Coal drove the development of a whole new way of cooking and a radically different diet. A menu based upon coal-fired food was the cuisine that accompanied industrialization. Food and fuel were intricately linked in a fossil fuel-burning age.
One of the cliches of the New Deal was that businesses were entitled to a “fair” profit. Leonard Read astutely pointed out that profits (and losses) have nothing to do with “fairness.”
While the United States has not fallen as far economically as Argentina, the fact is that the present economic policies are ruinous. We need someone like Javier Milei to speak the truth about what is happening.
Today, the Fed takes a short break from robbing us via inflation and, instead, delivers huge amounts of cash to banks to service Black Friday purchases. The large cash infusions often make banks vulnerable to robberies.
For those who value self-determination, free markets, peace, and freedom, Napoleon provides little to be admired. He was a despot, a warmonger, a centralist, and a hypocrite who claimed to spread freedom to justify his own lust for conquest and power.
Econometric models are constructed with the idea that they can be substituted for authentic human action. Not surprisingly, they fail badly.
What lies behind the attempt to bypass fear of failure is the perceived lack of any substantial cost to failure. The illusion lasts only for so long before economic reality prevails.
Free-market intellectuals, activists, and columnists must never tire of endlessly recapitulating the truth about freedom, free markets, and peace. So long as a sizable portion of the Argentine public thinks the Peronists "get it right," no free-market reformer can succeed.
Instead of the usual statist candidates, Argentine voters have elected a self-proclaimed Rothbardian who is calling for radical free-market changes in the nation's economy.
Not only is Washington in political turmoil, but the policies emanating from the Beltway are more incoherent than ever.
