Gore’s remarks come at a curious time, his party having suffered some terrible electoral defeats in the last election cycle. A proposal to create a Canadian-like system in Oregon was defeated 80-20 at the polls. Yet there are reasons why the socialist idea remains popular.
Capitalism (the free economy) is constantly being criticized, and it usually begins with opposition to the merchant class. However, the arguments and examples that people use against business under capitalism are not only illogical but also inaccurate.
Roosevelt-era farm policy lives! Consider: dairy farmers in northern New England dumped 80,000 pounds of fresh milk in a protest against low milk prices. The farmers evidently favor the price-support program that ended last year, because it worked as a kind of minimum wage program: keeping their incomes high and competitors out of the market. Now these farmers must face the mean forces of supply and demand, and they don’t like it one bit.
After decades of “miracle” economic growth since World War II, Japan’s economy abruptly faltered in 1990 and has stagnated since. Why? Neither the Keynesian nor Monetarist explanations can provide an account. Only the Austrian theory of the business cycle provides the explanation.
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. By John Gray. Granta Books, 2002. X + 246 pgs.
For a few billion dollars you might expect to be able to bribe some small third world country into cleaning up its act, to defend the property rights of its citizens, to provide a stable currency, and to establish a non-interventionist economic and foreign policy.
With little Switzerlands and industrial revolutions developing around the globe, the U.S. could provide the examples that would establish a classical liberal world order within one generation with less than 1% of the federal budget.
