A Rip-roaring Masterpiece of a Book
And so it goes on, with essay after glorious essay exploring all forms of egalitarianism and smashing them all with typical twinkling Rothbardian glee.
Welfare Is Corrupt Always and Forever
Every government transfer program allows resources given for one purpose to have far different effects than intended.
Oh! what a tangled web they weave
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.”
The Thoroughly Rotten Central Planners and Their Wicked Ways
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.
Richard Ebeling’s Congressional Testimony on Monetary Policy and the National Debt
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
Merger Mondays and Malinvestment
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.
Mises on Action
“Man is a social animal”: thus Aristotle’s famous dictum is often translated. Ludwig von Mises believed that man could not have acquired the ability to act had his forebears lived in complete isolation. And John Donne said, “No man is an island.”
The Road to Taxi Serfdom
The New York City mayor has decreed the Nissan NV200 minivan will become the official taxi of the city. In addition to illustrating the corrupting effects of political power, the episode underscores the economic problems of government ownership of roads.
The “Buy-Local” Canard
In fact, when people take “buy local” seriously, they are setting the stage for absurd and potentially tragic economic results.
The Economics of Abundance
A situation in which abundant unused reserves of all kinds of resources (including all intermediate products) exist may occasionally prevail in the depths of a depression. But it is certainly not a normal position on which a theory claiming general applicability could be based.
