From today’s Daily Article at Mises.org:
The “protesters” made it on to the evening news in their latest attempt to dupe the American public into believing that they were not really the millionaire owners of large corporate farms, but lowly dust bowl families just trying to make ends meet and feed their families. A public that is gullible enough to believe a president who promises to eradicate tyranny from the planet is likely to fall for this lie as well.
“Farmed Robbery” by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
The article is an excellent short course on politicalCapitalism, also know as mercantilism, protectionism, corporate welfare, corporatism, or sometimes state capitalism.
It is the opposite of economicCapitalism in a freeMarket, also known as laissez faire, and sometimes classicalLiberalism.
For more on the distinction, see Straw Men & Ham Sandwiches for the short light version, or the BlackCrayon essay Reluctant Capitalist for the long dense version.
Virtually everything government does increases the cost of living by driving up prices. Yet most Americans still believe in the fairy tale that it is the free market that causes higher prices and that it is government, through benevolent and wise antitrust regulation, that “saves” us from rapacious monopolists. This has always been a lie; antitrust regulation has always been, at best, a smokescreen designed to divert the public’s attention from the real causes of higher prices, such as agricultural price support programs, protectionism, and myriad other forms of government-mandated price increases.
Ibid.
Few people want to be alone on Thanksgiving… or Christmas… or New Year’s… or Valentine’s Day. As a result, many courtships that by all rights should have expired in the autumn linger on into mid-February. Now that V-day’s over, the Annual Rite of Overdue Dumping should soon commence, thereby setting the stage for the Spring Mating Season.
