Healthcare in Canada is not free. Constantly full waiting rooms and long waits for procedures are not an unavoidable fact of life but a product of a "priceless" supply system, where waiting for service acts as a rationing substitute for the market price.
One by one, Mises discusses and dispatches the pillars of progressive dogma: government spending can create jobs for the unemployed; the service motive is better than the profit motive; government choices are superior to individual choices.
One does not need to be a Brookings Institute scholar— specializing in "oil dependence, electric vehicles, and climate change" — to see why no one will willingly purchase an all-electric car, much less the one million that President Obama wants on the nation's highways in five years.
F.A. Hayek, in a forgotten article from 1941, observes the tragedy that "men of science and engineers" may "frequently be found leading a movement which in effect merely serves to support the unholy alliance between the monopolistic organizations of capital and labor."
Groupon is a brilliant concept that uses social networking to mobilize shoppers and bring down prices. In contrast to all the mainstream economic models of "market failure," Groupon is yet another example of market success.
Friedenberg was among those who regarded US participation in the Vietnam War as an abomination. He had begun expressing his outrage in print in the mid-'60s, though most of it was directed at American public schools rather than at American foreign policy.
If there is anything that government is actually good at doing, it is destroying things. Strangely, love for this destruction has become a popular cause, revealed in the push for "sustainability" and the banning of technologies that improve our lives.
Thomas Mun set forth what would become the standard mercantilist line. He pointed out that there was nothing particularly evil about the East India Company trade. The company imported valuable drugs, spices, dyes, and cloth from the Indies, and it re-exported most of these products to other countries.
Hayek noticed that the British habit of proclaiming compromise to be ingenious is an excuse for closing the eyes to unpleasant facts. If there is anyone who is not entitled to put his trust in the genius for compromise and for muddling through, it is the modern planner.
"The Randist analysis of the nature of crime implies the necessity for a minimal government."
