Cronyism and Corporatism

The Harris-Walz campaign has adopted “freedom” as its watchword slogan, but it is a version of freedom that is more fitting for something from one of Orwell‘s works than freedom in the classical sense.

While some economists are lauding the idea of the “entrepreneurial state,” the reality is that such a term turns the very concept of entrepreneurship on its head. By nature, the state cannot act as an entrepreneur.

America is always on the verge of finally having "honest government." Of course, what passes for “honest government” is a government that efficiently takes wealth from productive people and transfers it to those who are politically-connected.

Progressives claim that the state grants us our rights, and that liberty can flourish only in the presence of a powerful state. The truth runs in the opposite direction.

On this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop are joined by Patrick Newman.

Tuesday night’s Vice-Presidential Debate was remarkable not for what was said (which was forgettable), but for what was not asked: What should be the proper role of government in what purports to be a free society? Neither candidates nor the moderators were interested in that question.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk want to make the federal government more efficient. But if the true aim of our political system is not to solve the problems facing Americans but to transfer wealth to the government and the politically-connected, the government is already very efficient.

The standard belief is that slavery was about obtaining “cheap labor,“ yet nothing could be further from the truth. Slavery comes with high opportunity costs, which is why American slave owners depended upon several government regulations to subsidize their “peculiar institution.”

When our ruling classes speak of “believing in democracy,” they are speaking of a romantic version of a form of governance that, in real life, is quite different than the sanitized version presented in our media. 

Despite claims from progressive historians that US slavery was a natural outgrowth of a free market economy, the reality is that slavery would have been much costlier without governments—federal and state—subsidizing it. It is time to set the record straight.