Even granting the goals of “meeting people’s needs” and “selflessness” cherished by socialists, a property-based market economy is far superior at meeting those goals in modern civilization compared to a top-down, centrally controlled socialist system.
Many support democracy because for them the collective or “republican” liberty they favor far exceeds individual liberty in importance. Those of us who follow Mises and Rothbard will disagree.
The 1920s featured political détente, debt liquidations by prior consumer price inflation, an introductory stalling of monetary inflation, a German economic miracle, and a broad-based technological revolution. The 2020s have none of these.
The Nuremberg prosecutors wanted to indict the Nazis on trial for crimes, but at the same time they wanted to preserve the dogma that the modern European nation-state is the culmination of moral progress. This created a conundrum.
The 1920s featured political détente, debt liquidations by prior consumer price inflation, an introductory stalling of monetary inflation, a German economic miracle, and a broad-based technological revolution. The 2020s have none of these.
The Canadian Liberal Party began as a party of classical liberalism, radically supportive of freedom and free markets. But those days are long over.
Different people often react quite differently to the same conditions, so attempts to blame religious conflict on material deprivation fail. Ideological differences also better explain why Islam is not monolithic.
The idea of ordinary people enjoying luxuries and "unnecessary" items has long troubled intellectuals and aristocrats. But thanks to capitalism, ordinary people can now enjoy the basic pleasures the ruling classes have long seized for their own.
Machiavelli asserts that civil society can best flourish in the absence of government intrusion.
Machiavelli asserts that civil society can best flourish in the absence of government intrusion.
