Markets are people too

[Hat tip Being Objectivist]

"Your needs don't automatically become claims on somebody else's effort"

"Capitalism says inequality can exist, but your needs don't automatically become claims on somebody else's effort. You produce, trade, improve yourself, or persuade others to help voluntarily. 

"Socialism teaches the opposite moral lesson: need itself creates an entitlement and someone else's success creates the corresponding obligation. Follow that premise far enough and failure never teaches self-reliance, it merely produces another person to blame and another demand to make."

~ Rock Chartrand

The natural condition of humanity before capitalism expanded globally: Poverty

 

"In 1820, 94 out of every 100 people lived in extreme poverty. Forty-three children out of every 100 died before the age of five. Eighty-eight adults could not read. Not a single person was vaccinated against diphtheria, whooping cough, or tetanus.

"That was the natural condition of humanity before capitalism expanded globally.

"Two centuries later, those numbers are 10 people in extreme poverty, 4 child deaths per 100, 85 who can read, and 86 vaccinated. The world's population grew nearly eightfold during that period, and the number of people living in misery fell in absolute terms.

"The explanation lies in the mechanisms capitalism introduced at global scale. The price system began allocating resources to where they were most valued. Property rights gave people a reason to innovate, invest, and save. Free trade connected regions that had been isolated from one another, generating mutual gains where precarious self-sufficiency had existed before. Together, these mechanisms made wealth creation a continuous process.

"No other economic system in human history has produced this result. Socialism promised equality and delivered scarcity. Feudalism kept the majority trapped in subsistence for centuries. Capitalism was the only one that raised the floor for everyone."

~ Students for Liberty [Data: OurWorldInData]

"'Real Socialism' has never been tried in the same way that 'Real Capitalism' has never been tried. 

"The difference is 'Almost Socialism' resulted in the impoverishment & death of hundreds of millions of people. 

"While 'Almost Capitalism' has lifted billions from absolute poverty."

~ Mark Antro

Lies, Damn Lies, and the History of Capitalism

Modern historians have rarely told the truth about the history of capitalism, especially about the early days of the Industrial Revolution. In this Guest Post, Wanjiru Njoya reckons it's time to set the record straight...

Lies, Damn Lies, and the History of Capitalism
by Wanjiru Njoya

Mark Twain popularised the phrase, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” It could equally well be adapted to depict the role of socialist narratives taught as “history”—narratives that wreak even more economic havoc than outright lies. Lies can be debunked with facts, but socialist narratives appeal to political and moral ideologies that are less easily dislodged once they take root.

The socialist view of economic history teaches that capitalism is based on exploiting the poor. It alleges that Western nations are rich due to colonising the Third World. As the economist Peter Bauer observed:

The principal assumption behind the idea of Western responsibility for Third World poverty is that the prosperity of individuals and societies generally reflects the exploitation of others.

The industrial revolution is said to have been powered by theft from poor countries, with white nations acquiring wealth by subjugating other races. Bauer details the essential facts proving these beliefs to be false. He also identifies some of the reasons why these types of anti-capitalist narratives are so influential, arguing that “acceptance of emphatic routine allegations that the West is responsible for Third World poverty reflects and reinforces Western feelings of guilt.”

These guilt narratives, which masquerade as “historical facts,” are more pernicious and more difficult to defeat than blatant lies because, much like statistics, they are assumed to be objective and factual—even when they bear no relationship to the truth. Bauer describes them as “not only untrue, but more nearly the opposite of the truth.”

These myths have fed the prevailing tendency to view “capitalism” as a catch-all phrase denoting cruelty to the less fortunate. In his book Capitalism and the Historians, Hayek explains that this hostile view of capitalism is based on false history:

Who has not heard of the “horrors of early capitalism” and gained the impression that the advent of this system brought untold new suffering to large classes who before were tolerably content and comfortable? We might justly hold in disrepute a system to which the blame attached that even for a time it worsened the position of the poorest and most numerous class of the population. The widespread emotional aversion to “capitalism” is closely connected with this belief that the undeniable growth of wealth which the competitive order has produced was purchased at the price of depressing the standard of life of the weakest elements of society.

That this was the case was at one time indeed widely taught by economic historians.

Hayek argued that despite the “thorough refutation of this belief,” it has not lost its influence—“Yet, a generation after the controversy has been decided, popular opinion still continues as though the older belief had been true.” He warned that this “socialist interpretation of history,” and in particular economic history, had “governed political thinking for the last two or three generations.” Like Bauer, he emphasised that it has no basis in truth:

Most people would be greatly surprised to learn that most of what they believe about these subjects are not safely established facts but myths, launched from political motifs and then spread by people of good will into whose general beliefs they fitted. . . most of what is commonly believed on these questions, not merely by radicals but also by many conservatives, is not history but political legend.

