Mises Wire |
- Currency Debasement and Social Collapse
- Is an Educated Population Really Necessary for Innovation and Growth?
- How the West Adopted China-Style Lockdowns
- The Public Health Officials Say "Trust Us." The Data Says Otherwise.
- Double Your Gift on Mises's Birthday!
- Vaccinate for Global Democracy? The US Empire Turns Therapeutic
| Currency Debasement and Social Collapse Posted: 29 Sep 2021 12:00 PM PDT Knowledge of the effects of government interference with market prices makes us comprehend the economic causes of a momentous historical event, the decline of ancient civilization. It may be left undecided whether or not it is correct to call the economic organization of the Roman Empire capitalism. At any rate it is certain that the Roman Empire in the 2nd century, the age of the Antonines, the "good" emperors, had reached a high stage of the social division of labor and of interregional commerce. Several metropolitan centers, a considerable number of middle-sized towns, and many small towns were the seats of a refined civilization. The inhabitants of these urban agglomerations were supplied with food and raw materials not only from the neighboring rural districts, but also from distant provinces. A part of these provisions flowed into the cities as revenue of their wealthy residents who owned landed property. But a considerable part was bought in exchange for the rural population's purchases of the products of the city dwellers' processing activities. There was an extensive trade between the various regions of the vast empire. Not only in the processing industries, but also in agriculture there was a tendency toward further specialization. The various parts of the empire were no longer economically self-sufficient. They were interdependent. What brought about the decline of the empire and the decay of its civilization was the disintegration of this economic interconnectedness, not the barbarian invasions. The alien aggressors merely took advantage of an opportunity which the internal weakness of the empire offered to them. From a military point of view the tribes which invaded the empire in the 4th and 5th centuries were not more formidable than the armies which the legions had easily defeated in earlier times. But the empire had changed. Its economic and social structure was already medieval. The freedom that Rome granted to commerce and trade had always been restricted. With regard to the marketing of cereals and other vital necessities it was even more restricted than with regard to other commodities. It was deemed unfair and immoral to ask for grain, oil, and wine, the staples of these ages, more than the customary prices, and the municipal authorities were quick to check what they considered profiteering. Thus the evolution of an efficient wholesale trade in these commodities was prevented. The policy of the annona, which was tantamount to a nationalization or municipalization of the grain trade, aimed at filling the gaps. But its effects were rather unsatisfactory. Grain was scarce in the urban agglomerations, and the agriculturists complained about the unremunerativeness of grain growing.1 The interference of the authorities upset the adjustment of supply to the rising demand. The showdown came when in the political troubles of the 3rd and 4th centuries the emperors resorted to currency debasement. With the system of maximum prices, the practice of debasement completely paralyzed both the production and the marketing of the vital foodstuffs and disintegrated society's economic organization. The more eagerness the authorities displayed in enforcing the maximum prices, the more desperate became the conditions of the urban masses dependent on the purchase of food. Commerce in grain and other necessities vanished altogether. To avoid starving, people deserted the cities, settled on the countryside, and tried to grow grain, oil, wine, and other necessities for themselves. On the other hand, the owners of the big estates restricted their excess production of cereals and began to produce in their farmhouses — the villae — the products of handicraft which they needed. For their big-scale farming, which was already seriously jeopardized because of the inefficiency of slave labor, lost its rationality completely when the opportunity to sell at remunerative prices disappeared. As the owner of the estate could no longer sell in the cities, he could no longer patronize the urban artisans either. He was forced to look for a substitute to meet his needs by employing handicraftsmen on his own account in his villa. He discontinued big-scale farming and became a landlord receiving rents from tenants or sharecroppers. These coloni were either freed slaves or urban proletarians who settled in the villages and turned to tilling the soil. A tendency toward the establishment of autarky of each landlord's estate emerged. The economic function of the cities, of commerce, trade, and urban handicrafts, shrank. Italy and the provinces of the empire returned to a less advanced state of the social division of labor. The highly developed economic structure of ancient civilization retrograded to what is now known as the manorial organization of the Middle Ages. The emperors were alarmed with that outcome, which undermined the financial and military power of their government. But their counteraction was futile as it did not affect the root of the evil. The compulsion and coercion to which they resorted could not reverse the trend toward social disintegration which, on the contrary, was caused precisely by too much compulsion and coercion. No Roman was aware of the fact that the process was induced by the government's interference with prices and by currency debasement. It was vain for the emperors to promulgate laws against the city dweller who "relicta civitate rus habitare maluerit."2 The system of the leiturgia, the public services to be rendered by the wealthy citizens, only accelerated the retrogression of the division of labor. The laws concerning the special obligations of the shipowners, the navicularii, were no more successful in checking the decline of navigation than the laws concerning grain dealing in checking the shrinkage in the cities' supply of agricultural products. The marvelous civilization of antiquity perished because it did not adjust its moral code and its legal system to the requirements of the market economy. A social order is doomed if the actions which its normal functioning requires are rejected by the standards of morality, are declared illegal by the laws of the country, and are prosecuted as criminal by the courts and the police. The Roman Empire crumbled to dust because it lacked the spirit of liberalism and free enterprise. The policy of interventionism and its political corollary, the Führer principle, decomposed the mighty empire as they will by necessity always disintegrate and destroy any social entity.
