The medical profession has long employed the state to pad doctor salaries and influence. Before the Flexner Report, mechanics made more than doctors and the brightest students avoided the profession to enter the clergy.
The political machines that run America's cities are likely to keep running them when these protests and riots end. Taxpayers will be worse off, but politicians will be even more powerful.
We already employ a wide variety of nonpolice crime deterrent strategies, from private gun ownership to security cameras to private security. Meanwhile, in spite of the proliferation of police and police departments, crime, rioting, and looting endure.
Thanks to the COVID-19 panic this year, graduates at America's institutions of higher education missed the "opportunity" to be lectured by some celebrity or politician about the importance of "giving back" to the community, or being yourself, or following your dreams.
In the 1960s, politicians and bureaucrats had nearly unbounded faith in the ability to plan a nearly perfect society. Things didn't turn out as they had planned.
Ironically, the economic collapse in Europe has united both the poor and rich members of the EU in agreement that the EU has none of their best interests at heart. The political winds have shifted and are blowing against the EU.
It's a mistake to think freedom is protected by having the Supreme Court declare what is "constitutional," thus imposing centralized federal law on all the states.
When people are scared they let the authorities get away with all sorts of nonsense. We're seeing this with the Federal Reserve right now.
"History cannot teach us any general rule, principle, or law. There is no means to abstract from a historical experience a posteriori any theories or theorems concerning human conduct and policies."
Mises knew: “Mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people…forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed."
