Download Episode. Scott is joined by Mark Thornton, Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, to discuss an article he wrote recently on the current housing bubble. They begin by discussing the damage that unbacked government-managed paper money does to the United States and the world. They relate that back to our current economic situation where we are feeling the effects of the enormous monetary expansion the Fed unleashed in 2020. Next, they turn to housing where Thornton, who was an early observer of the housing bubble that crashed in 2007, explains how that bubble has evolved into what...
Free trade
TGIF: Pursue Your Happiness and Forget the Rest
How about we do something novel in the new year? Let's stop worrying about the stuff most politicians, pundits, and activists want us to worry about and instead think about ourselves, our families, our friends, and whatever communities we choose to be part of. Let's forget about "the country" and the rest of the world. Let's individually pursue happiness. All I'm saying is that it's finally time for the politicians, bureaucrats, and know-it-all intelligentsia, left or right, to get out of the way and let us set our own agendas. Too self-centered? Well, too bad. Much evil results from...
Vaccines, Autonomy, and Mandates: A Libertarian Analysis
Prefatory Note Given the subject matter discussed below, I believe it prudent to state at the outset that I am not at all opposed to vaccinations themselves: indeed, I have received a COVID-19 vaccine, as well as all other normal-course vaccinations recommended for someone my age. Yet there are, it seems to me, interesting, difficult questions surrounding the state’s role in promoting or mandating vaccines. The goal here is to start a conversation not about the effectiveness of vaccines, but about the individual’s sphere of autonomy and what kinds of medical decisions are within it, and...
TGIF: Double-Rigging of the Auto Market
U.S. government interference with our lives often resembles a Russian matryoshka doll: regulation is nested in more regulation. Take the provision of Biden's pending Build Back Better bill that would create a big tax credit for people who buy U.S.-built electric vehicles (EV). Not only would the government distort the domestic auto market by rigging it in favor of electric vehicles over conventional ones, but it also would rig the EV market, Trump-style, in favor of U.S.-made products. This implies that "foreign" EVs are so attractive to American buyers that the domestic offerings need...
Libertarian Party Presidential Nominee Explains Her Platform – Dr. Jo Jorgensen and Keith Knight
https://youtu.be/wNew73i8VzQ ... you cannot roll back or whittle away statism — whether it be the government’s inflation, its budget, or its numerous depredations and controls on the economy — by getting a few “good guys” in there to speak Truth to Mr. President. ... In the case of the State, the only thing that will roll back State power in any and all areas is the growth of a mass movement from below, i.e., among the public outside of and subjected to State power. Only a mass movement from below and outside: either by individual or organized actions, by ad hoc organizations, or by a...
If Adam Smith Were Writing the Wealth of Nations Today
“It is not from the benevolence of the mask maker, glove maker, or hand-sanitizer maker that we expect our person protective equipment, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.”
Trump Administration Flunks Trade Economics 101
International trade is one of the many areas in which the Trump administration has been egregiously bad. Trump himself seems to lack even the most basic knowledge about the principle of trade -- he seems to think it is always zero-sum with a loser for every winner -- and he's surrounded himself with advisers who are just as ignorant. We are indebted to George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux for keeping a close eye on these reckless ignoramuses, who are so casual about our well-being. In the latest of a series of blog posts, Boudreaux again notes how militantly ignorant those...
Venezuelan Sanctions are a Bad Idea
The Trump administration recently enacted sanctions against Venezuela, citing human rights abuses among its justifications. But if violations of human rights are a legitimate concern for the administration, then pursuing economic sanctions is bad policy. Research shows that such sanctions not only fail to achieve their stated goals seventy to eighty percent of the time, but also result in greater poverty and widespread malnutrition and starvation. If preserving and improving the lives of the oppressed is an outcome for which we're shooting, well, this ain't it, chief. Instead, we should...
How to Look at Tariffs
The best way to look at tariffs or import quotas or other protectionist restraints is to forget about political boundaries. Political boundaries of nations may be important for other reasons, but they have no economic meaning whatever. Suppose, for example, that each state of the United States were a separate nation. Then we would hear a lot of protectionist bellyaching that we are now fortunately spared. Think of the howls by inefficient, high-priced New York or Rhode Island textile manufacturers who would then be complaining about the "unfair," "cheap labor" competition from various...
Peace, Harmony, and Free Trade: 10 Uplifting Quotes by Richard Cobden, the Shining Knight of Classical Liberalism
June 3rd marks the 1804 birth of “the Apostle of Free Trade,” Richard Cobden. He earned that name spearheading the campaign against England’s protectionist Corn Laws, whose repeal in 1846 spread liberalized trade through much of Europe. Some have said free markets owe him their existence. Cobden recognized free trade as the key to creating material prosperity. But far more, he emphasized the moral superiority of free trade over the injustice of protectionism, in which government uses its power to help one group by unjustifiably harming others. Further, he saw that markets’ exclusively...
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