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| Is an Educated Population Really Necessary for Innovation and Growth? Posted: 29 Sep 2021 11:00 AM PDT The example of England in the Industrial Revolution suggests enormous amounts of innovation and growth can be achieved even without high levels of education among the general population. Original Article: "Is an Educated Population Really Necessary for Innovation and Growth?" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.  |
| How the West Adopted China-Style Lockdowns Posted: 29 Sep 2021 09:00 AM PDT Prior to the global pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 or covid-19, many looked to the United States as a beacon of freedom and liberty. When viewed in comparison to the harsh realities of the world, this may seem rather true. After all, one's perception of freedom and liberty is skewed by perspective. In recent weeks, the Biden administration has escalated its increasingly authoritarian approach to "managing" the threat of the virus. Even President Biden himself stated that safety takes precedence over freedom. Examples of the Biden administration's overreach include: its extension of the eviction moratorium through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccine mandates through the Department of Labor, and its investigations into states that refuse to adhere to the federal government's preferred public health guidelines. Over the past eighteen months, countless commentators have declared that the pandemic should be treated akin to warfare, often using military analogies. During a prior pandemic, the nation's predominant civil liberties defender, the American Civil Liberties Union, released a report that warned of the government imposing national security measures to clamp down on an "invisible enemy." An ACLU report from 2008 stated the following: "Coercion and brute force are rarely necessary. In fact they are generally counterproductive—they gratuitously breed public distrust and encourage the people who are most in need of care to evade public health authorities." The past eighteen months have demonstrated that the public health institutions view their role as part and parcel of the nation's broader national security apparatus. As if the ACLU had predicted the government's response to covid-19, their report notes the following: "Too often, policymakers are resorting to law enforcement and national security–oriented measures that not only suppress individual rights unnecessarily, but have proven to be ineffective in stopping the spread of disease and saving lives." During the early stages of the pandemic, governors of all political persuasions instituted similar shutdown measures throughout their respective states. After a period of weeks, conservative-leaning governors slowly withdrew these executive edicts as more was learned about the transmissibility and lethality of the threat. Progressive-leaning governors have been more reluctant to withdraw these executive edicts. As vaccines became widely available, individuals across the country slowly warmed to the idea of lifting the covid-19 mitigation measures. Some progressive-leaning American cities like New York City, San Francisco, and New Orleans have chosen to do so while introducing a digital health pass, often referred to as a vaccination passport. Other cities have been more skeptical of this concept; the mayor of Boston, Kim Janey, compared the concept to the slavery-era freedom papers. The vaccination passport was only an abstract idea in the early days of the mass vaccination campaign. The urban elite and the managerial class have fully endorsed the idea of requiring vaccination or proof of a negative covid test to participate in daily life. It is unlikely that the vaccination passport will ever be fully adopted by the United States government as policy. It is also unclear what is the end goal of our covid-19 containment policy. The conflicting public health messaging has led to fears of a "permanent pandemic," whereby emergency powers are invoked indefinitely. The Vaccine Passport Idea GrowsAlong with much of the global establishment—e.g., the World Health Organization—in November 2020, Chinese president Xi Jinping endorsed a concept similar to the vaccination passport: "a global mechanism on the mutual recognition of health certificates based on nucleic acid test results in the form of Internationally accepted QR codes." While President Xi's idea is related explicitly to a negative covid test versus proof of vaccination, the underlying concept of "showing your papers" remains. Other regimes soon pushed similar ideas. Similarly, the Chinese state was an early proponent of using digital QR codes to help the country navigate through the pandemic. Digital QR codes are a simple and efficient means of tracking one's movement and verifying proof of identity for those with a smartphone. Digital QR codes are now frequently used at restaurants and other venues to replace paper menus and to provide further information on products. Few could have predicted that prominent progressives in the United States would openly embrace proof of identity upon entry into nearly any venue. The thought of being required to scan a personal digital QR code upon entry to any venue is reminiscent of "Your papers, please." Given that America has been effectively governed by the flip-flopping public health diktats of Dr. Anthony