Bureaucracy and Regulation

Systems do not collapse when they finally become unstable; they appear stable until the moment their failure can no longer be ignored.

In this issue of The Misesian, we continue our Year of Rothbard with a new essay from Joseph Salerno on what made Rothbard’s work in Austrian economics so notable. Rothbard took the inimitable work of Mises, as set down in his groundbreaking treatise Human Action, and expanded it further.

For much of its history, California stood out, not only as a land of remarkable natural beauty and extensive natural resources, but as a place with institutions that fueled extraordinary wealth creation. What happened?

The democratization of urban planning, the politicization of the environmental movement, and the no-growth movement came together to erect enormous barriers to housing construction in California.

Humans have a tremendous amount of agency in how dangerous natural disasters end up being. Unfortunately, most politicians and government officials have become a major part of the problem. 

According to AOC and Bernie Sanders, it is impossible for someone to obtain a billion dollars of income by any means beyond theft. How much of a mega-income is due to entrepreneurial profit and how much is a wealth transfer?

Prediction markets, while obviously imperfect, still work well because people voluntarily put their money where their beliefs are. Naturally, the government wants to shut them down.

Regulatory systems are infamous for creating “traps” in seem to be impervious to reform. Regulators seek to “drain the swamp,” but, instead, find themselves up to their necks in alligators.

The very term “environmental activist” tells us that Greta and her ilk care not a whit for the betterment of mankind, except in the most theoretical and secondary way. It is the “environment” that is the end goal.

Regulatory systems are infamous for creating “traps” that seem to be impervious to reform. Regulators seek to “drain the swamp,” but, instead, find themselves up to their necks in alligators.