As you may have noticed, those dreaded “forces” seem to have rematerialized—in the headlines, in the journals, in the pages of bestsellers: those historical, material, political, or ideological forces that supposedly make conflict between some set of groups, classes, or states “inevitable.”

But as the great libertarian historian Ralph Raico never tired of telling, such collectivist narratives are often little more than convenient scapegoats or outright inventions to cover for bad decisions made by powerfully situated individuals who could and should have done otherwise.

Waiting for financial collapse is hardly a fast-moving process, nor something to look forward to. But the winding down of the balance sheet and eventual bust to follow must be explained to the public. Inflation metrics are still higher than anyone would like. The stock market still flounders. There is no end in sight.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will testify in front of Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Politicians will use the sessions to pressure the Central Bank to adopt their party’s preferred monetary policy and as an excuse to bring up their favorite economic talking points. But these hearings also serve a larger purpose — to frame a recession as if it is possible to avoid.

The American Left has decided that the so-called meritocracy is a bad thing. In a typical example from the Los Angeles Times this week, Nicholas Goldberg points to a number of issues exploring how merit is not actually the key to power and riches in America:

Economics in Action
By Brian Balfour
Thales Press, 2022; 306 pp.

Murray Newton Rothbard, perhaps the greatest enemy of the state in the second half of the twentieth century, would have recently celebrated his ninety-seventh birthday had he lived.

Men are not salmon, those unique creatures that swim against the current. Most people “go with the flow” and allow the pace of events to dictate their lives, at least in that few consciously choose to reject the current order of things, declare it to be profoundly wrong, and act on it. Rothbard was one of those few.