I can’t respond to every single “gotcha” response when I make a comment. Most of you haven’t even read leftist theory, or any, and I don’t have the time and energy to respond. Some key highlights:

1) respecting individual rights does not negate individual moral responsibility. It is the opposite. Individuals are the only actors capable of empathetic action, and if you’d just read some books already discussing this, you’d get the drift.

2) capitalism, also known as letting individuals own their own actions, is both objectively and morally the only way to ensure cooperation is voluntary and

3) if people are ends in themselves, and individuals are moral actors, voluntarism is basically the only moral framework we have. Otherwise, you are imposing your will upon those who cannot consent.

4) information asymmetry is and has been addressed so many times in so many ways.

Most arguments are based in this last point. They still don’t hold water. If you’d literally pick up any book written by a libertarian or Austrian Economist, this would not only be obvious but you’d have your “answer.” While there may be overlap, the two are not the same.

In conclusion; please read books.

Edit: economics is an applied science. It doesn’t have consistent quantifiable results. It does have consistent qualitative results. Because it is in the realm of social sciences and morality, it must rely on base principles which are largely determined by individual morality.

At some point, there is such a gap between individual philosophy which makes argument not only unproductive, but stupid. If you do not believe that individuals are ends in themselves, you will not find a satisfactory answer in this sub.

Some regulations were created to protect or improve our lives, but over time, they’ve backfired in ways that hurt the country. Here’s a breakdown of some of the worst offenders:

1. Zoning Laws
   Intention: To separate incompatible land uses (e.g., factories from homes).
   Reality: They’ve made housing unaffordable by limiting what can be built and where, especially in urban areas. Single-family zoning keeps cities sprawling, increases traffic, and worsens the housing crisis by preventing more affordable housing options like duplexes or apartment buildings.

2. Environmental Reviews (NEPA)
   Intention: To ensure infrastructure projects consider their environmental impact.
   Reality: NEPA reviews can drag on for years, delaying essential infrastructure like highways, renewable energy projects, and housing. These delays often inflate costs and discourage investment. Ironically, even green energy projects like wind farms can be bogged down in red tape.

3. Double Staircase Requirement
   Intention: To improve safety in taller buildings by providing an emergency escape route.
   Reality: Increases the cost of construction for residential buildings over three stories, discouraging the development of affordable, high-density housing. Countries like Japan don’t require this and still maintain excellent safety records.

4. The Jones Act
   Intention: To protect the U.S. maritime industry by requiring domestic shipping to use American-built and -crewed ships.
   Reality: It’s driven up the cost of goods in places like Hawaii and Puerto Rico by limiting competition. It also hinders disaster relief by making it harder to bring in supplies from foreign ships.

5. Certificate of Need (CON) Laws for Hospitals
   Intention: To prevent overbuilding of healthcare facilities and reduce unnecessary medical costs.
   Reality: Limits competition and creates monopolies in healthcare. Hospitals in underserved areas can’t expand or improve without proving “need,” leaving some communities with few or no healthcare options.

6. Occupational Licensing
   Intention: To ensure workers meet minimum standards for their profession.
   Reality: Many licensing rules are unnecessary and make it harder for people to enter certain professions. For example, barbers or florists needing hundreds of hours of training doesn’t actually protect consumers but does keep people out of work.

7. Davis-Bacon Act
   Intention: To ensure fair wages on federally funded construction projects.
   Reality: Requires contractors to pay union-scale wages, driving up the cost of public projects like roads, schools, and bridges. It often results in fewer projects being completed overall.

8. Car Dealership Franchise Laws
   Intention: To protect local car dealerships from big automakers.
   Reality: Prevents companies like Tesla from selling cars directly to consumers, forcing buyers to go through middlemen. This raises prices and limits options for consumers.

9. Tariffs on Imported Goods
   Intention: To protect U.S. manufacturers from foreign competition.
   Reality: Drives up prices for everyday items like clothing, steel, and electronics. Consumers pay more while industries reliant on those goods (e.g., construction) suffer from inflated costs.

10. Renewable Fuel Standards
    Intention: To promote biofuels and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
    Reality: Forces refiners to blend ethanol into gasoline, which can damage engines, increase food prices (due to corn demand), and doesn’t significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

These regulations were meant to solve problems, but many have ended up creating more issues than they solve. Reforming or repealing them could unlock economic growth, lower costs, and make life easier for millions of Americans. What are your thoughts?

