Interventionism

Nevertheless, economic law is relentless and Mises is still right: due price will be paid sooner or later.

Even if GM itself was unable to survive bankruptcy, the resources freed from its grasp could be hugely beneficial to other automotive companies that make products that American consumers value more.

But even "free market" media such as the Wall Street Journal cling to Keynesian pump-priming, which — by the media's own admission — didn't help Japan and in fact caused the housing boom.

Recorded at the Mises Institute Supporters Summit, 31 October 2008; Auburn, Alabama. Includes an introduction by Tom Woods.

Recorded at the Mises Institute Supporters Summit, 1 November 2008; Auburn, Alabama. Includes a brief introduction by Mark Thornton.

"Great Britain's private coins were more popular than official ones, and for good reason…"

In a nutshell, John Maynard Keynes held that one cannot have complete trust in a market economy, which is inherently unstable. If left free, the market economy could lead to self-destruction. Hence there is the need for governments and central banks to manage the economy.

There is, after all, a very keen similarity between Hamiltonian mercantilism — or an economy directed and controlled by government, supposedly "in the public interest" but in reality for the benefit of a privileged few — and the economic fascism of Italy (and Germany) of the 1920s and '30s.

The state punishes those who do good (those who provide services that customers are willing to pay for at a price they are willing to pay) and rewards those who do evil (those who use the coercive power of the state to prevent people from entering the marketplace and earning a living).

They want to abolish private control of the means of production, market exchange, market prices, and competition. But at the same time they want to organize the socialist utopia in such a way that people could act as if these things were still present. – Ludwig von Mises