These political legends are depicted as merely descriptive of historical reality. Hayek attributed this in part to the claim of some historians to be objective:

One reason for this probably is the pretension of many modern historians to be purely scientific and completely free from all political prejudice. . . . There is indeed no legitimate reason why, in answering questions of fact, historians of different political opinions should not be able to agree. But at the very beginning, in deciding which questions are worth asking, individual value judgments are bound to come in.

Lacking a huge amount of time for independent study, many people rely on historians for factual analysis. When professional historians push their ideology over as “history” their readers are often none the wiser. Hayek saw this as a major reason why socialist ideology had become entrenched:

The remarkable thing about this [socialist] view is that most of the assertions to which it has given the status of “facts which everybody knows” have long been proved not to have been facts at all; yet they still continue, outside the circle of professional economic historians, to be almost universally accepted as the basis for the estimate of the existing economic order.

Why are false claims that have “long been proved not to have been facts at all” still taught as historical reality? It is not necessarily because socialist historians deliberately try to promote their own ideology—although that is sometimes the case. The more serious issue is failure to appreciate that interpretation of history requires selection and interpretation. As Hayek put it, value judgments necessarily influence historical interpretation:

And it is more than doubtful whether a connected history of a period or a set of events could be written without interpreting these in the light, not only of theories about the interconnection of social processes, but also of definite values—or at least whether such a history would be worth reading.

Further, the dissemination of historical narratives is not confined to formal study. When a historical narrative is dominant, in the manner described by Hayek, it is embedded as part of the general culture and generally accepted as being “obviously true.”

. . . it is via the novel and the newspaper, the cinema and political speeches, and ultimately the school and common talk that the ordinary person acquires his conceptions of history. But in the end even those who never read a book and probably have never heard of the names of the historians whose views have influenced them come to see the past through their spectacles.

Hayek emphasised the importance of getting the facts right, as “we can hardly hope to profit from past experience unless the facts from which we draw our conclusions are correct.” And one could certainly provide the detractors of capitalism with the facts about productivity and economic progress. Bauer’s work on economic development is a great resource for that purpose.

But it is not a simple matter of presenting the facts. Given people’s prior understanding of what they assume to be meant by “capitalism,” which reflects the commonly accepted narratives, any defense of capitalism merely reinforces their moral and ideological objection. Such defenses seem to be saying “yes, the rich brutally exploit the poor, but it’s worth it.”

To illustrate this point, take the example of Bauer’s observation that colonialism in fact introduced economic progress. He explained:

In the early 1890s there were in the Gold Coast no railways or roads, but only a few jungle paths. Transport of goods was by human porterage or canoe. By the 1930s there were railways and good roads; journeys by road required fewer hours than they had required days in 1890. In British West Africa public security and health improved out of all recognition over the period. Peaceful travel became possible; slavery, slave trading and famine were practically eliminated, and the incidence of the worst diseases greatly reduced.

You would expect that to settle the matter for anyone who is genuinely concerned with the facts. But, on the contrary, socialists respond with yet more mockery —“just because you built railroads does not mean colonial brutality was acceptable.” They miss the point entirely, because they cling to their erroneous view of what capitalism is in the first place. Propaganda is based on false ideology and cannot be displaced by highlighting the facts. The underlying ideology itself must be countered: pointing out that capitalism itself is the only system allowing wealth and riches to be attained without exploitation, that the trader principle of capitalism allows each party a win-win, and that it is the only political system protecting an individual's rights.

Nor is it enough to inform people of the correct definition of capitalism, because socialist ideology cannot be displaced by semantic debates. Rather than merely informing socialists that they do not understand what “real” capitalism is, it is necessary also to defeat the underlying ideology, by defending the foundational principles of civilisation—private property, individual liberty, voluntary exchange, and limited government.

* * * * 

Dr. Wanjiru Njoya is the Walter E. Williams Research Fellow for the Mises Institute, and the author of Economic Freedom and Social Justice (2021), Redressing Historical Injustice (2023), “You Stole Our Land: Common Law, Private Property, and Rothbardian Principles of Justice” (2024) and “Individual Liberty, Formal Equality, and the Rule of Law.”
    Dr. Njoya earned her Ph.D. in Law from the University of Cambridge (UK) and taught law for over 20 years at a number of UK universities, including the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics.

    Her article previously appeared at the Mises blog.

