Hoarding is not even a very disruptive process, because for every miser stuffing money into his mattress, there are numerous misers' heirs ferreting it out. This has always been the case, and it is not likely to change drastically.
It is true that if labor becomes more efficient, workers must find other uses for the time they now have available. But why is this a problem? Human beings have unlimited wants, and there are always new uses for human labor.
Clearly marked prices on private-sector cash-payment surgeries are a great thing. In fact, the competition of for-profit surgery centers drives down prices at more "traditional" (i.e., highly bureaucratized) hospitals.
Keynes and Hazlitt: their lives and loyalties are a study in contrast — and mostly of choices born of internal conviction, in Hazlitt's case, or lack thereof, in Keynes's case.
Singapore left both the British Empire and Malaysia before finally becoming an independent city. It then proceeded to become one of history's most impressive economic success stories.
Only Spooner realized that it would be compounding crime and error to try to use government to right the wrongs committed by another government.
With this analysis of gift giving, we're reminded that mainstream economists seem hell-bent on reforming anything they haven't already screwed up.
Why does this domino process affect only banks, and not real estate, publishing, oil, or any other industry that may get into trouble?
Trade agreements have thus become obsolete tokens of negotiation in larger geopolitical disputes, protectionist tools for managing and interfering with global trade flows.
This immense cooperative system is known as a free-market economy. It was not consciously planned by anybody. It evolved.
