Free Markets

It is certainly true that our age is full of conflicts which generate war.

Diminished preparedness for severe weather events should surprise nobody. The airport industry is one of the most regulated and intervened-in sectors worldwide, and it is not uncommon for governments to own the airports outright, leasing or licensing the facilities out to favored operators.

Our health and living standards have virtually nothing to do with charity and virtually everything to do with entrepreneurs solving problems. Had we depended on only alms and goodwill to elevate our living standards, we would still be squatting in mud huts.

Prohibition and the New Deal are alike in their professed intention. Both assumed the guise of disinterested benevolence towards the body politic. We are judged incapable of setting up an adequate social defense against vicious rum-sellers and malefactors of great wealth.

I want to focus on how these times relate to history and how we can change the future by applying the economic way of thinking. I am therefore going to draw your attention to four different themes.

The first self-conscious school of economic thought developed in France shortly after the publication of Cantillon’s Essai.

If we are going to look at the current, dismal economy and blame somebody's policies for it, surely we can acquit Ron Paul. That doesn't by itself prove that Ron Paul's views are correct, but it certainly casts doubt on Krugman's constant claims.

The first self-conscious school of economic thought developed in France shortly after the publication of Cantillon's <i>Essai</i>. They called themselves "the economists" but later came to be called the "physiocrats," after their prime politico-economical principle: physiocracy (the rule of nature).

The envy-driven masses do not care a whit for what the demagogues call the "bourgeois" concern for freedom of conscience, of thought, of the press, for habeas corpus, trial by jury, and all the rest. They long for the earthly paradise that the socialist leaders promise them.