Thoughts on Prosperity from a Hipster Coffee Shop

This article was written by a 26 yr old American college student by the name of Alyssa Ahlgren who, back then (seven years ago), was in the middle of an MBA. "My Generation," she reckons, "is blind to the prosperity around us!"

I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis (Florida) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of political candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBooks, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.

These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty One Times!!! Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.

Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity." Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. 

My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion, but I digress.

Let me lay down some universal truths really quickly. The United States of America has lifted more people out of abject poverty, spread more freedom and democracy, and has created more innovation in technology and medicine than any other nation in human history. Not only that but our citizenry continually breaks world records with charitable donations, the rags to riches story is not only possible in America but not uncommon, we have the strongest purchasing power on earth, and we encompass 25% of the world’s GDP. The list goes on. However, these universal truths don’t matter. We are told that income inequality is an existential crisis (even though this is not an indicator of prosperity, some of the poorest countries in the world have low-income inequality), we are told that we are oppressed by capitalism (even though it’s brought about more freedom and wealth to the most people than any other system in world history), we are told that the only way we will acquire the benefits of true prosperity is through socialism and centralisation of federal power (even though history has proven time and again this only brings tyranny and suffering).

Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, we elect some politicians who are dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why? The answer is this: my generation has ONLY seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the Great Depression, or live through two World Wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or we didn't see the rise and fall of socialism and communism.

We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague.

With the current political climate giving rise to the misguided idea of a socialist utopia, will we see the light? Or will we have to lose it all to realize that what we have now is true prosperity? Destroying the free market will undo what millions of people have died to achieve.

My generation is becoming the largest voting bloc in the country. We have an opportunity to continue to propel us forward with the gifts capitalism and democracy has given us. The other option is that we can fall into the trap of entitlement and relapse into restrictive socialist destitution. The choice doesn’t seem too hard, does it?

Hat tip Michael Reddell Joseph Mooney, who reminds us that for all our own problems eager to be "fixed" by the political classes, New Zealand's own poverty line, measured on similar terms, still begins 25 times above the global average ...

RELATED: Jimmy Carr: “Life has never been objectively better, and subjectively worse”.
Every day we’re here is a stroke of fortune in the grand scheme of time, so appreciate it fully."

We’re living better than 99.9% of humans who ever walked the earth, hot showers, modern medicine, endless entertainment, kids that actually survive infancy, yet so many of us feel miserable. He calls it “life dysmorphia.” We get used to how good we have it (the hedonic treadmill), then compare ourselves to everyone else and tank our own happiness. As he puts it: happiness = quality of life minus envy. Marcus Aurelius put it perfectly: “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.” When was the last time you caught yourself feeling unhappy despite objectively having it pretty damn good?

"Marxism has never died. It has mutated."

"Here are four things every serious anti-communist should understand about Marxism: 

    "First, Marxism is not primarily a set of economic policies. It is a complete philosophical system built on the claim that private property and markets are the root causes of human oppression and alienation. This is why communist regimes did not simply make economic mistakes - they systematically tried to abolish the foundations of voluntary cooperation. 

    "Second, Marxism focuses heavily on social structures and class forces while leaving very little room for individual choice and moral responsibility. Individuals are treated largely as products of their class position rather than as autonomous agents capable of shaping their own lives. This deterministic outlook underpins both Marxism’s repeated predictive failures and its readiness to justify coercive social engineering. 

    "Third, the authoritarianism, terror, and centralised control seen in every communist state were not distortions of Marxism. They were logical consequences of attempting to impose a total transformation of society (and Mark understood that). Once private property and markets are rejected, coercive state power becomes necessary to enforce the new order. 

    "Fourth, Marxism has never died. It has mutated. Much of today’s identity politics, critical theory, and institutional “equity” activism draws directly from Marxist frameworks - simply replacing economic class with race, gender or other identity categories while retaining the same oppressor-versus-oppressed logic."

~ Creative Deduction

"Socialism is an alternative to capitalism..."

“A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings. Socialism is an alternative to capitalism as potassium cyanide is an alternative to water.”

~ Ludwig Von Mises from his 1949 book Human Action (ch. 24 sec. 3)

What's in a name? Are we really a "capitalist command economy"?

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

What do you call an economic system that's neither a free-market economy with a small state and light-handed regulation, nor a state-owned economy run by bureaucratic, politically-driven trading departments -- it's neither, sometimes both, but mostly a mongrel grab-bag of bits from small govt and large. They're wrestling with that question in the UK at the minute -- and we could just as easily ask the same question here:

The left call it neoliberal but neoliberals have had no meaningful influence on British governments for thirty years. The right call it socialist but neither the Tories nor Labour have shown much [recent] interest in seizing the means of production. 

