Government has existed for millennia; only a century or so ago did intellectuals — many of them economists — come up with the idea that government was a suitable instrument for solving society’s problems. It is a bizarre idea: why should the guys with the guns run the financial system or provide us with education or health care?
The equivalent perspective in Austrian economics comes from methodological individualism – the study of economic energy at its smallest possible scale: the individual, individual choices, and individual transactions. These interactions and transactions roll up into the complex, swirling, ever-changing systems we call firms, markets and, ultimately, economies.
Biden has eliminated a 2019 Executive Order 13891 that would “take public input into account when appropriate in formulating guidance documents, and make guidance documents readily available to the public.” Right, government agencies are supposed to treat their regulations as if they are regulations, and tell people what they’re obligated to do.
Rather than fully winterizing the grid, Texas focused on closing down coal plants and building up wind and solar power. Over the past five years wind power in Texas increased by 113 percent; solar power, by 2,000 percent; while power from coal declined by 30 percent.
Progressivism gave rise to the administrative state and the creation of a class of professional administrators unaccountable to voters and “trained in the ‘science’ of administration to manage society more rationally and carefully than the masses would, if left to their own devices.”
Individuals strive for what they think is desirable, and markets transmit this striving as exchange and trade that benefits many. The unlimited variety of human gifts and skills is orchestrated by markets even though all the members of society who benefit are unaware of most individuals’ contributions.
George Washington left us provided core principles that provide a useful model in that direction. But we have turned to honoring those principles more in the breach than the observance. We could greatly benefit from reviving those principles, which made him “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
The most obvious sign is the frenzied growth. Amid the global stock market volatility, last year’s $83 billion haul by SPACs was six times the amount raised in 2019 and nearly equaled the figure mustered by IPOs. Even David Solomon, chief executive of major SPACs underwriter Goldman Sachs, warned in January 2021 that the boom is not “sustainable in the medium term.”
Many of the studies instrumental to the theories that behavioral economists cite to prove human irrationality are highly flawed in their reasoning. In many cases, they either extrapolate beyond what the original experiment can be said to prove, or, in some cases, have been shown to be the product of deliberate fraud.
Beyond simply serving China’s imperial needs, the US oligarchy is working to build an America that looks more like China. The contours of their system are already clear: an enlightened elite broadcasts official progressive facts, beliefs, and values that none may question.
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