The current issue of Cato Unbound features Roderick Long’s critique of “Conflationism,” defined as the “pervasive conflation of corporatist plutocracy with libertarian laissez-faire.” As Roderick rightly points out, in the mixed economy large corporations are among the prime beneficiaries of government largess, such that a wholesale defense of
Roderick Long has kindly responded to my critique of his essay on corporatism. I don’t find Roderick’s reply very convincing, however. I don’t have posting privileges on Cato Unbound so I’ll offer a brief response here. My basic critique of Roderick’s position is two-fold. First, on substance: Roderick’s arguments strike me as a form of what
A recurring meme in the mainstream bailout chatter is the idea that the government should intervene to “stabilize” the financial system. After all, the odious piece of legislation rammed through Congress last week was titled the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.” Today, the AP reports , “President Bush’s top economic advisers vowed to
Oskar Lange famously believed that the development of high-speed computers would render Mises’s and Hayek’s critiques of socialism obsolete. “Were I to rewrite my [1936] essay today,” he wrote in 1967, “my task would be much simpler. My answer to Hayek and Robbins would be: So what’s the trouble? Let us put the simultaneous equations on an
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.