Liberty Scott puts the question:

Of course the Greens, TPM and parts of Labour will say t[that New Zealand] is under the oppressive yoke of neo-liberalism, and their latest scapegoat "billionaires" and "foreign capital"; and, of course, people like me will rail against the "commie kids" on the left in Parliament and in local government, but [in truth] there's little real evidence of NZ embarking on [either] Douglas/Richardson Mk. 2 or becoming the DDR ....

It's not to say the Douglas/Richardson ... reforms have been unwound. New Zealand isn't returning to rampant protectionism, nor has Labour embarked on vast re-nationalisation ... ["but hold my beer!" says Winston], but what has happened is an accretion of central command and control.

This is one reason some pundits are beginning to realise that, beyond the usual vitriol, there's so little separating the two tired main parties that a Grand Coalition would at least be more honest than continuing their pretence of difference. They've both kept the institutional structure established by Douglas/Richardson, while quietly growing an activist state to increasingly dictate how (and by whom) it will be run -- "regulatory control of the private sector remain[ing] at the heart of what the Wellington bureaucracy advances to meet [their] social goals."

Some might call this Fascism, i.e., the pretence of private property with an activist state dictating terms. But we're not there yet.

Ludwig Von Mises, who'd seen and escaped from the Nazi's fascism, would probably have simply called it a Hampered Market:

The system of interventionism or of the hampered market economy differs from the German [i.e., the Nazi] pattern of socialism by the very fact that it is still a market economy. The authority interferes with the operation of the market economy, but does not want to eliminate the market altogether. It wants production and consumption to develop along lines different from those prescribed by an unhampered market, and it wants to achieve its aim by injecting into the working of the market orders, commands, and prohibitions.

BOTH MISES AND HIS student Ayn Rand were quick to point out that the Hampered Market, or what Rand was happy to dub the Mixed Economy, was of course a mongrel mixture on the way to something else -- that no matter how tired the state's representative might seem, it is still their coercion that is pulling the strings. Any analyis of the Mixed Economy must logically, she said, begin by identifying the two elements that are being mixed: A mixed economy, she identified "is an explosive, untenable mixture of two opposite elements,” freedom and statism, “which cannot remain stable, but must ultimately go one way or the other.”

A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls—with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship. A mixed economy has no principles to define its policies, its goals, its laws—no principles to limit the power of its government. The only principle of a mixed economy—which, necessarily, has to remain unnamed and unacknowledged—is that no one's interests are safe, everyone's interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it. ...

A mixed economy is rule by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalised civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another's expense by an act of government—i.e., by force. In the absence of individual rights, in the absence of any moral or legal principles, a mixed economy's only hope to preserve its precarious semblance of order, to restrain the savage, desperately rapacious groups it itself has created, and to prevent the legalised plunder from running over into plain, unlegalised looting of all by all—is compromise; compromise on everything and in every realm—material, spiritual, intellectual—so that no group would step over the line by demanding too much and topple the whole rotted structure. ...

The only danger, to a mixed economy, is any not-to-be-compromised value, virtue, or idea. The only threat is any uncompromising person, group, or movement. The only enemy is integrity.

If there's one thing New Zealand's so-called opposing parties do agree on, beyond their love for the activist state, it's their hatred of the groups their erstwhile opponents appear to favour., their cronies or voting fodder But as Rand points out, 

If parasitism, favouritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.

ECONOMICALLY, WE LIVE IN a Hampered Market. Politically, we live in a Mixed Economy. Realistically, we should be aware that neither can exist indefinitely. Things "must ultimately go one way or the other."

Envy

"Socialism is driven by envy of the rich, not concern for the poor."

~ paraphrased from George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier

"[The envious] do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself. '''

~ Ayn Rand from 'Galt's Speech'

"Globalisation encourages the capitalist engine of growth."

"Globalisation encourages the capitalist engine of growth. If people understood how generous that engine has been they would have less enthusiasm for protectionism or socialism or environmentalist or economic nationalism in any of their varied forms. Most educated people believe that the gains to income from capitalism’s triumph have been modest, that the poor have been left behind, that the Third World (should we start calling it the Second?) has been immiserised in aid of the First, that population growth must be controlled, that diminishing returns on the whole has been the main force in world economic history since 1800. All these notions are factually erroneous. But you’ll find all of them in the mind of the average professor of political philosophy."