Fauci, I assume that vaccination passports are merely the icing on the cake. Dr. Fauci provided an eyebrow-raising endorsement on September 13; on cable television, he endorsed the idea of requiring vaccination in order to travel domestically by aircraft. Dr. Fauci's proposal comes nearly a year after a Department of Defense joint study with United Airlines that said "the risk of COVID-19 exposure onboards its aircraft is 'virtually non-existent' … when masks are worn." Despite the cheaper, less intrusive option of universal masking in certain situations, Dr. Fauci's neurotic endorsement of mandatory vaccinations for air travel continues to propel America's descent toward an authoritarian nightmare. Australia Abandons LiberalismNo Western country has so embraced the despotic lockdown ideal as Australia. The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf writes, "the government of South Australia, one of the country's six states, developed and is now testing an app as Orwellian as any in the free world to enforce its quarantine rules. Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person." In ordinary times, such a government application would be considered a police state's control mechanism; however, the government of South Australia apparently feels no remorse for subjugating its citizens to highly intrusive measures under the guise of public health. In late July, the BBC reported that Australian Defence Force soldiers would be deployed to help enforce covid lockdowns. The soldiers would "join police in virus hotspots to ensure people are following the rules." In late August, Australian police arrested hundreds of protesters participating in "unauthorised protests" against the government's draconian lockdown measures. When questioned about the police response to the protesters, Victoria Police chief commissioner Shane Patton warned against participation and added "that it was 'just ridiculous to think that people would be so selfish and come and do this.'" Friedersdorf contends that Australia's prolonged police state methods are a product of its failure to significantly invest in a large supply of vaccines. In closing his argument, Friedersdorf presents the poignant question specifically for the supposedly liberal, democratic government of Australia: "[H]ow much time must pass before we must regard Australia as illiberal and unfree?" In the face of an "invisible enemy," many Western nations have implemented emergency measures that were once considered dystopian and wholly incompatible with liberal democracy. The adoption of such intrusive and draconian measures would not be possible without the constant fear-mongering drumbeat of the news media, which has led to many so-called liberals devaluing the meaning of freedom and liberty in order to ensure their own "safety." To be sure, freedom and liberty do not require one to abandon safety, and safety does not require the abandonment of freedom and liberty. The problem with the Western adoption of vaccination passports, enforced universal masking, and draconian lockdowns is that mass protests in opposition to those policies have sprung up in nearly every Western country. Here are just a few examples:
As everyday life begins to adjust back to its precovid normal, it is of paramount importance that everyday individuals push back against government attempts to maintain emergency powers despite the absence of a raging pandemic. Similarly, it is past time that we demand clear goals from public health experts on what level of "herd immunity" is necessary to emerge from the officially recognized pandemic. If both tasks fail, it is not clear that the West will emerge from the pandemic as anything remotely resembling liberal.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The Public Health Officials Say "Trust Us." The Data Says Otherwise. Posted: 29 Sep 2021 08:00 AM PDT Despite all the data we have on lockdowns, hospitalization trends, and newly emerging vaccination data, one can only marvel at how trust in the public health system and ruling elite can persist in any capacity. Original Article: "The Public Health Officials Say "Trust Us." The Data Says Otherwise." This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.  |
| Double Your Gift on Mises's Birthday! Posted: 29 Sep 2021 07:00 AM PDT Today marks the birthday of Ludwig von Mises, and a chance to double your impact. Mises was the most important scholar of the twentieth century, a man who not only revolutionized our understanding of economic science, but was also a powerful champion of liberty and property and the greatest enemy of socialists of all kinds. In the world today, we are seeing what Mises feared. Our institutions have been infested with the products of a university system hostile to private property and individual liberty. We are governed by power-hungry technocrats seeking more and more control. Today the justification is covid. Tomorrow it may be "climate change" or central bank–fueled inflation. The crisis may change, but their answer will remain the same: the sacrifice of our freedom to the whims of would-be central planners. This is why our work is so important, and why we need your support. Become a Sustaining Member today for just $5 a month, or join or renew your Membership for $60, and you will receive our timely booklet The Middle of the Road Leads to Socialism by Mises. We will also list you on mises.org as a Supporter! Even better, as a donor you will receive special access to a Private Seminar with Jeff Deist and Bob Murphy discussing Mises's timeless work. A small gift of just $5 or $10 today makes a difference. A monthly recurring gift is even better, and helps us sustain and plan for our mission. Hunter Lewis, a generous supporter of the Institute, offered to match all donations during our Fall Campaign, so your contribution will go that much further. Our mission is simple: keep lit the torch of civilized society that Ludwig von Mises has passed down to us. In the words of Mises: "No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us." Help us stand for civilization. Help us stand for liberty. Help us stand for Ludwig von Mises. Please donate today.