“Follow the money.” This is a common watchword among those distrustful of the state. If you want to know what politicians or state institutions are really up to, the common wisdom goes, you have to stop listening to what statists do and say, and start paying attention to who is paying them to do and say it.

[Dr. Gilbert Berdine of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Ryan McMaken discuss the policy makers’ justifications for vaccine mandates over the past two years. Will any of these policy makers admit to any mistakes?]

Jedediah Purdy is a legal academic probably best known for his work in environmental law, and his just-published Two Cheers for Politics (Basic Books, 2022) shows his wide knowledge of political philosophy. But a central argument of the book is a textbook case of a fallacy to which Ludwig von Mises was keen to call our attention.

It gives me no joy to write this piece.

Even a cursory review of the redacted version of the affidavit submitted in support of the government’s application for a search warrant at the home of former President Donald Trump reveals that he will soon be indicted by a federal grand jury for three crimes: Removing and concealing national defense information (NDI), giving NDI to those not legally entitled to possess it, and obstruction of justice by failing to return NDI to those who are legally entitled to retrieve it.

Introduction

With my talk, I would like to accomplish three goals:

First, I want to explain some sound and time-tested basics of monetary theory.

Second, I would like to point out why it is important to have a free market in money; that the battlefront of our time is not between, say, bitcoin, stable coins, gold, and silver, but between government-monopolized fiat monies and a free market in money.

At the end of September 2021, the Nord Stream 2 project was a reality after many years of uncertainty. At that time, there were only a few more regulatory hurdles remaining for Germany and Russia to seal the deal on the long-awaited and highly controversial natural gas pipeline. Achieving such a feat would have been a milestone in energy cooperation between the two countries.