Bob Murphy has unwittingly made a great contribution in his article today to a short list of common false dichotomies in the area of political economy:
The first thing to realize is that people do not decide to “spend” or not; rather, they decide whether to spend in the present versus in the future.
Here is a similar false dichotomy spotted by Hayek who wrote about the use of the term “planning” to mask what was really at stake… Who should plan? The government or individuals?:
My article Intellectual Property and Libertarianism was published last month in Liberty magazine (December 2009 issue).
It might have been much worse were it not for the efforts of a relative handful of intellectuals who have fought against socialist theory for more than a century. Without them, it might have been 99% in support of socialist tyranny.
A lot of blogposts have been flying around the libertarian blogosphere about the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago. Those looking for truly thoughtful commentary should read the article by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “De-Socialization in a United Germany” Review of Austrian Economics, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1991).
[Originally published in Dissent on Keynes: A Critical Appraisal of Keynesian Economics, edited by Mark Skousen. New York: Praeger (1992). Pp. 171–198.
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