In case you doubted that California's politicians are firmly committed to ever-higher levels of taxation, California is now trying to retroactively impose sales taxes on out-of-state retailers going as far back as 2012.
Consumers are indeed sovereign, but the reason consumers can exercise their sovereignty is that entrepreneurs have already borne the uncertainty of production to make the goods available for purchase.
Many healthcare professionals have happily embraced the same attitude as cops: "We're experts, don't you dare question us." But the 100,000 yearly medical-error deaths suggest this expertise ought to be questioned more often.
Now is not the time to pine for the days of agreeable politics. In recent decades, the US has gone through radical political and cultural transformations that are making the country progressively ungovernable.
Why do individuals pay much higher prices for some goods versus other goods? The answer requires understanding the law of diminishing marginal utility.
The Marxist dialectic was purported to explain every development in Soviet society. But so much wishful thinking was required that eventually it all just became a subject for jokes.
Decentralized decision-making is critically important in potential emergency situations, because only property owners have the skin in the game that that forces people to think long and hard about the consequences and side effects of their actions.
The dollar has benefited mightily from the abandonment of commodity money, the Bretton Woods system, and the rise of competing fiat currencies. This is partly why the dollar has come to dominate international trade.
