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2024-02-14
The new year started out on a painful note for autoworkers building electric vehicles (EVs). In the last month, thousands of workers have been laid off from General Motors (GM) and Ford plants in Michigan.
Most workers involved were, or were slated to be, working on electric versions of each brand’s signature trucks—the Chevy Silverado EV and Ford F-150 Lightning. The latter has been available for purchase since 2022, with the Silverado EV set to debut this year. Yet both have run into a problem: consumers don’t want them.
More specifically, consumers don’t want as many of these trucks as Ford and GM are currently producing. On its face, this might appear like a classic case of entrepreneurial error. But there’s more to the story because the production level of EVs, in recent years, has
2024-02-12
Each week we encounter mouthwatering policies implemented by the newly elected libertarian president of Argentina Javier Milei. He has the libertarian community in awe.
His arrival to politics with an openly antisystem discourse shook not only the local scene in Argentina but also the rest of the world.
But how? The respective libertarian parties in each country barely get enough votes to even appear on the main grid on election night!
There are numerous reasons as to why this may be. We libertarians know ourselves well and no one with a minimum of self-criticism is surprised that our current situation in party politics is such. While political culture differs by country, our internal ideological discussions as libertarians are the same.
While there’s no formula for liberty, one may find
2024-02-09
In a 1922 essay about Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in his book Prejudices: Third Series H.L. Mencken asked, “Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg Address”? One example of the nonsense of Lincoln’s rhetoric as explained by Mencken is as follows:
“Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern
2023-11-14
The recurring cycle of economic booms followed by inevitable busts has remained a puzzle for generations of observers. While mainstream Keynesian and monetarist theories propose monetary interventions to smooth these fluctuations, the Austrian School offers a compelling and alternative perspective. Austrian business cycle theory provides a profound understanding of how artificially inflated booms sow the seeds of their own destruction. Delving into the depth of this theory illuminates the inherently unsustainable nature of economic upswings driven by the availability of cheap credit and inflation.
The Core of the Theory: Artificial Booms Lead to Busts
The Austrian business cycle theory argues that efforts to artificially suppress interest rates below natural market levels fuel an
2023-11-10
There’s a growing palpable sense of optimism among many economists and journalists that the United States economy is heading toward a growth phase while avoiding recession. They are in turn lauding the Federal Reserve for its strategic handling of inflation—with economic growth and low unemployment rates—as well as praising the efficacy of the Biden administration in reining in prices through social pressure on profit-making and through increases in production via large subsidy grants, along with the stimulus checks that have been distributed generously through various legislative acts.
This optimism and belief in the ability of the government to deal with economic problems come right after experiencing a severe inflationary crisis over the last three years, starting in late 2020. The
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