Comments on: Misdirecting Production

By: Barbara Grant

Barbara Grant — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:28:47 +0000

Gringo, I think it’s 1913 rather than 1933 (creation of the Federal Reserve.) Or one could go back further.

[Right you are, B.–IM]

By: Gringo_Malo

Gringo_Malo — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:43:19 +0000

Meant to say without baseball, etc. Ought to proofread my stuff before posting.

By: Gringo_Malo

Gringo_Malo — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:41:55 +0000

This is hard for me. Rationally, I'm in favor of free markets and opposed to unconstitutional bailouts. On the other hand, nobody's paid any attention to the Constitution since 1933. Our federal government allowed foreign firms, whose governments effectively barred GM from their countries, to compete on an equal footing with GM in America. It's hard to call that free trade. It's also hard to imagine America with baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. And no, I don't work for GM.

By: Steve Stip

Steve Stip — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:49:22 +0000

Mises and Rothbard show that an immoral economic system is also an unstable one or if stable, then stagnant.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:23:16 +0000

I think the argument for liberty is a little simpler than that. Quite simply, if you try to steal from me, or otherwise infringe upon my life, limb, and liberty, then I will fight back. As would any moral man.

I appreciate Mises’ efforts in his defense of liberty, but he didn’t have to make a big economic analysis of it. Indeed, for trying to find a social justification for a God-given right, he comes off as a socialist apologist of the libertarian creed. There’s no need to use a single mathematical formula, except for the following:

violating my property = paying the price [By your “logic,” there is no need to design skyscrapers, as huts serve man perfectly fine. That’s an apt analogy for your dismissal of Mises’ utilitarian writings.–IM]

Of course, there is a need to elaborate on why the DEFENDERS of property would be able to overpower the OFFENDERS of property in a moral world; and there is a need to elaborate on HOW a moral government should be run. But the mathematics that I have put forth in this comment are the essential argument for liberty.