No man or group of men — including any group of men calling themselves "the government" — is morally entitled to initiate the use of physical force, the threat of force, or any substitute for force against any other man or group of men. The USA is moving increasingly away from a free-market economy and toward fascist totalitarianism.
What we need today is full, radical, complete, uncompromised deregulation and privatization. We need competition. What we need is the absence of legal barriers to enter the market. Many people want to avoid the topic of energy because it is technical, large, and seems too specialized. But Robert Bradley's book tells you what you need to know, from the perspective of history, economics, and politics; and it does so understandably.
Allowing terminally ill people to bypass the drug testing and approval process will not create a "right to experimental drugs." It will not destroy the incentives for patients to participate in the clinical trial system. It will not make it impossible to gather scientific data on how drugs work. What it will do is allow individuals who are fully capable of rational choice to make the most important choices of all according to their own values.
To Mises, freezing money supply did not represent, per se, a desirable money system, even though the consequences derived from it would make such a system appear more in line with a free market economy than the current system of relentless increase in credit and fiat money supply, controlled by the government.
Rich men exist today, but more frequently than not they owe their fortunes directly or indirectly to the state.
Please please, can't somebody do something about Christian contemporary music? This stuff is the bane of the entire radio dial.
It is certainly true that antitrust regulation has in the past been used as a protectionist device by punishing firms for being too good at pleasing consumers, thereby taking business away from economically inferior but politically connected competitors.
Delivered at the Mises Institute on July 6, 2006.
