A Message of Hope from the Dismal Science - Art Carden - Mises Daily

A Message of Hope from the Dismal Science - Art Carden - Mises Daily: "Almost all economic progress has been confined to the last two and a half centuries, which has (for me, at least) changed the way I look at history, look at my life, read my Bible, and all sorts of things. We've done well, but the fact that our progress is confined largely to the last 250 years suggests that we should tread lightly and avoid hubris. The past shows us that economic growth is not automatic, and under the wrong conditions, self-interest will be channeled into predation rather than production."

"for all of our wars and bloodshed you are today less likely to die at the hands of another person than at any point in history. In China and India, we are witnessing the largest movement of human beings out of abject poverty in the history of our species.

An average life several hundred years ago would be considered a humanitarian disaster today."

"The poor are not better than you and me. They're just poorer. We bourgeois do not make them better off by being ashamed of being rich, since it's not our fault that they are poor, and there is therefore no original sin in our being rich. We should instead work to make them rich, too, by spreading the used-up liberal capitalism."

"just because some people cannot be trusted with liberty does not mean that other people can or should be trusted with power."

"Calling President Obama a socialist or a Nazi short-circuits the discussion and puts our friends on the Left on the defensive. It obscures the substance of the analysis. It's also intellectually lazy, and it's something I don't tolerate from my students."

The Faults of Fractional-Reserve Banking - Thorsten Polleit - Mises Daily

The Faults of Fractional-Reserve Banking - Thorsten Polleit - Mises Daily: "'any contractual agreement that involves presenting two different individuals as simultaneous owners of the same thing (or alternatively, the same thing as simultaneously owned by more than one person) is objectively false and thus fraudulent.'[4] A 'fractional reserve banking agreement implies no lesser an impossibility and fraud than that involved in the trade of flying elephants or squared circles.'"

"Arguing in favor of fractional-reserve banking would in fact be tantamount to saying that it is legal (or rightful or even lawful) that Mr. A does whatever he wishes with Mr. B's property — without requiring Mr. B's consent."

"fractional-reserve banking is not, as Mr. Wolf notes, 'a natural consequence of market forces.' It is a result of, and has been upheld by, government law.


In a free-market system, the practice of fractional-reserve banking would be illegal by its very nature. And so fractional-reserve banking would be ended (sooner rather than later) under the auspices of a functioning law of private-property rights."

"fractional-reserve banking under commodity money necessarily causes economic problems on a grand scale. This is because banks then engage in circulation-credit expansion — that is, they issue money through lending that is not backed by real savings.

Circulation bank credit is inflationary, and it causes economic disequilibria and overindebtedness of the private sector — in particular on the part of governments. It is also the very cause of the 'boom-and-bust' cycle."