Last week, I discussed the way in which Patrick Deneen misreads John Stuart Mill in his book Regime Change. I’d like to continue the assault on Regime Change this week by looking at an argument he makes against libertarianism. Libertarians, Deneen alleges, are elitists. They think that ordinary people need to be ruled by an elite class of experts. They favor restrictions on democracy in order to entrench laws about property rights that benefit the rich at the expense of the masses.

Deneen tells us that

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday left the target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) unchanged at 5.25 percent. This “pause” in the target rate suggests the FOMC believes it has raised the target rate high enough to rein in price inflation which has run well above the Fed’s arbitrary two-percent inflation target since mid-2021. 

Most people agree that we are closer to nuclear war than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Some would even argue that we are closer now than we were in those fateful days, when Soviet missiles in Cuba almost triggered a nuclear war between the US and the USSR.

In those days we were told that we were in a life-or-death struggle with Communism and thus could not cede a square foot of territory or the dominoes would fall one-by-one until the “Reds” ruled over us.

Last week’s decision by the Federal Reserve to pause on interest rates left many unanswered questions, despite reporters raising them during the Q & A session. While the average person may be skeptical that the Fed can control inflation by simply raising interest rates, it’s still a position the Fed holds onto dearly.

Most cartels and trusts would never have been set up had not the governments created the necessary conditions by protectionist measures. Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency immanent in capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laisser-faire.

—Ludwig von Mises, Socialism

Everything possible is done to prevent the fraud of the monetary system from being exposed to the masses who suffer from it.

—Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), before the US House of Representatives, February 15, 2006

Since 1960, Congress has raised the debt ceiling 78 times, according to Bloomberg. The process of increasing the debt limit has become so regular that markets barely worry about it. Furthermore, as the 2011 debt ceiling crisis showed, the impact on asset prices happened mostly in emerging economies. In 2011, Turkish and Indian debt were the most negatively impacted, while Treasuries rose.

When we think of “solar power,” we picture a field or a roof full of glass panels churning out electricity. However, this is just a more recent development in channeling the sun’s energy. Most histories of solar power will begin with stories regarding the use of magnifying glasses and mirrors to make fire. From the first to fourth centuries, the Romans began including large south-facing windows in their famous bathhouses, optimizing the heat energy the sun provided to heat the buildings.