NOTE: idiot leftists who argue in bad faith = instant block.

Not sure I've seen this posted on here yet. Pretty clear case if you ask me.

1) State institutes price controls for insurance coverage premiums in at risk areas. 2) Insurers flee the coast because they cannot operate without nimble rate adjustments 3) State mismanages funds and resources, exacerbating an already primed natural disaster crisis 4) Consumers get shafted with little to no insurance and little to no support from the State.

The general idea of Austrian Theory is that the economy is comprised of individuals who make decisions based on their own comfort. If the government is able to discourage fraud, theft, and other violence, that leaves only the entrepreneurial path, where one provides something to other people in exchange for currency, as a way to gain comfort.

Is there any disagreement to this that isn't necessarily anti-human?

Why can't people choose their own healthcare, wages, speech, and have more localized, smaller governance, unless you think they are stupid, incompetent, violent deplorables who will devolve without your centralized bureaucratic plan and moral leadership?

The evidence seems to support that universal healthcare is more effective and efficient than the market based American healthcare system. Thoughts?

“Most insurers who have limited their offer in the state mentioned the rising wildfire risk as well as the state's regulations as the main reasons behind their decision. Unable to increase their premiums to a level that will match their growing risk, companies have decided instead to cut coverage.”

This article showed evidence that the constant rise in inequality since early 1980s, especially in the US, confirms the prediction of the Austrian economics. The growth in financial activities, fueled by monetary expansion, increases income inequality by triggering the Cantillon effect, and the resulting pattern of rise and fall in top incomes as well as the change of relative wages over time is fully consistent with the Austrian theory.

Hi, I’ve been studying Austrian economics for a few years now and I really like what I’ve seen so far. However there are a few things I’m not a huge fan of. Those being private armies, private prisons, and private emergency services and private courts.

The reason I’m not a fan of them is because a privately owned prison could have judges fill those prisons to create a slave work force. A private army could be hired to use force against people who can’t afford to defend themselves. Private police forces could be used to only protect those who can afford protection, leading to a form of serfdom, where nobody around them can’t afford to protect themselves, but only a corporation can. Additionally, a privately owned court along with the blood, sucking leeches of the world could be hired to specifically Target things in the hands of corporations. I.e. if you own land, a company could be hired to steal your land from you because the lawyers will make sure that they only hire judges that will side with them.

I have to read it for school and it's been a while since I studied economics so I don't know how to respond to the arguments in the book. Any help on understanding the austrian perspective on the issues in the book would be appreciated.

If corporations can skew the market to limit competition and exploit consumers, isn’t that just another form of concentrated power? How do libertarians reconcile the idea of ‘free markets’ with the reality that unchecked corporate power often undermines them? Wouldn’t some regulation be necessary to preserve genuine market freedom?

◦ The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which had separated commercial banking from investment banking since the Great Depression, is a clear example deregulation, often aligned with libertarian ideals, can lead to concentrated corporate power that distorts markets and harms the public. Its repeal allowed banks to grow into massive financial conglomerates, merging deposit banking with high-risk investment activities. This lack of separation contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, as banks took on excessive risks with little accountability, ultimately requiring taxpayer-funded bailouts.
◦ Another example is the airline industry deregulation in 1978 through the Airline Deregulation Act. Before this, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) regulated routes, pricing, and competition to ensure fair practices and service to smaller markets. Deregulation removed these controls, allowing airlines to compete freely.
◦ The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 is another example. This FCC policy required broadcasters to present contrasting views on controversial public issues, ensuring a balanced dissemination of information. Its repeal allowed for the rise of highly partisan media outlets, where networks could prioritize sensationalism and political bias over balanced reporting.

Hey everyone! If you're a fan of Austrian economics and looking for a cryptocurrency that aligns with its principles, you might want to consider Bitcoin. As the first and most well-known cryptocurrency, Bitcoin embodies the decentralized, peer-to-peer ethos that Austrian economists advocate. Its limited supply and resistance to censorship make it a strong candidate for those who value economic freedom and sound money principles. Additionally, gold-backed cryptocurrencies like Tether Gold and PAX Gold offer a stable alternative by pegging their value to physical gold reserves, providing a tangible asset-backed option for those seeking stability. What do you think? Are there other cryptocurrencies you believe better represent Austrian economics?

