Big Government

In response to my article, “Government: Unnecessary but Inevitable” (2004), Walter Block (2005) offers a detailed refutation of my argument on the

Mazzucato’s economic reasoning falters on one of the most basic axioms of economics, namely the broken-window fallacy.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 26 July 2014.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 24 July 2014.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 24 July 2014.

Left alone, the market always allocates resources to the highest bidder i.e., to their most highly valued uses and through this process of investment and reinvestment, capital is accumulated and the marginal productivity of labor increases. Thus when the market remains free, wages and living standards are seen to continually increase as well.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 23 July 2014.

The word efficiency as used by government has been demoted from a useful analytical term to little more than another warning to watch your wallet.

A private seminar for graduate students. Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 21 July 2014.

Industrious low-income people often must turn to doing business in the black market to avoid the burdensome costs of government regulations, writes