money matters
Correction, Mr. Bernanke
Mises Daily: Wednesday, December 23, 2009
by Frank Shostak
In his speech at the Economic Club in Washington, DC on December 7, the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, detailed his expectations of the future course of the US economy. Below, I comment on the various parts of Bernanke's speech.
A year ago, our economy � indeed, all of the world's major economies � were reeling from the effects of a devastating financial crisis. Policymakers here and abroad had undertaken an extraordinary series of actions aimed at stabilizing the financial system and cushioning the economic impact of the crisis. Critically, these policy interventions succeeded in averting a global financial meltdown that could have plunged the world into a second Great Depression.
The actions that policymakers have taken amount to the introduction of extremely loose monetary and fiscal policies. But how does Bernanke know that such policies have averted a global financial meltdown? Neither printing money nor increasing government spending can be a catalyst for economic growth.
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hardback
What We Can Know About the World
Mises Daily: Wednesday, December 23, 2009
by Hans F. Sennholz
[The Freeman, 1970]
In 1957 Professor Mises added Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution to his impressive list of scholarly publications. It is Mises's philosophical treatise that sums up his views on what man can know in his world. As man has always gone amiss in his attempts to bridge the gulf between mind and matter, he must adopt a dualistic approach � or methodological dualism.
According to Mises,
this dualism merely takes into account the fact that we do not know how external events � physical, chemical, and physiological � affect human thoughts, ideas, and judgments of value. This ignorance splits the realm of knowledge into two separate fields: the realm of external events, commonly called nature, and the realm of human thought and action.
Ever conscious of this dualism and aware of the limitations of human knowledge, Professor Mises defends the sciences of human action against those philosophies and doctrines that would deny their very existence. In particular, he refutes the positivistic and panphysicalistic distortions of determinism, the doctrines of materialism, positivism and behaviorism, historicism and relativism.
Present day ideologies, according to Professor Mises, are characterized by their summary rejection of individual freedom and private property in economic production.
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high
beams
Highway to Hell: Bon Scott's swan song
Featuring: Bon Scott, Angus & Malcolm Young
by Lewis Whitten
Ironically
the last words sung by the great poet and singer Bon Scott were "Shazbot, na-nu na-nu."
Words spoken by comedian Robin Williams to close out his break
through TV series, Mork and Mindy. That's how Scott ends
"Night Prowler," one of the great songs on this CD. In
fact, AC/DC's Highway to Hell ranked number 199 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all
time. This is a must have for anyone who enjoys rocking out - and
by using the above link to buy it you can support the swan song of
another great individual, Mike Zigler. This freedom-concisous
website and the magazine it represents was his last publication.
cinema
The
Union: The Business Behind Getting High
Starring Joe Rogan, Tommy Chong,and Brett Harvey
by Lewis Whitten
This movie makes a good argument for legalizing marijuana. Along the way you�ll tour thru twenty box cars buried underground in the mountains of British Columbia, used as a huge grow operation. Learn about corruption in the prison and drug testing industry. All the while getting a review of things you may already know - facts like nobody has ever died from smoking marijuana and other bits of marijuana trivia and history. There�s a discussion of the marijuana industry, that almost comes off as a guide on how to start your grow business. Its easy to watch and not to distracting from my FarmVille game.
learning
curve
Libertarianism in Ancient China
Mises Daily: Wednesday, December 23, 2009
by Murray N. Rothbard
[This article is excerpted from Economic Thought Before Adam Smith.
Available as audio file
MP3 download here]
The three main schools of political thought: the Legalists, the Taoists, and the Confucians, were established from the sixth to the fourth centuries BC. Roughly, the Legalists, the latest of the three broad schools, simply believed in maximal power to the state, and advised rulers how to increase that power. The Taoists were the world's first libertarians, who believed in virtually no interference by the state in economy or society, and the Confucians were middle-of-the-roaders on this critical issue. The towering figure of Confucius (551�479 BC), whose name was actually Ch'iu Chung-ni, was an erudite man from an impoverished but aristocratic family of the fallen Yin dynasty, who became Grand Marshal of the state of Sung. In practice, though far more idealistic, Confucian thought differed little from the Legalists, since Confucianism was largely dedicated to installing an educated philosophically minded bureaucracy to rule in China.
By far the most interesting of the Chinese political philosophers were the Taoists, founded by the immensely important but shadowy figure of Lao Tzu. Little is known about Lao Tzu's life, but he was apparently a contemporary and personal acquaintance of Confucius. Like the latter he came originally from the state of Sung and was a descendant of lower aristocracy of the Yin dynasty. Both men lived in a time of turmoil, wars and statism, but each reacted very differently. For Lao Tzu worked out the view that the individual and his happiness was the key unit of society. If social institutions hampered the individual's flowering and his happiness, then those institutions should be reduced or abolished altogether. To the individualist Lao Tzu, government, with its "laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox," was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and "more to be feared than fierce tigers." Government, in sum, must be limited to the smallest possible minimum; "inaction" became the watchword for Lao Tzu, since only inaction of government can permit the individual to flourish and achieve happiness. Any intervention by government, he declared, would be counterproductive, and would lead to confusion and turmoil. The first political economist to discern the systemic effects of government intervention, Lao Tzu, after referring to the common experience of mankind, came to his penetrating conclusion: "The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished � The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be."
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