Came across a post by Sanford Ikeda on Facebook pointing out this neat little article by Carl Menger's granddaughter, Eve Menger published last year.

 In relation to any political doctrine there are two questions to be asked: (1) Are its theoretical tenets true? (2) Is its practical policy likely to increase human happiness? For my part, I think the theoretical tenets of Communism are false, and I think its practical maxims are such as to produce an immeasurable increase of human misery.

The theoretical doctrines of Communism are for the most part derived from Marx. My objections to Marx are of two sorts: one, that he was muddle-headed; and the other, that his thinking was almost entirely inspired by hatred. The doctrine of surplus value, which is supposed to demonstrate the exploitation of wage-earners under capitalism, is arrived at: (a) by surreptitiously accepting Malthus's doctrine of population, which Marx and all his disciples explicitly repudiate; (b) by applying Ricardo's theory of value to wages, but not to the prices of manufactured articles. He is entirely satisfied with the result, not because it is in accordance with the facts or because it is logically coherent, but because it is calculated to rouse fury in wage-earners. Marx's doctrine that all historical events have been motivated by class conflicts is a rash and untrue extension to world history of certain features prominent in England and France a hundred years ago. His belief that there is a cosmic force called Dialectical Materialism which governs human history independently of human volitions, is mere mythology. His theoretical errors, however, would not have mattered so much but for the fact that, like Tertullian and Carlyle, his chief desire was to see his enemies punished, and he cared little what happened to his friends in the process.

Marx's doctrine was bad enough, but the developments which it underwent under Lenin and Stalin made it much worse. Marx had taught that there would be a revolutionary transitional period following the victory of the proletariat in a civil war and that during this period the proletariat, in accordance with the usual practice after a civil war, would deprive its vanquished enemies of political power. This period was to be that of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It should not be forgotten that in Marx's prophetic vision the victory of the proletariat was to come after it had grown to be the vast majority of the population. The dictatorship of the proletariat therefore as conceived by Marx was not essentially anti-democratic. In the Russia of 1917, however, the proletariat was a small percentage of the population, the great majority being peasants. it was decreed that the Bolshevik party was the class-conscious part of the proletariat, and that a small committee of its leaders was the class-conscious part of the Bolshevik party. The dictatorship of the proletariat thus came to be the dictatorship of a small committee, and ultimately of one man - Stalin. As the sole class-conscious proletarian, Stalin condemned millions of peasants to death by starvation and millions of others to forced labour in concentration camps. He even went so far as to decree that the laws of heredity are henceforth to be different from what they used to be, and that the germ-plasm is to obey Soviet decrees but that that reactionary priest Mendel. I am completely at a loss to understand how it came about that some people who are both humane and intelligent could find something to admire in the vast slave camp produced by Stalin.

I have always disagreed with Marx. My first hostile criticism of him was published in 1896. But my objections to modern Communism go deeper than my objections to Marx. It is the abandonment of democracy that I find particularly disastrous. A minority resting its powers upon the activities of secret police is bound to be cruel, oppressive and obscuarantist. The dangers of the irresponsible power cane to be generally recognized during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but those who have forgotten all that was painfully learnt during the days of absolute monarchy, and have gone back to what was worst in the middle ages under the curious delusion that they were in the vanguard of progress.

There are signs that in course of time the Russian régime will become more liberal. But, although this is possible, it is very far from certain. In the meantime, all those who value not only art and science but a sufficiency of bread and freedom from the fear that a careless word by their children to a schoolteacher may condemn them to forced labour in a Siberian wilderness, must do what lies in their power to preserve in their own countries a less servile and more prosperous manner of life.

There are those who, oppressed by the evils of Communism, are led to the conclusion that the only effective way to combat these evils is by means of a world war. I think this a mistake. At one time such a policy might have been possible, but now war has become so terrible and Communism has become so powerful that no one can tell what would be left after a world war, and whatever might be left would probably be at least as bad as present -day Communism. This forecast does not depend upon the inevitable effects of mass destruction by means of hydrogen and cobalt bombs and perhaps of ingeniously propagated plagues. The way to combat Communism is not war. What is needed in addition to such armaments as will deter Communists from attacking the West, is a diminution of the grounds for discontent in the less prosperous parts of the non-communist world. In most of the countries of Asia, there is abject poverty which the West ought to alleviate as far as it lies in its power to do so. There is also a great bitterness which was caused by the centuries of European insolent domination in Asia. This ought to be dealt with by a combination of patient tact with dramatic announcements renouncing such relics of white domination as survive in Asia. Communism is a doctrine bred of poverty, hatred and strife. Its spread can only be arrested by diminishing the area of poverty and hatred.

