Statism resounds in the last two paragraphs of this article (NO subscription required) in this week's Economist. The interesting story is a particularly stark example of how the use of cell phones can and does promote economic wellbeing, this in the Indian state of Kerala.
But at the end of the short article, the writer (and/or the author of the paper it reports) marvels as though it were an exception to some rule that this material advancement comes about without subsidies, taxes, laws, regulations (well, it says SOME regulation is required) and such to promote it or even make it possible. This growth, through some sort of aberration, came about through people's VOLUNTARY actions!
And here, until this periodical with the rather presumptuous name set me straight, I had been thinking, like that Austrian Ludwig Whatshisname, that generalized economic progress NEVER comes about through government actions — indeed, that government is at bottom purely consumptive and destructive and that its activities invariably RETARD economic progress.
Read and be enlightened.
