Elon Musk—via his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency)—exposing and attempting to cut government waste is wonderful. However, it’d be even better if Elon focused more on striking closer to the root of the problem: the public’s economic ignorance from which all the disastrous, coercive, competition-immune, monopolistic government central planning, spending, and also warmongering grows. This is precisely what Ludwig von Mises did, and I like to call it the “Misesian formula” for prosperity. Mises devoted parts of his majestic treatise Human Action (1949) to the formula.

In the past few months several reputable aviation magazines, such as Combat Aircraft Journal Magazine, have stated that the F-35 is not combat capable.

Money-supply growth rose year over year in February for the seventh month in a row, the first time this has happened since mid-2022. The current trend in money-supply growth suggests a continued reversal of more than a year of historically large contractions in the money supply that occurred throughout much of 2023 and 2024. As of February, the money supply appears to be continuing in a period of moderate monetary growth coming out of a period of historically large swings in monetary trends from early 2020 to mid-2024. 

For decades, the dominant narrative surrounding population growth has been one of alarm. Thinkers like Malthus warned that population growth would cause mass starvation and ecological collapse. Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb famously predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve in the 1970s due to overpopulation.

In this week’s column, I’d like to discuss an important contribution to libertarian theory by the philosophers Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl in their book, Norms of Liberty (2005). This book has meant a lot to me over the years, and I read the manuscript before publication.