[Originally published February 2007.]
It is hard to think of a slogan that nurtures anti–free market sentiment as strongly as the term “stabilization policy.” To Ludwig von Mises, stabilization policy was a direct consequence of the failure of government’s interventionism in the field of monetary affairs:
There is an impulse inwrought in all living beings that directs them toward the assimilation of matter that preserves, renews, and strengthens their vital energy. The eminence of acting man is manifested in the fact that he consciously and purposefully aims at maintaining and enhancing his vitality.
The Vampire Economy, by Guenter Reimann (1939) is a rare and wonderful thing: a detailed account of how the Nazis crushed the private sector and hamstrung the economy with vast regulations, violations of property rights, inflation, price controls, and taxes.
It is now available in PDF, and also as a print on demand book.
The author emigrated from Germany and worked on Wall Street after the war. One very odd thing: Reimann was a member of the Communist Party.
If every man has the absolute right to his justly-held property it then follows that he has the right to keep that property—to defend it by violence against violent invasion.
The insightful Global Economic Analysis blog has a concise write-up on “Helicopter Ben” and the Twelve Bankers and the reality of our current Federal Reserve system.
Did you ever think that a counterfeiting money could be good for the economy and that the counterfeiter could be considered an economic genius or even a national hero?
Living near the home of a major state university, national collegiate rankings are a real source of pride. There are the typical sports rankings that make the headlines; those for football and basketball in particular. But lately, The Columbus Dispatch has reported and editorialized on a new ranking; research and development expenditures at U.S. universities and colleges (in reports such as this).
Any one who wants to truly understand the sociology of production must go and search for what William Graham Sumner called the Forgotten Man. He will be found to be worthy, industrious, independent, and self-supporting. He is not, technically, “poor” or “weak”; he minds his own business, and makes no complaint. Consequently the philanthropists never think of him, and trample on him. The industrious and sober workman, who is mulcted of a percentage of his day’s wages to pay the policeman, is the one who bears the penalty. But he is the Forgotten Man. He passes by and is never noticed, because he has behaved himself, fulfilled his contracts, and asked for nothing.
Representative democracy in action in RobespiBlaire’s Gulag UK. The Government is to press ahead with preparations for nationwide congestion charging despite the millionth signature on a petition opposing the idea.
Despite what you were taught in school, writes Jim Fedako, governance is ugly; in all forms, and at all times. “Don’t believe me? Attend a meeting of a local governing entity. You will find the council — omnipotent by vote, omniscient by delusion — seated before you at the table. All night long, they’ll bicker and battle all the while proposing and dissecting plans and schemes with shouts and pounding shoes; Khrushchev moments indeed. And it doesn’t matter the span or purpose of the governing entity. This ugly reality holds equally true for the fist-fighting Taiwanese legislator as for the insult-hurling band booster. Power corrupts at all levels.”
