The yearly growth rate of the consumer price index jumped from 5.4 percent in June 2021 to 9.1 percent in June 2022. Some economists attributed this increase to monopolies.

In 1964, Leonard Read wrote a genealogy from the perspective of a pencil, demonstrating the vast, complicated web of the structure of production that is handled by the division of labor on free markets. The pencil explained that no one knows how to make a pencil because of the myriad production processes involved:

In over twenty-five years of teaching undergraduate students, I have heard the same refrain countless times: free markets have many problems that government has to step in to solve. Indeed, students expect government to “step in” so much that markets occupy a peripheral role in their idealized economic system. Even students with an ideological predilection toward markets will be quick to argue that certain problems, such as pollution, require extensive government regulation and probably copious spending of tax dollars.

The day after America celebrated its independence and its founding principles of self-governance and liberty, across the pond, Britain paid tribute to its values of collectivism and statism by commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the National Health Service (NHS). Children’s choirs sang “Happy Birthday” at a thanksgiving church service celebrating the NHS at Westminster Abbey.

Economic exchange stands as the defining essence of any economy, epitomizing the intricate web of interconnected transactions that shape its very existence. In essence, an economy derives its essence from the culmination of individual exchanges. However, the profound impact of the crucial distinction between voluntary choice and coercion often goes unnoticed by many outside the realm of economic study.

The state is, first and foremost, an institution whose overarching goal is the forcible subjugation of all the people who inhabit a given territory. However, what makes the state different from other coercive entities, such as organized crime groups, is that it enjoys some form of popular legitimacy. In other words, in addition to enslaving its inhabitants physically, it needs to secure their mental servitude as well.

The acronym 2SLGBTQ+IA stands for two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, androgynous, and asexual.

On Friday, July 7, 2023, news broke in the financial market media that the “BRICS” (that is, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) will implement their plan to create a new international currency for trading and financial transactions, and that this new currency will be “gold backed.”

It is no surprise to libertarians that what is in the interest of the government might not be in the interest of people in general. More often than not, the government’s interest is directly at odds with the interests of people in general. The countless wars waged by governments throughout history, for which common people paid ultimately with their lives, bear witness to this fact.

Earlier this week Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr delivered a speech called Holistic Capital Review, sharing thoughts on the banking sector’s existing capital requirements imposed by the Fed.

He firmly stated:

… the existing approach to capital requirements is sound.

Illustrated through nondescript mentions, despite this alleged soundness, he did find some ways to improve the fatally flawed system: