Mises Wire

Let us begin with what CBDCs definitely are not: they are not a new kind of cryptocurrency akin to bitcoin.

No matter how bleak the economy may be, the Keynesians are likely to say, “It would have been worse without us.” 

The Left has often claimed that privatization is a neoliberal scam. But actual experience suggests privatization schemes have improved access to goods and services while raising productivity and real incomes. 

The aims of the WEF are not to plan every aspect of production and thus to direct all individual activity. Rather, the goal is to limit the possibilities for individual activity—by dint of squeezing out industries and producers within industries from the economy.

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. 

Murray Rothbard wrote, “The rate of interest is the price of ‘time.’” It’s safe to say the world’s central banks have manipulated and mispriced what time is worth.

Though he was generally a Ricardian, John Stuart Mill thought that the main obstacle to socialism is that people might not yet be civilized enough to put it into practice. 

“The General Theory was published in 1936 and Hayek decided not to respond directly. In making this decision, Hayek committed what many defenders of the free market system consider to be one of the major tactical errors of this century.” 

Ideally, political elites would like nothing more than state-sponsored ethnic conflict. Having multiple groups pitted against each other in petty political squabbles makes effective opposition against the managerial class virtually impossible. 

Deficits still matter, largely because they require monetary policies that lead to bubbles, inequality, and the slow Japanization of the US economy.