Hoover’s Attack on Laissez-Faire

If government wishes to alleviate, rather than aggravate, a depression, its only valid course is laissez-faire—to leave the economy alone. Only if there is no interference, direct or threatened, with prices, wage rates, and business liquidation will the necessary adjustment proceed with smooth dispatch.

Any propping up of shaky positions postpones liquidation and aggravates unsound conditions. Propping up wage rates creates mass unemployment, and bolstering prices perpetuates and creates unsold surpluses.

Inflation Is a Policy that Cannot Last

To Austrian economists, the so-called international credit market crisis is a prima facie case of the inherent destructive tendency of government-controlled paper money: it is the consequence of an excessive expansion of credit and money, which encourages uneconomic investment and leads to unsustainable debt burdens. The inflation-provoked cluster of errors (this time in the financial sphere) eventually triggers an economic and political disaster.

Holding up the stock market

Oil is over $100 per barrel and gold is approaching $1000 per ounce. Consumer confidence just hit a 15 year low and every statistic about the housing bust just keeps on getting worse. Unemployment has spiked upward and so has price inflation. How has the stock market managed to hold its own under these conditions?

Triumph of the Red-State Fascists

Every Republican I’ve spoken to is mystified that John McCain has sewn up the Republican nomination. For his entire career, he has been more statist on both domestic and foreign policy than even the typical Republican. He has been considered a “liberal,” and not in a good sense. He doesn’t share any of the values that are said to make up the Republican consensus on economics or culture or religion. His personal baggage is heavy and a mile long. He had no dedicated constituency within the party. Of course I’m not talking to the run-of-the-mill Republican. There are vast hordes of these people who have never read a book and vote only by the most sordid political instinct known to man. McCain is their candidate. It comes down to one thing only: the simple-minded, unthinking impression that he is a war hero and, more than anyone else, has what it takes to smash the evil foreign peoples who want to kill us. In short, he appeals to the militaristic, nationalistic impulses of the base Republican base.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Note that no drought ever officially ends. The papers are packed with warnings of impending doom during the worst of it. But when the torrents of rain come — and they invariably do, eventually — there is no press release that says something along the lines of: “Praise Be to God, the drought is over. Use as much water as you are willing to pay for!” Bureaucrat International has a common feature: loathing of “consumerism.”

The “Who Is” Series

We are putting hard copies of these small monographs in any store order that includes a book by the author. The plan is to double and triple the number of authors covered, until they all have a monograph, and continue to include them free in shipped orders. Of course we hope that people will read them and pass them around.

Triumph of the Red-State Fascists

Every Republican I’ve spoken to is mystified that John McCain has sewn up the Republican nomination. For his entire career, he has been more statist on both domestic and foreign policy than even the typical Republican. He has been considered a “liberal,” and not in a good sense. He doesn’t share any of the values that are said to make up the Republican consensus on economics or culture or religion. His personal baggage is heavy and a mile long. He had no dedicated constituency within the party.

Is the Starving Man Free?

Modern “liberals” who advocate the view that government should provide us with the necessities or alleged necessities of life rarely appreciate that this assistance rests on a system of mass robbery and enslavement that is highly inimical to their professed belief in liberty. In fact, the advocates of such policies present them in quite the opposite light, as enhancing our liberty.

The Crisis Point of the Inflationary Boom

Most of the businessmen canvassed are finding their costs are rising and, in particular, the dominant cost they typically bear: that associated with retaining a competent and motivated workforce. At the same time, those who do not directly play a part in satisfying the needs of end consumers (an overriding majority, if our sample is representative of industrial and commercial organization as a whole) are beginning to fret about a slackening of demand for their (mainly higher and intermediate goods) output. As Mises, Hayek, et al. took great pains to explain, what this means is that the seemingly golden age — in reality, a thinly gilded one — during which the first, most favored issuers of cheap credit and artificially boosted equity prices enjoyed almost effortless success, has reached the limit of its ability to postpone the workings of fundamental economic law.

Society Is a Blessing, but Government Is Evil

Thomas Paine was more than a pamphleteer for the cause of the American revolution. He was a serious political philosopher, as this excerpt from The Rights of Man demonstrates. In many ways, he anticipated the insights of Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek. “A great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It had its origin in the principles of society, and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has in man and all the parts of a civilized community upon each other create that great chain of connection which holds it together. “

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