On “Private Tyrannies”

If you have ever read much of the political philosophy and commentary of renowned anarchosyndicalist intellectual Noam Chomsky, then you are probably familiar with his view that large private business organizations are “private tyrannies” — oversized and antidemocratic institutions that function according to that most hated of organizational principles, the hierarchy!

Saving Alabama from Bingo

Alabama Governor Bob Riley has become a paradigm of state interventionism and tax-and-spend policies. Historically, Governor Riley has carried out his big-government policies with the help of his attorney general, Troy King. Together they helped to expand the government’s control towards a police state. Recent events have disrupted the rather unfortunate status quo.

The Future of Gold

The US dollar’s strength as the equity and commodity markets collapsed was due to deleveraging and an effect of the Fed’s temporary sequestration of dollars, taking dollars out of supply. That is over. Oil seems to be putting in a bottom on strong volume, no one is left to buy any more negative real-yield securities the Treasury is issuing, and gold has started looking very bullish.

Financial Crisis: The Failure of Accounting Reform

The greatest error of the accounting reform recently introduced worldwide is that it scraps centuries of accounting experience and business management. It replaces the prudence principle, as the highest ranking among all traditional accounting principles, with the “fair-value” principle, which is simply the introduction of the volatile market value for an entire set of assets, particularly financial assets.

Rules for International Monetary Reform

Any future reform will fail as miserably as past reforms unless it strikes at the very root of the present problems and rests on the following principles: the reestablishment of a 100% reserve requirement on all bank demand deposits and equivalents; the elimination of central banks as lenders of last resort; and the privatization of the current, monopolistic, and fiduciary state-issued money and its replacement with a classic gold standard.

A Book that Changes Everything

With piracy and struggles over intellectual property in the news daily, it is time to wonder about this issue, its relationship to freedom, property rights, and efficiency. You have to think seriously about where you stand. Read Against Intellectual Monopoly (Cambridge University Press, 2008) by Michele Boldrin and David Levine, two daring professors of economics at Washington University in St. Louis. They have written a book that is likely to rock your world, as it has mine.

Leaving Holes Undug, Paper Unprinted

I had a busy weekend. I dug a hole, filled it in, and dug it out once again. I shoveled my driveway and then threw the snow back so that I could shovel it a second time. I vacuumed the carpet in our family room, shook out a bag of Cheerio dust, and vacuumed the same as before. Based on the prevailing view of political economy, I worked and therefore eased our economic crisis.

Falling Prices Are the Antidote to Deflation

[This is the first in a series of articles that seeks to provide the intelligent layman with sufficient knowledge of sound economic theory to enable him to understand what must be done to overcome the present financial crisis and return to the path of economic progress and prosperity.]

A disastrous economic confusion, one that is shared almost universally, both by laymen and by professional economists alike, is the belief that falling prices constitute deflation and thus must be feared and, if possible, prevented.

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