a hit. But the practice of “insider trading” can actually be beneficial. In a free society, there would be no such thing as laws against so-called insider trading.
And so it goes on, with essay after glorious essay exploring all forms of egalitarianism and smashing them all with typical twinkling Rothbardian glee.
Germany will likely give Greece a second bailout in the very near future. Simon Hobbs tries to explain the incredibly tangled web from which the European Central Bank dangles above disaster. Hobbes suggests that a Greek default could lead to Ireland defaulting, which could lead to the collapse of the ECB.
Hobbs concludes, “Importantly, provided that greece keeps paying its bills the house of cards still stands.”
As part of my ongoing series on the small ways government wrecks our lives, I’ve been getting floods of correspondence from business people who tell amazing stories of the most idiotic regulations that are slowly ruining their lives. I receive dozens of these every day, and I’m astounded at how the details are not even published in an accessible form that I can link to. Industry is regulated so extensively that you would never know about it unless you actually were charged with following all this nonsense day after day.
I have posted testimony that I delivered earlier today, May 11th, for the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, chaired by Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), on “Monetary Policy, the Federal Reserve, and the National Debt Problem.”
The link is:
http://defenseofcapitalism.blogspot.com/2011/05/monetary-policy-federal-reserve-and.html
When the money’s cheap, CEOs go shopping was the point I made in a talk given at the Institute’s Houston Mises Circle this January. Despite the fact that from 60% to 80% of mergers fail, CEOs think that when they do a deal two plus two will equal five, the fact is it often turns out that two plus two ends up equaling three.
