As the once-formidable Enron Empire continues to implode--and new revelations appear daily about the inner workings (and apparent financial shenanigans) of this firm--we are treated, not surprisingly, to the wrong story by the mainstream news media and their associates from the political classes.  It is bad enough to see a huge firm go bankrupt, but what makes this situation even worse is the moral and intellectual bankruptcy that follows in its wake as the apostles of statism feed the rest of us disinformation.

Ludwig von Mises was correct to observe that “the great creative genius who perpetuates himself in immortal works and deeds does not when working distinguish the pain from the pleasure. For such men creation is at once the greatest joy and the bitterest torment, an inner necessity.” It is also true that intellectual promise can degenerate into arrogance, narcissism, and paranoia, such that genius becomes drivel, as is the case with Nobel Prize-winning economist and mathematician John Nash.

Born in 1899 in Schwarmstedt, Germany, Wilhelm Röpke would become one of the most distinguished economists of his day. Acknowledged as a peer by such eminents as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek, Röpke was a key intellectual architect of postwar prosperity in Europe.

When individuals are not owners of resources, they are not able to assess their value; and when resources are publicly owned, their use will be systematically hasty and imprudent. When we realize that public ownership leads to systematic haste and imprudence, we get a hint that the inability of assessing the value of resources has deleterious consequences for most of us, with no one to blame except perhaps those who insist on keeping the institution of public ownership in force.