Sublime

Since wealth is an order and procedure of production and exchange rather than an accumulation of (mostly perishable) goods, and is a trust (the “credit system”) in men and institutions rather than in the intrinsic value of paper money or checks, violent revolutions do not so much redistribute wealth as destroy it. There may be a redivision of the l

The accumulation of wealth by experts, combined with the decreasing efficiency of technocracy, is creating this third institutional crisis.

Böhm-Bawerk declared that the cultural level of a nation is mirrored by its rate of interest. In the ancient world, interest rates charted the course of great civilizations. In Babylon, Greece and Rome interest rates followed a U-shaped curve over the centuries; declining as each civilization became established and prospered, and rising sharply dur

The solution was anathema to that era: get money into the hands of the workers. Because they couldn’t get jobs in bankrupt industries, the solution was to create jobs, even make-work jobs, in order to get money into their hands.

Crucial to the long success and ultimate failure of hunting-and-gathering bands is the fact that they had to operate on a very small scale over a very wide area. Foragers could survive only where population densities were light. To see why, think of the problems that larger groups would have posed. For one thing, a thousand hunters parading togethe

The experience of the past leaves little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient. Normally and generally men are judged

From the time of the American and French Revolutions onwards, democracy, in the modern sense, becomes an important political force. Socialism, as opposed to democracy based on private property, first acquires governmental power in 1917. This form of government, however, if it spreads, must obviously bring with it a new form of culture; the culture

Indeed, one could judge how egalitarian a society really was by exactly this: whether those ostensibly in positions of authority are merely conduits for redistribution, or able to use their positions to accumulate riches. The latter seems most likely in aristocratic societies that add another element: war and plunder. After all, just about anyone w

As Hayek put it: “The cause of waves of unemployment is not ‘capitalism’ but governments denying enterprise the right to produce good money.”