Free Markets

The Fed has been creating money at a phenomenal clip all year with the M-3 (that government no longer reports, but economist John Williams does on Shadowstats.com) growing at a 14-percent rate, a 34-year high.

The extent those costs harm the domestic auto industry illustrates what happens to industries in which worker benefits exceed worker productivity. No market participant consistently gambles with economic law and wins, and the UAW has been gambling for a long time.

If a regime of complete economic freedom be established, social and political freedom will follow automatically; and until it is established neither social nor political freedom can exist.

Hunter Lewis's excellent book differs from nearly all other books on economics. Most books defend a particular point of view: a work by Duncan Foley, e.g., will be much more favorable to Marxism than one by Ludwig von Mises.

I blogged elsewhere the “Palmer on Patents” post below a couple years ago.

No doubt, the costs of a return to "sound money" — that is ending the government money-supply monopoly and returning the supply of money to free-market forces — would most likely be substantial. It would most likely entail a severe loss in output and employment, given that inflation has been allowed to have a say in the allocation of scarce resources for decades.

We do know, however, that free people are better able to adapt and prosper than unfree people, in whatever situation the future holds.

So long as one exercises discretion in accepting information from Wikipedia, and so long as one's research extends beyond the Wikipedia article to the sources it cites, Wikipedia is an exceptional resource that is unique to our generation.

At least it will give us something to do until we figure out where next to hitch up the engine of inflation. At which point we can once again cast off the hair shirts, put on our gladrags, and throw another wild, exuberant, but ultimately destructive, orgy of high living and hot money — and devil take the hindmost!

What does society need to do to make sure that it has enough scientists and the right level of technological advance that is also economically viable? It needs a free market.