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Vaccinate for Global Democracy? The US Empire Turns Therapeutic Posted: 29 Sep 2021 04:00 AM PDT After twenty years of failure in Afghanistan, the US government is embarking upon yet another unwinnable war. This time around, however, the military-industrial-congressional complex isn't pulling the strings. In a Washington Post editorial published shortly before the United Nations General Assembly's global summit on fighting the pandemic, editors made the case that President Joe Biden and European leaders should use the tools provided by the UN to "reach tangible outcomes to help the global south." Yes, while many states challenge Biden's national vaccine mandate, legacy media pushes to turn the US into a world vaccine provider, making the case for "vaccine equity." That includes serving as "the world's arsenal of vaccines," a goal put forth by Biden in early June.
But what does living up to his goal really look like? Would foreign nationals have the ability to seek compensation for damages caused by the vaccine in a local or global court? Better yet, does anyone have a say on whether they get injected with a vaccine they do not want or trust? From Bombs to NeedlesEarlier this month, Biden unilaterally decreed that all businesses with a hundred or more employees must implement vaccine mandates or face hefty fines. Immediately after announcing his order, at least twenty-four state representatives, including governors and attorney generals, vowed to resist. Many states already have laws forbidding such mandates and are unwilling to comply. At the heart of the debate are questions related to the vaccines' efficacy, especially in light of the growing reports showing the currently available shots are harmful, especially to the young. But that's not the only problem. When it comes to medical treatments, patients have a right to make a decision on whether they will or will not participate. It is their body and their decision what ultimately happens to it. Furthermore, if a vaccine is indeed effective, the vaccinated should not fear the unvaccinated. There should be no major push by either the US government or its health czar, Dr. Anthony Fauci, to ensure all are vaccinated. The fact that there is, however, shows that this is yet another fearmongering tactic, put forth in order to coerce a greater number of Americans into participating in the novel medical experiment, all the while making no arrangements to ensure Americans have any legal protection in case something goes wrong. As a matter of fact, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar invoked the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act while President Donald Trump was still in the White House in order to shield the vaccine manufacturers from legal actions. When Biden assumed the presidency, his administration failed to reverse the immunity rules protecting vaccine manufacturers. Until 2024, when the rules are set to expire, the American people are unable to hold vaccine manufacturers, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the employers who mandate inoculation as a condition of employment accountable if they are severely injured. With America serving as the world's vaccine distributor, when will foreign countries begin to feel like they are guinea pigs in the US-backed experiment? Instead of spreading "democracy" by bombing foreign nations, America will be spreading "health" by delivering vaccines produced by untouchable pharmaceutical conglomerates to some of the poorest countries in the world. Is that what some are now calling the vaccine- or covid-industrial complex? In his Business Times piece arguing for caution when it comes to private and government interests dictating covid policy, financial analyst Ahmed Sule wrote that much like the military-industrial complex benefits directly from prolonged conflicts around the world, the same could eventually happen for the pharmaceutical and biotech firms as well as the members of Congress whose campaign donations are directly tied to the distribution of the novel vaccines.
As Dr. Ron Paul stated recently, there's good reason for people to resist vaccine mandates. Most importantly, "if [the] government can force people to take a potentially dangerous vaccine to protect against a hypothetical harm to others, the same reasoning would support the imposing of many additional liberty violations." By putting America in charge of implementing similar policies around the world with the help of the UN, how much further can it go?  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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