One cannot discount the role of politics here. In the end, we could have a well-known person owning a felony record and being sentenced to prison and a once-prosperous company in tatters. We will see some federal prosecutors being feted as though they had just solved the Case of the Century. These are dark times, indeed, for the pursuit of justice in the United States of America.
The journalist's skill as an observer can only take him so far, if he is observing with the wrong theory in mind. As Thomas Friedman's "Theory of Everything" shows, without the distinction between power and market—the very core of the libertarian idea—a theory of everything can easily turn into a theory of nothing.
If there is a solution, the market will find it long before the politicians will. Spam filters have dramatically diminished the problem relative to what it would otherwise be, and these have been provided solely by the pressures of commerce. The efforts to certify ISPs and police the web for spammers, entirely a private undertaking, are ongoing. The methods that work will last and those that do not will be discarded.
No restaurant or bar owner can force anyone to work or eat at his or her establishment, so at best, the state is "rescuing" people from their own free choices, which means that the political authorities—and the activists cheering them on—are in effect also coercing those workers and patrons into making choices that meet state approval.
Weaving a story that combines travelogue with a love story, investment advice, history, geography, economics and world politics is no easy task. But, Jim Rogers succeeds as he had in the investment world.
The merchant class has been the most reviled in the history of political thought. Their very existence sticks in the craw of those who, like Marxists and modern-day militarists, believe that history should be about great conflicts, and winners and losers. Why? Because the merchant class views history in a more mundane way: as a series of small steps by which people are provided the goods and services they need to overcome the great economic problem of scarcity.
State efforts to reduce inequality and poverty have been, at best, ineffective. Everywhere we turn, writes Art Carden, the prophets of doom are telling us that the market economy sows the seeds of its own destruction by generating unequal distributions of income.
With growing government outlays and the Fed's reckless monetary policies, it is mission impossible to have an effective cut in taxes, argues Frank Shostak. That the intention is to grow rather than shrink the size of the government was demonstrated by President Bush's signing the increase in the Federal debt limit from $6.4 trillion to $7.384 trillion on the day he signed into law the tax cuts.
There is no radical disconnect between the interest of consumers (who always want lower prices) and overall economic health. What's good for consumers is good for everyone, writes Lew Rockwell. Thus one can only marvel at the many economists and commentators who try to convince the public that deflation is a very scary thing.
Spending is based on what government "taxes" but also on what government borrows and inflates. It's quite simple. If government spends it, we can't spend or save or invest, and that's bad. As Murray Rothbard explained, deficit spending leads either to inflation or to crowding out private capital investment. Either horn of the dilemma reduces wealth.