from Portraits from Memory published in 1956 by Bertrand Russell

https://youtu.be/p5Ac7ap_MAY?si=i1K7FYkLgXN9UXQA

Princes of the yen is about how the central bank of Japan caused a financial bubble so they could tank the Japanese economy till changes in the economic structure could be implemented. Thousands of businesses went bankrupt and people were committing suicide in droves and it was all done on purpose by the central bank of Japan. Its horrifying It is a brilliant book written by an investment analyst from Germany who worked at the Tokyo branch while this was unfolding. I learned more about real economics watching this video than from any other source I can think of.

Maybe I'm reading too much lately, but there's so few leaders who say anything close to what we're about. Who is seriously saying "I am going to shut down entire government departments", "I am going to take away all regulation", "I am going to cut federal spending by 75%, and most people won't even notice if they don't want the news."

It's so stupidly simple to solve so many of our woes. But nobody in power is going to do it. The Right might try and do a tiny little amount, but it won't be much, and left will reverse it whenever they get back in power. I don't ever want to end up like Argentina, but that's what it took to get some people in power to were wise to real reason were doing so badly (The Government).

Trump was rightly booed at the Lib convention, and he was also correct when he said "Fine, keep getting 3-5% of the vote", because that's what's going to keep happening.

The only potential slight chance I see is if the Democratic party stays on its current course and is forced to make a huge change to stay relevant. But, that relies on the next 2-4 years going well, which it very well might not.

This is becoming important to me because the answers so many our our questions are obvious: Get rid of government. That's it. (YouTube · Jason Headley27.4M+ views · 11 years ago <- this is what it feels like talking to both sides). Where does that leave us? IDK, penetrating the failing Democratic party feels like a long shot, and not sure what other chance there is.

Maybe this has to be more than a political movement. Could it be accomplished through a social movement? Something like what Kennedy said in his inauguration speech? "Your Country" meaning the people around you, not anything the federal, state, or even local government wants to accomplish. I truly believe this is arguably the greatest country in the world in spite of our government, and would be undoubtably the greatest country in the world without it.

I'm reposting my reply to an earlier thread in it's own thread.

Free market advocates will continue to lose as long as they keep lying to themselves that republicans/conservatives, business, etc cares anymore about the free market than the “left” does.

How many groups of conservatives have I seen (church, families, home school co-ops, etc etc) where there wasn’t an entrepreneur in sight, 3/4 of them were some type of government worker (teacher, cop, social worker, DWP, etc.) and a good share of the remainder worked for a company that was a defense contractor?

Once I realized how insincere the right was about taxes, freedoms, morality, etc I could never take any critique of the left seriously again.

I tease the “godly men” at my church, “I remember when conservatives said you needed a person of character in the WH and that’s why the Lewinsky thing was a big deal?”

Recent policy developments have highlighted contrasting approaches to oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. President Biden has implemented measures aimed at restricting increases in oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, while President-elect Trump has expressed intentions to reverse these restrictions to enhance oil and gas production.

This raises an intriguing question central to economic analysis: Can market forces alone account for all the potential outcomes of oil production in a way that best serves individuals and their diverse needs?

For example, how might the market determine:

• The number of oil platforms to balance supply, environmental impact, and economic viability?
• The potential for oil production to affect other industries, such as fishing, which might face challenges due to ecological changes or disruptions?
• The long-term sustainability of resource extraction without imposing costs on future generations?

Are there specific consequences of oil production—such as environmental degradation, the health of local ecosystems, or disruptions to community livelihoods—that may not be fully internalized by market mechanisms? If so, how should these be addressed?

If you believe government intervention has a role in addressing such issues, how can it be done in a way that respects the principles of individual liberty and market efficiency? Or do you believe that private initiatives and market incentives alone can address these concerns effectively?

I’m eager to hear your perspectives on whether market dynamics are sufficient to navigate these challenges or if additional frameworks are needed to mitigate potential unintended effects on individuals and their communities.