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.
As "left" and "right" categories dissolve and become increasingly meaningless on the American ideological scene, as young people, with the collapse of both the SDS-Left and the liberal "consensus," grope toward a new philosophy and a new orientation, right-libertarianism may ascend.
Legal or not, destruction is animal-like behavior. It's one thing when it is done by wild pigs. But when identical forms of destruction are sponsored by the state, we are talking about a form of brutality that is purely man-made.
Anyone who has worked in middle management has likely, at one time or another, had their big boss pass out some dopey management books that especially touched the hamster-brained sociopath (as Scott Adams would say) who was in charge of operations.
The economy is now a networked economy. Some people even say that in this networked world centralized managerial hierarchies are obsolete; in the future, they will be replaced by decentralized, disaggregated, peer-to-peer communities.