~ Deirdre McCloskey from her review of Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree and John Gray’s False Dawn

"Economic theory has identified four sources of economic progress"

In January Javier Milei explained to a room of Davos delegates to the WEF forum how the world works, and how economic progress and prosperity happens. This is an excerpt. [Milei's speech was originally in Spanish, and the English version at the WEF website has been transcribed by AI. I have edited slightly it for smoothness and clarity. Emphases mine]

As early as 380 BC, Xenophon pointed out that economics is a form of knowledge that enables men to increase their wealth while arguing that private property is the most beneficial vehicle for the life of individuals.

Xenophon ... [first] highlight[ed] the benefit of private property by stating that the owner's eye fattens his cattle. [Or as the English saying has it: "It's the master's eye that makes the mill go"]... Xenophon then delves into the dynamic realm, noting that efficiency also entails increasing wealth: that is, increasing the available quantity of goods through entrepreneurial creativity, namely through trade, innovation, and recognising opportunity. ...

"[T]he institution of private property deserves a separate chapter. By focussing on it, the Austrian School of Economics from Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, Kirzner and Hoppe to Huerta de Soto has demonstrated the impossibility of socialism, thereby dismantling the illusory idea of John Stuart Mill that postulated independence between production and distribution; a form of academic deafness that led to socialism, and cost the world the lives of 150 million human beings -- while those who managed to survive the terror, did so in absurd poverty.

In line with [those writers'] previous remarks, and consistent with Xenophon's second [point], economic theory has identified four sources of economic progress.

First, there's the division of labour, which was illustrated by Adam Smith through the pin factory example. At its core, this is a mechanism that generates productivity gains, manifested as increasing returns. Although its limit is determined by market size, the size of the market is positively affected by this process. However, it is also worth noting that this virtuous process is not infinite and that its ultimate limit lies in the endowment of initial resources.

Second, there is the accumulation of capital, both physical and human. With regard to physical capital, the interaction between saving and investment is crucial, highlighting the fundamental role of capital markets and of the financial system in carrying out such intermediation. On the human capital side, the focus should not be limited to education alone, but should also include the development of cognitive capacities from birth, as well as nutrition and health, basic elements for gaining access to education and the labour market.

Third, there is technological progress, which consists in being able to produce a greater quantity of goods with the same amount of resources, or to produce the same output using a smaller quantity of inputs.

Finally, there is entrepreneurial spirit, or rather the entrepreneurial function, which, according to Professor Huerta De Soto constitutes the main driver of the economic growth process. Because, although the three factors mentioned are important, without entrepreneurs, there can be no production, and living standards would be extremely precarious.

In fact, the entrepreneurial function is not so much focused on short-term efficiency, but rather on increasing the quality of goods and services, which, in turn, leads to higher standards of living. On this basis, what truly matters is to expand the frontier of production possibilities to the maximum extent possible.

Thus, dynamic efficiency can be understood as an economy's capacity to foster entrepreneurial creativity and coordination.

In turn, the criterion of dynamic efficiency is inseparably linked to the concept of the entrepreneurial function, which is that typically human capacity to perceive profit opportunities that arise in the environment and to act accordingly to take advantage of them. This makes the task of discovering and creating new ends and means fundamental, driving spontaneous coordination to resolve market imbalances.

Moreover, this definition of dynamic efficiency proposed by Huerta de Soto coherently and appropriately combines Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction with North's concept of adaptive efficiency.

Naturally, given the role of the entrepreneurial function, the institutions under which it develops are of vital importance. In this regard, both Douglass North and Jesús Huerta de Soto consider one of the key functions of institutions to be that of reducing uncertainty.

So, while North presents them as a set of humanly devised constraints that structure social interaction in a repetitive manner, Huerta de Soto considers that these institutions, conceived by human beings, emerge spontaneously from a process of social interaction without being designed by any single individual, and that they reduce uncertainty in the market process.

As Roy Cordato points out, the appropriate institutional framework is one that favours entrepreneurial discovery and coordination. Accordingly, within this framework, economic policy should aim to identify and remove all artificial barriers that hinder the entrepreneurial process and voluntary exchanges.

Given the decisive influence of institutions on economic progress, this directs our attention to the importance of ethics, as societies that adhere to stronger moral values and ethical principles in support of institutions will be dynamically more efficient and will therefore enjoy greater prosperity.

Accordingly, the fundamental ethical problem is a search for the best way to foster entrepreneurial coordination and creation.

Therefore, in the field of social ethics, we conclude that conceiving human beings as creative and coordinating actors entails accepting axiomatically the principle that every human being has the right to appropriate the results of their entrepreneurial creativity.

