Interest rates should be determined by the market, according to its needs, to operate efficiently and effectively distribute society’s financial resources, allocating capital among different stakeholders according to the results of their investments. For example, an entrepreneur who achieves an IRR of 10 percent would be willing to pay 5 percent interest to expand his business, attracting those investors who cannot obtain 5 percent for their capital.

Western and American culture can be said to have undergone a process of infantilization—reduction to a childish and immature state. The familiar maxim “hard times create strong men; strong men create good times; good times create weak men; weak men create hard times” has been applied quite a bit recently to American culture. This quote seems particularly apt regarding, not just economic ignorance, but economic immaturity.

In 1918, the Austrian political scientist Joseph Schumpeter delivered a now-famous lecture titled “The Crisis of the Tax State.” The question he addressed was whether or not the First World War would bring about a destructive fiscal crisis for European states. Would the burdens of post-war debt and taxation threaten to destroy these states?

Throughout history, there have been tyrannies that have been imposed on the citizenry through non-democratic means. Monarchies have been one example. Another example have been communist regimes in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and Cuba. Still other examples have been US-supported national-security-state coups in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile.

The U.S. directly purchased Argentine pesos and finalized a $20-billion currency swap to provide stability amid the country’s economic turmoil.

There are men who write books. And there are men who write worlds. Ludwig von Mises—exiled in his own land—single-handedly birthed an entire science, invisible to the eyes of an age bewitched by the tyranny of numbers.

For every $5 the government collected in taxes, about $1 went to pay interest.

The authors of multiple peer-reviewed studies in the British medical journal The Lancet, say the actual death toll is much higher.