World History

Paper money transforms governments from parasites to predators. Once a government can print what it likes, it no longer needs taxes.

Infamous hyperinflations like what hit Germany in 1923 did not begin as a flood. Instead, they started as smaller bouts of inflation initiated by governments that printed money to pay for deficit spending.

Some free-market advocates are pushing for dollarization in Argentina. But the devastating US sanctions against Panama in 1989 show us how dollarization helps the US exercise more hegemonic power over foreign economies. 

Compared to how most other people in the world live, Americans have a high standard of living. And despite the talk about inequality, there is more economic and social mobility here than anyplace else.

Members of the Canadian Parliament recently applauded a Ukrainian member of the Nazi Waffen-SS during World War II. Apparently, it's now okay to be a Nazi so long as you're fighting the Russians.

The state is held together by violence and nothing else. There is no such thing as "the social contract." But even violence cannot make a state last past its time, as we saw with the USSR.

On this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan and Tho take a look at "classical liberalism," a term that has come to mean a variety of different things in recent years. 

More than forty years ago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn urged his fellow Russians “not to live by lies.” In our politicized age, his words ring truer than ever.

Although there has been excitement and fanfare over the recent BRICS meetings and proclamations, it is doubtful that these economies’ performance can match their rhetoric.

Hans Hoppe theorized that monarchs, as opposed to democratically-elected political authorities, would have lower time preferences and would be less likely to engage in reckless government spending. Unfortunately, at least one Medieval Danish king acted like a modern politician.