So the private appropriation of the fruits of what entrepreneurs create and discover is a principle of natural law because if an author were unable to appropriate what they create or discover, their capacity to detect profit opportunities would be blocked, and the incentive to carry out their actions would disappear. Ultimately, the ethical principle just stated is the fundamental ethical foundation of the entire market economy.

So, what we've just demonstrated is that free enterprise capitalism is not only just but also efficient and also that it is the one that maximises growth.

[Full speech here]

RELATED: Here's Per Bylund at the latest Ludwig Von Mises conference explaining that it's entrepreneurs, not politicians, who change the world for the better.

BOOK REVIEW: 'Who Was Behind the Bolshevik Revolution?' by Ron Asher [updated with reply by publisher]

I have in front of me a new book by Tross Publishing, which I have been invited to review. Having written a chapter or two for the publisher, it is my unpleasant job not just to recommend you not buy it, but that the publisher withdraw it. (Recommending withdrawal is not a matter of "free speech" -- the right to speak includes the right to take the consequences, including criticism -- simply a recommendation for good editorial hygiene.) Withdraw, because it sits poorly with his other titles, because it sits badly with genuine scholarship on any subject. ...

... and because it's not even a good read.

In 1917 in the midst of a war for survival on the First World War's eastern front, Bolshevists seized power from a provisional Russian government fighting the war, and proceeded to enact terror on the population and thereafter on the world. Far from a revolution, it was a squalid little coup, and what came of it was disaster, starvation, death, and mass-murder. 

There had been a revolution that swept away the Tsar -- swept away him and his autocratic regime -- what Ayn Rand was to call "the good revolution." But it wasn't the Bolsheviks who revolted against the Tsar's regime; they came to power instead in a squalid little backdoor coup eight months later -- orchestrated in part by the Imperial German High Command, who had sent Lenin into Russia to kill the war on their terms -- a backroom revolt that stabbed in the back the Provisional Government and squashed like a bug Russia's first stumbling chance at real freedom. 

The Bolsheviks didn't sweep away oppression; they brought it back.

And our friend Mr Asher has now written 93 pages (and 5 pages of notes) to tell us who really did it. And oddly, the important wartime context is never mentioned ...

The wartime context of the coup. (From Louis Fischer's

 The Life of Lenin (NY: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 109

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT WAS SUPPOSED TO have said that "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

This short book claims to reveal who was really behind the Bolshevik Revolution. Really and truly. And it will do so, we are promised, "with meticulous care and references" [p. 5; all uncredited page notes will refer to Mr Asher (2026)]. Take careful note: This is not a book about the ideas that caused the event in question. It is about the people. And, spoiler alert, our author says it was the Jews wot dunnit. They were driven to it, says the author, because they were Jews. 

That's it. That really is it.

And note the argument: it wasn't that those who driven to it because they happened to be Jews. They were driven to it because they were Jews. It was "vengeance," says our author, for earlier Russian pogroms against Jews. Or just because their religion was weird. Or ... something.

A remarkable claim, not least because head Bolshevik and the revolution's driving force was one Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who was not at all Jewish. (He was raised in a Russian Orthodox Christian family, baptised as an infant, and identified culturally and ethnically as Russian; historians who have examined distant links, such as the author of Lenin's Jewish Question, emphasise any link was irrelevant to his identity, ideology, or actions: he critiqued all religion, including Judaism, and saw ethnicity as secondary to class struggle). Nor was Lenin's successor known as Stalin any more Jewish (he was, famously, an ethnic Georgian christened as Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili), and nor was the head of Lenin's feared secret police, the Cheka (the brutal Feliz Dzerzhinsky, who was a Pole). 

None of the heads of the snake were Jewish.

Indeed, of the 21 members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party in August 1917, there were at most just six who could be categorised that way. Such niceties however do not disturb our author. (Indeed, he adds three more, without any reference for doing so.) 

And in any case.a similar ethnic make-up can be found for many other Russian movements of the time, including the Russian Orthodox priesthood, the rival Menshevik party (whose founders were both Jewish, and which actually had double the proportion of ethnic Jews to the Bolshies), and of course the Jewish Bund (a secular Jewish socialist party active between 1897 and 1920). A similar make-up can be found because any intellectual movement attracts intellectuals -- and Jewish Russians were among the most educated of the time, and were barred by the Tsar's regime from other political involvement.

So the claim is not just remarkable for being bold, but also (as we will see) for lacking the kind of "meticulous care and references" the boldness demands. It's true that historians of the various Russian revolutions and coups d'etat have generally recognised that Jews were represented in early Bolshevik leadership, but so were many other educated ethnic minorities who all faced persecution under the Tsar. (Most of whom were excluded by being non-Russian from advancement in Russian culture or in the vast Russian bureaucracy.) And of course the vast majority of Jews were not Bolsheviks, and Jews as a community suffered enormously under Soviet rule.

