“The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and, instead of exchanging commodities and services, fight one another.”

So Ludwig von Mises begins a short chapter in Human Action called “The Economics of War.”

Throughout my life, a specter developed by the state has been used to haunt and cajole the world’s politics to favor centralized technocracy. I remember it first being called “global warming,” complete with apocalyptic prognostications meant to occur by specific years.

Germany is the euro area’s economic powerhouse and most competitive economy. It accounts for close to 30 percent of the euro area gross domestic product (GDP) and has recorded sizable current account surpluses since the introduction of the euro. Substantial fiscal and labor market reforms in the early 2000s propelled the German economy.

Americans live in a complex world. That has made those who argue for ever-growing statism to often claim that “the more complex the society, the more government control we need.” One major reason is that this claim allows them to assert that even if liberty was appropriate in a long-past, simple “horse and buggy” age (as when America began as a country), it cannot possibly be so now.