The furor over the supposed racism of Texaco's management dramatizes, in miniature, the tragedy and danger of so-called civil-rights legislation. The Texaco story paints a vivid picture of what we've become: an economy distorted and abused by a racial spoils system, in which race is pitted against race, employees pitted against employers, and all power is held by federal bureaucrats and magistrates who "resolve" disputes by taking capitalists to the cleaners.
The physical impossibility of Santa got me thinking about the economics of the old boy's operations. After all, he is not paid for the goods he delivers, and it would be improper for him to send a bill the next morning. Nobody asked him to leave the stuff, or contracted with him to do so. But that means he gets no feedback from the consumer, much less a clear indication of profit or loss.
As the Cold War wound down, opinion elites discovered a new menace: "unfair trade practices." These are the subsidies, protectionist tariffs, and various regulations and business practices other countries use, which hamper the export of American goods.
It's no shock that the Senate has taken another step towards socializing the medical sector. That's been the pattern for nearly a century. What's appalling is that this socialization is confused with authentic insurance, a viable market institution.
Murray Rothbard had a remarkable ability to ask fundamental questions that others, even those within his own free-market camp, missed. After Rothbard touched an issue, it could never remain the same.
Voter opposition to major "free trade" agreements helped propel a surge in protectionist rhetoric this year. Even constituencies when should be naturally free trade—Republican conservatives—have fallen prey to old fallacies.
Yet despite aggressive marketing and loads of free PR, neither Honda nor Chevrolet (which sells the Geo line) could give these pint-sized Edsels away. It turn out that the views of the fuel-efficiency killjoys and the general population sharply diverge.
It was November 25, 1945, and the overpaid workers at General Motors were striking, again. Their gripe? Company profits were up, but wages were not. They demanded a shorter workweek and higher pay. Then as now, this government-backed union was using its legal privileges to stick it to consumers and employers. But there was one voice of sanity.
To the outside world, it appears that all economists agree: free trade can never be compromised. Inside, the picture is far more complicated. Good economists, preeminently the Austrian School, favor liberty across the board. Yet among the mainstream, economists who favor big government at home likely reject free trade abroad.
Defenders of the free market are often stigmatized as uncritical apologists for big business. Nothing could be further from the truth, as readers of this book will at once discover.
