Sublime

From the preceding discussion, and from the understanding of monetary economics afforded to us by Austrian economics, the importance of sound money can be explained for three broad reasons: first, it protects value across time, which gives people a bigger incentive to think of their future, and lowers their time preference. The lowering of the time

In an ironically Machiavellian tone, Aristotle explains what a tyrant must do to retain power. He must prevent the rise of any person of exceptional merit, by execution or assassination if necessary. He must prohibit common meals, clubs, and any education likely to produce hostile sentiment. There must be no literary assemblies or discussions. He m

It is likely instructive at this point to be clearer about how exactly Ostrom defines a common pool resource, and how she distinguishes it from a “public good.” She writes, The relatively high costs of physically excluding joint appropriators from the resource or from improvements made to the resource system are similar to the high costs of excludi

The idea of freedom ‘thus degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise’, which means ‘the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property’.

As we move from the 1950s to the 1970s and then to 2008, we notice a problem. A perfectly good idea morphed into another good idea, spread beyond housing, and then culminated in uncontrolled insanity. By 2008, no one, including the management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or the Department of Housing and Urban Development, had any idea of the fragi

Governments are subject to the same laws of economics as anyone else. The only “security” they offer is the promise to take care of you with other people’s money.

The “boom,” then, is actually a period of wasteful misinvestment. It is the time when errors are made, due to bank credit’s tampering with the free market. The “crisis” arrives when the consumers come to reestablish their desired proportions. The “depression” is actually the process by which the economy adjusts to the wastes and errors of the boom,

The first major treaty of the century of monetary nationalism was the 1922 Treaty of Genoa. Under the terms of this treaty, the U.S. dollar and the British pound were to be considered reserve currencies similar to gold in their position in other countries' reserves. With this move, the U.K. had hoped to alleviate its problems with the overvalued st

The “boom-bust” cycle is generated by monetary intervention in the market, specifically bank credit expansion to business.