Peter's Blog

Socialism’s historical record includes well over 100 million civilians killed by socialist regimes over the past century, yet the ideology has seen a resurgence in popularity, particularly among recent college graduates. Its persistence and appeal lies in exploiting contempt, envy, and a fear of personal responsibility rather than in any coherent economic case against private […]

A decade of populist anger on both the right and left has correctly identified that America’s institutions serve the political class rather than ordinary citizens, yet virtually every goal that anger was meant to achieve, ending DC corruption, winding down foreign wars, reducing inequality, has only gotten worse. Ron Paul’s generation of populists correctly identified […]

Commentators have labeled the divide between soaring asset prices and stagnant wages the “K-shaped economy,” but slapping a name on the pattern is not the same as explaining it. The real driver is the Cantillon effect: new money enters the economy through the banking system first, inflating the assets held disproportionately by the wealthy while […]

Modern institutions have embraced the belief that more data, more regulation, and more centralized coordination will always produce better outcomes, but that assumption is increasingly running into its own limits. As bureaucracies drown in information they cannot meaningfully interpret, the very mechanisms built to improve performance begin producing the opposite result, a phenomenon that undermines […]

Wars are consistently sold to the public on false or misleading pretexts, and the true beneficiaries are rarely the citizens asked to fight and pay for them but the politicians, financiers, and military-industrial interests who profit regardless of outcome. Statist ideology and nationalism condition people to accept these sacrifices, obscuring the reality that the state’s […]

Mainstream economists often argue that increasing the money supply is necessary to stimulate economic growth. However, Austrian economists have long recognized that monetary expansion merely creates the illusion of prosperity while sowing the seeds of future crises. Printing money cannot create real wealth or productive resources, but instead distorts economic calculation and leads to malinvestment. […]

Alan Greenspan served as Federal Reserve Chairman for nearly two decades, presiding over the US economy during a period of significant growth and turmoil. While often portrayed as a stalwart defender of free markets, a closer examination of his career reveals a more complex picture. Greenspan’s ability to adapt his views and rhetoric to suit […]

The US tax system is often praised as a means of funding essential government services and redistributing wealth. A deeper analysis reveals that it is primarily driven by envy and resentment rather than a genuine concern for the common good. By pitting different groups against each other, the tax code fuels social division and undermines […]

The current study of economics in an academic setting is extremely overrun by empiricists. Empiricism is a method of study that involves primarily driving conclusions from what can be observed rather than first principles. Empiricism links the validity of every idea back to observable points of evidence that can be used to support it. While […]

Most analysts treat economic data as the starting point for understanding the economy: if GDP rises, things are good; if it falls, things are bad. What they fail to appreciate is that data without theory is meaningless, and that any interpretation of economic data already presupposes a theoretical framework, whether the analyst knows it or […]