Peter's Blog

Can Consumption Create Wealth?

Most Americans are familiar with the Keynesian idea that government spending and money creation can stimulate a sluggish economy by boosting demand. What those not versed in Austrian economics may not appreciate is that this framework gets the causal order exactly backwards: production must come before consumption, and genuine demand can only arise from prior […]

Does Government Create Wealth or Consume It?

Defenders of big government often argue that roads, courts, and national defense prove the state is indispensable to prosperity, but this reasoning contains a fatal flaw. The state has no independent source of wealth: it first expropriates resources from private producers through taxation, then provides services with those resources, and finally points to those same […]

Why Capitalism’s Real Alternatives Are Worse

As Trump’s crony capitalism and socialist inroads in the Democratic Party crowd out defenders of free markets, many assume the only choice is between capitalism and socialism. But a third danger lurks — the possibility that rejecting both leads not to liberty, but to feudalism or primitivism, systems where rights collapse and poverty reigns just […]

Both Parties Get “Tax the Rich” Wrong

The debate over taxing the rich has returned to the headlines, with progressives arguing that no one can legitimately earn a billion dollars and conservatives firing back that wealth at the top reflects risk-taking and value creation. Both sides, however, miss the deeper truth: a century of government intervention has so warped the economy that […]

One Size Fits One

Life is infinitely divisible. It is impossible to break a situation down to its most fundamental level. The infinite complexity of the world means that we only run out of information when we stop asking questions. Physically, we proceed from molecules to atoms to quarks and particles, and finally to the intersection of energy and […]

How Antitrust Policy Helped Kill Spirit Airlines

Most Americans are familiar with the frustrations of air travel, including high fares and limited options. Those less versed in the history of airline regulation may not realize that this oligopoly was built with government help from the very beginning, and that antitrust crusaders who claim to fight Big Business often end up strengthening the […]

How Regulation Protects Monopolies and Weakens Competition

Most Americans understand the visible harm that excessive regulation causes – higher costs and fewer choices in the marketplace. Those less familiar with Austrian economic theory may not appreciate that government regulations also actively create monopolies by shielding politically connected industries from the competitive pressures that drive innovation and spread knowledge. The following article was […]

The Deadly Tradeoff Between Learning and Safety

Although learning things the hard way is often seen as a benchmark of failure, it often might be the only way to learn. Particularly in situations of first time discovery, repeated failure is all but necessary to produce a meaningful new outcome. Learning things the hard way should only be seen as failure when one […]

Ignore the Rich – Don’t Punish Success

In an unsurprising move from the interventionist state of California, a new tax proposal threatens to take an even larger share of wealth from the state’s wealthier inhabitants, and – even worse– the act would enforce ex post facto taxation against recent emigrants from the state. Despite state propaganda to the contrary, this won’t make […]

Central Banking: Legalized Monetary Piracy

In a free market for money, monetary policy would be unnecessary, with market forces governing the production and use of money. In the current monetary landscape, monetary policy constitutes a coercive, redistributive, and intentional force that benefits the political class at the expense of everyday consumers. The following article was originally published by the Mises […]