On page 1 of today’s New York Times, there is an article titled “Health Care, Vexing to Clinton, Is Now at Top of Bush’s Agenda.” Typical of The Times and the Left, the article treats the continuing rise in health care costs as a phenomenon of the free market and presents government intervention as the solution.
Ted Koppel offers a long and bitter reflection on the sad state of television news, and you read and read in hopes of a telling insight, only to finally bump into his diagnosis of the problem: deregulation, the drive for “profits” and “capitalism” generally.
One day in a nice community in Auburn, the construction crews arrived to pour concrete and build some very lovely bike and walking trails. How nice they were. But then a few months later, more crews arrived to install, all up and down the entire trail, the most ghastly array of stop signs, crossing details, no-motor-vehicle signs, do-this-don’t-do-that signs, hundreds of them, or so it seems. It was like a bad joke, and joy turned to fury.
I have the great pleasure to report that I am currently at the Universidad Francisco Marroquin (www.ufm.edu.gt) as a visiting professor teaching three courses on Austrian Economics.
When people consider the question of how society should be organized, there is a tendency to portray issues in terms of false alternatives. Such is the case with competition or individualism (i.e., market organization) versus cooperation or community (i.e., organization through government). It is often stated, and even more frequently implied, that we can choose cooperation over competition, when competition in markets is in fact a superior way to achieve social cooperation.
I have been discussing the nature and truth of the proposition that humans act with a nominalist. I have not been able to respond to his criticism of the truth of synthetic a priori categories, ideas, concepts, etc. It seems to me to be perfectly valid criticism, but I am interested to hear what other people think.
