Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism
In Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism, Jörg Guido Hülsmann has surely written the definitive personal and intellectual biography of perhaps the greatest economist of the 20th century.
Hülsmann takes us into the world of Mises’ childhood, and the intellectual climate of his day. Hülsmann’s knowledge of economics enables him to explain and evaluate Mises’ major works and the various arguments with which Mises contested. One of Mises’ major works, Socialism, converted many to the market economy, and left the socialists of his day without a viable system.
Kevin Rudd's Painful Recovery
Kevin Rudd is no economist. In his recent article, The road to recovery (Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 2009), Rudd has demonstrated he does not understand the current economic depression.
Kevin Rudd is setting up a free market straw man to destroy in order to sell further intervention to the Australian people. This intervention is bound to fail. While the people struggle along with his policies on their back, Kevin Rudd will no doubt take credit for their progress.
Government Stimulus Impossible
In the present economic depression (known as the Global Financial Crisis) politicians around the world are enacting massive programs aimed at ‘stimulating the economy’. They are bound to fail and can only make matters worse.
Government stimulus is nothing less that taking money from the many to give to the few. It is like taking water out of the deep end of the pool, and pouring it in the shallow end, in an effort to raise the water level.
The Impossibility of Limited Government
In his lecture, The Impossibility of Limited Government, Hans-Hermann Hoppe examines three sources of American national pride. The sources include, (1) America’s colonial past of natural human liberty, (2) the original American revolution, and (3) the American constitution. In Professor Hoppe’s view the first two are justified sources of pride, but the third represents a fateful error.
Privatise Electricity
The trade union movement and political parties like Socialist Alliance must be elated by the decision of the Liberal Party of NSW to keep the means of the production of electricity in the hands of the state.
The Zimbabwe Inflation
According to news reports (RTE / The Citizen) the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has issued yet another higher denomination banknote, this time a 200,000 dollar note. Is anyone still wondering why prices are skyrocketing?
Parking at Pendle Hill Train Station
Parking at Pendle Hill Train Station is at a premium. There are too many cars, and too few car parking spaces. To deal with this shortage, I would suggest that the owners of the car parking spaces should charge a fee for the prime car parking spaces.
Frank Shostak in the Weekend Australian
Dr Frank Shostak is featured in a story in the Weekend Australian today. In RBA policy ‘causing inflation’, the MAN Financial chief economist warns investors inflation is heading up due to the policies of the Reserve Bank.
Environmental and Resource Economics
In Environmental and Resource Economics, Walter Block, Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and Senior Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, shows how the free market can solve environmental problems. Current environmental problems he says are not caused by market failure, but by government failure in not allowing private property to operate in a free market.
Milton Friedman RIP
Milton Friedman died today age 94. Milton Friedman was my introduction to free market economics (or more precisely, the economics that is correct). I originally came across Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose in what was called the Economics Reference Room in building C5A at Macquarie University. (This was a place where commerce students went to study.) I remember the very seat in the courtyard of building C5C where I first read chapter one of the book, The Power of the Market. I loved the book and couldn’t put it down. I read it in about a week.