This is especially important today to understand. The book comes at a time when ethnic Russian fascism and anti-Semitism has escalated dramatically following Putin's insane aspirations for empire, and Hamas's murderous October 7 attack followed by Israel's bloody response. It's said that Hamas's “Sinwar placed his money on the 2,000-year belief that Jews were inherently vengeful, greedy, and lustful for the blood of innocents and children [and] in betting on Jew-hatred, Sinwar hit the jackpot."  

The irrational hatred continues even here in New Zealand, once considered a relatively safe environment for Jewish folk, and yet the NZ Jewish Council recorded 227 antisemitic incidents in the 12 months following October 7 -- more than the 166 recorded across the entire eight-and-a-half years prior.

So things are ramping up, and you might well ask yourself about such a book's publication: "Why now?" 

And about the thesis, even if proven: "So what?"

WHILE YOU PONDER THOSE QUESTIONS, consider again what such a proof might look like -- proof that it was the Jews wot dunnit -- and about that promise of "meticulous care and references." 

Let's begin by looking at some contemporary (or near-contemporary) quotes adduced by Mr Asher to describe the Bolshevik coup and the Jews' alleged responsibility for it: some examples drawn from a diplomat's alarmed despatch, a gossip columnist's interview, a White Russian general's memoir, and a State Department intelligence file drawing on a known forgery -- all of which are treated as equivalent historical evidence ...

"Since then, poverty has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded."

 

"While the share of people in extreme poverty has been falling since the 19th century, the total number didn’t begin to decline [at scale] until the late 20th century, when [communism collapsed and] rapid economic growth spread worldwide.

"Since then, poverty has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded."

~ post by Human Progress

“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives..."

“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterised by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement.

"They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty.”

They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship.

"They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent.

"They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.”

~ Ludwig Von Mises from his 1944 book Bureaucracy

"No wonder the Trump/Mamdani meeting went so well—these 2 are kindred spirits"

 

“'For all the hype of a conflict, [reports Axios] President Trump and New York City's next mayor, Zohran Mamdani, had a surprising bond when they met Friday in the Oval Office ...'

"This is no surprise ... Like Mamdani, Trump is fundamentally a collectivist. Collectivism is the foundation of Socialism, whether of the Fascist or Communist variety.

"It’s instructive that, after his meeting with Trump ... Mamdani reiterated his belief that Trump is a Fascist. Indeed, as Axios reported ... 'For a few minutes, Mamdani — whom Trump had called a communist — and Trump, whom Mamdani had called a fascist, gave a glimpse of how they might find common ground . . .' Common ground, indeed!

"Whether or not Trump is a full-blown Fascist or Mamdani is a full-blown Communist, the fact remains that Fascism and Communism are, as the great champion of The Enlightenment Steven Pinker has observed, 'fraternal twins.' No wonder the meeting went so well—these 2 are kindred spirits ..."

~ Mike LaFerrara from his post 'On the Trump/Mamdani 'Lovefest''

"Capitalism created Poland's miracle, and socialism created Venezuela's catastrophe."

"Capitalism created Poland's miracle, and socialism created Venezuela's catastrophe."

~ Young Americans for Liberty [chart from the Our World in Data website]

"'Real Socialism' has never been tried..."

"'Real Socialism' has never been tried in the same way that 'Real Capitalism' has never been tried.

"The difference is 'Almost Socialism' resulted in the impoverishment & death of hundreds of millions of people.

"While 'Almost Capitalism' has lifted billions from absolute poverty."

~ Mark Antro

SOWELL: 'The Fallacy of Redistribution'

“The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty.” 

~ Thomas Sowell on 'The Fallacy of Redistribution'

Fascism. What is it?

"What is fascism, and what place does it occupy in political philosophy? There is more to that question than the standard identification with the extreme right, as echoed by the Encyclopedia Britannica:

'Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: 'people’s community'), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.'

"This characterisation doesn’t fit well on the conventional left-right axis of the political spectrum. For one thing, the mainstream left also entertains communitarian beliefs and favors “the good of the nation” against individual interests. Its devotion to democracy and liberalism, at least in the classical sense, is rather doubtful. Apart from its populist variant, the mainstream left does favor a hierarchy between elected officials and expert bureaucrats on the one side, and the populace on the other side. Finally, if we look at socialism à la Maduro or at communism, the practical difference with fascism wears thin. The favoured political constituencies of the two regimes differ but often overlap. For example, the common people easily rally behind strongmen of either the extreme left or the extreme right, and even move from one side to the other over time.'

