Whether its drug prices, crushing debt, or unemployment, government can always come up with someone else to blame. Fortunately though, in spite of the lackluster economy the Fed and the government seem committed to giving us, there's hope for a much better future.
With an election year soon upon us, many politicians are talking about cracking down on "greed" in the business and corporate worlds. Fortunately for politicians, federal law is flexible enough to prosecute nearly anyone, and the chilling effect on entrepreneurs will be real.
In spite of past assurances to the contrary, our central planners at the Federal Reserve emerged this week to announce that their zero-interest-rate policy will continue. Is the world coming to realize that the emperors have no clothes?
Refugees no longer stop at the nearest safe haven, but instead are lured into enduring hazardous black-market journeys for a welfare-state payoff. At the same time, states offer high fees and reams of paperwork for those seeking legal passage.
Many are debating the nature of the state’s role in marriage, but the state has never been a friend to marriage of any kind, and has done much to undermine marriage’s economic and social benefits while substituting the state for family institutions.
In the United States, both major parties are very fond of using the power of government to prohibit voluntary transactions among consenting adults. They merely disagree on which things to ban under pain of arrest and imprisonment.
Following Supreme Court decisions, commentators often claim that a law is now "settled public policy." This is a tactic to silence dissent, and draws on fanciful ideas about the permanence of federal law. In real life, no political question is ever settled.
Both the left wing and right wing in the United States today use nullification as a tactic against federal law, even though nullification is clearly illegal according to modern legal interpretations. Nullification isn’t a legal tactic, though. It’s a political one.
For starters, consider that personal and business reputations might well become even more important in a more libertarian society. Our reflexive aversion to cheats, liars, and secrecy is very much in accord with human nature, and there’s every reason to believe a private legal system would reflect this. In an uncertain world of scarce resources, a lack of trustworthiness in others creates huge transaction costs. This is especially true of our interactions with strangers, where we’re forced to create elaborate legal contracts before doing business-- a handshake no longer suffices.
Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 21 July 2015.
