Free Markets

In order to understand the tragedy of the euro and its history, it is important to be familiar with the two diverging and underlying visions and tensions that have come to the fore in the face of a single currency.

The beauty of the kitchen is that credentials or degrees don't matter. If there is such a thing as dog-eat-dog capitalism, this must be it — with customers holding the leash.

If you abjure all violence, you must abjure the state. Thus, while not all libertarians are pacifists, all pacifists are libertarians, whether they realize it or not (and, admittedly, a great many pacifists have not realized it). Gandhi, it appears, did realize it.

The legacy of (classical) liberalism, though never fully implemented, is one of vast economic progress and greater freedom wherever the ideology has been widely tried.

More than the anti-Soviet protests of the late 1980s, the Egyptian uprisings reveal what might eventually come home to the American empire itself, under the right conditions and at the right time.

The support of libertarians for big business is another debunked myth. So long as these enterprises are compatible with genuine free-market capitalism, fine. But because so many seek subsidies, bailouts, and other forms of coerced largesse, they do not carry the banner of libertarianism.

The Cold War was an unprecedented form of peacetime socialism, designed to appeal to big business, and Eisenhower became its spokesman. Savvy libertarians knew exactly what was going on and supported Cold War opponent Robert Taft.

Is it really such a stretch to suppose that when the US government (and Federal Reserve) brings the economy closer to outright socialism — as with Hoover, FDR, Bush, Obama, and Bernanke  — that those very interventions hamper the economy?

Beam’s chief problem, and the basic nature of New York magazine’s ignorance, is a certain degree of historical illiteracy. But that’s commonplace in our society. It is, therefore, one of the chief things we have to focus on.

Walt Disney maintained his desire to see the free-enterprise system of America always promoted as the solution to issues that societies face. The unfortunate reality of the present is that Disney World is becoming more of a museum about a bygone era.