Many economists use the idea of externalities as the basis for public policy recommendations: a tax or subsidy to "make up" the external costs. In fact, most government functions at one time or another have been justified on the basis of externalities. But Jacob Halbrooks asks: do externalities really have a meaningful role in economics?
As any reporter knows, U.S. attorneys on a regular basis illegally leak information to the press, which dutifully reports it as the unvarnished truth. By empowering the prosecution, the press is not protecting individuals but rather is creating an atmosphere in which government employees can readily break the law and be untouchable at the same time.
In war on terrorism, writes Lew Rockwell, we are dealing with the oldest political error: the belief that because everyone wants something (security), government should or must provide it. If the error is pervasive, the result is the total state. If it is completely uprooted, the result is the purely free society.
Hans Hoppe writes: "Though the implications of the arguments made in this volume are radical and sweeping, the principles are quite simple at root. In economics, the contributors seek the consistent application of market theory, not its arbitrary exclusion from whole areas of life, such that it applies also to the delivery of goods and services associated with security and defense. In politics, the contributors seek only the application of the principle Jefferson presented in his Declaration of Independence, that people have the right and duty to throw off governments that are not effecting their safety."
The disappearance of gold from the monetary scene is perhaps the most tragic economic calamity to befall the world of money in the twentieth century, writes Christopher Mayer. Views on gold in the first two decades of the twentieth century compared to those held today could scarcely be more different.
Hans Sennholz writes: No central bank on earth, not even the Federal Reserve System, can continually inflate its currency and defy market rates of interest without harming both its currency and the economy. Inflation tends to accelerate and ultimately destroy the currency and cripple the economy. And no government whatsoever can suffer budget deficits of half a trillion dollars annually without impairing its standing with its creditors.
Most people know Las Vegas as the slickly packaged, corporate version that is hawked coast-to-coast by the local government's convention authority these days. But, not so long ago, Las Vegas was just a dusty, desert town where a few of the nation's wise guys, bookmakers and one defense attorney came to reinvent themselves.
Balance of payments numbers such as those the US currently has would have broken many other currencies and would have triggered severe financial crises in other countries much earlier. But the US is different. It holds a privileged position within the international monetary system and its path to ruin may be longer and smoother than that for other nations. Nevertheless, there is a limit.
Gary Galles draws attention to writings that heavily influenced 18th century American politics.
Menger showed that value is the name of an attitude or disposition that a particular person adopts toward a good: he chooses to value it. Although Menger set economics on the path to a correct theory of value in 1871, writes Gene Callahan, ancient errors die hard. We can still find many erroneous conceptions of value in contemporary discussions of economic issues.