The kinship between the extreme right and the extreme left suggests that the conventional axis left-right is not a satisfactory model. The left and the right share more than is apparent. ...

"[A]sk Benito Mussolini himself, the founder of fascism ... [who] explained :

'Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State. … It is opposed to classical Liberalism ... When one says liberalism, one says the individual; when one says Fascism, one says the State.' ...

"[Both] fascism and communism—and, to a different extent, [both] the right and the left —... are collectivist and opposed to the individualism of classical liberalism and libertarianism.

"This distinction between collective and individual choices seems to be the main line of fracture in modern ideologies."

~ Pierre Lemieux from his post 'Fascism, the Right, and the Left'

"A movement that changed a country." Peacefully.

It's been risible watching statists here struggling over recent months to get their heads around the Atlas Network think tank—and what exactly think tanks do.

What troubles them most perhaps is the word "think" in the description. Many have forgotten how to.

Nonetheless, to help them understand, the think tank Students for Liberty sets out to explain what they do. 

They begin by asking: "Why is the President of Argentina wearing THIS pin while announcing major policy changes?"

The story goes back to 1945, when a war hero wanted to save his country—and a Nobel Prize winner told him to forget about politics.

This isn't just about a pin. It's about how ideas travel from university classrooms to presidential palaces. And why every student needs to understand this journey—because you're living through it right now.

In 1945, World War II just ended. F.A. Hayek, teaching at the London School of Economics, meets Antony Fisher—a combat aviator and war hero. Fisher had read Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and was terrified about Britain's socialist direction. "I want to enter politics," Fisher declared.

Hayek stopped him cold. "The political battle isn't won in the political arena," he explained. "It's fought—and ultimately won—by intellectuals." Politicians follow public opinion. But intellectuals? They shape it. 

 

Fisher listened. Instead of running for political office, he founded the UK's Institute of Economic Affairs. For decades, IEA scholars published papers, hosted debates, and educated a generation about free markets. The result? Britain elected Margaret Thatcher. 

 

Legend has it that in her first Cabinet meeting, Thatcher slammed down Hayek's book Constitution of Liberty—published by the IEA—and declared: "This is what we believe!" Ideas had become policy. Intellectuals had changed a nation. 

This wasn't an accident. Hayek had studied how ideas spread. It's like a pyramid:

        Scholars develop ideas ...

                ... Intellectuals* spread them 

                        ... Media amplifies them

                                ... Politicians adopt them

Every revolution starts at the top of that pyramid.

[* Note that the bar for "intellectual" here is clearly set very low.] 

Now look at American universities today (and this is fairly universal everywhere):  

X Professors teaching government as the solution to everything  

X Students defending socialism (70% of Gen Z consider voting socialist)  

X 53% of graduates feel unqualified for jobs in their field  

X Ideology of resentment toward achievement

 The pyramid is working—just not for liberty.

This is why Students For Liberty exists. 

Our Local Coordinators host events, educate peers, and develop as leaders worldwide. 

In 2024 alone: 3,881 events reaching 150,000+ people. 

One person who helped SFL in Argentina? An economist named Javier Milei.

Milei didn't just wear our pin—he partnered with us. 

He attended our events, explained our mission on TV, and mentored pro-liberty students across Argentina. 

Why? Because he understood: to change politics, you first have to change culture. 

 

Take Ethan Yang. Started with "no leadership experience, no professional skills. Just a small libertarian club that met in the basement of our dining hall." 

As a Students for Liberty coordinator, his Freedom of Information Act request helped halt the Biden administration's social-media censorship. The case reached the Supreme Court.

A federal judge called the Biden Administration's collusion with/threats to Big Tech "the most massive attack against free speech in US history." 

Stopped by one student. One request. Supreme Court case. 

That's the power of the pyramid when it works for liberty. 

 

Here's what every student needs to understand: 

You're not just getting a degree. 

You're being shaped by ideas that will define the next fifty years. 

The question isn't whether ideas will spread from campus—it's which ideas will spread.

Milton Friedman explains the point: "Our basic function is to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable." 

Before Milei became president, he was attending SFL events. 

That pin? It represents a movement that changed a country.

Tired of feeling outnumbered, silenced, or lost in campus groupthink? 

The College Survival Kit is your first step into this global movement. 

Learn how real change begins—with students who refuse to stay silent: DOWNLOAD YOURS HERE.