David Gordon on the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian visions of America

Most readers of the Mises Wire will be familiar with the account of American history developed in many books by Mises Institute President Thomas J. DiLorenzo.  According to him, American history since our founding as a nation has been shaped by two conflicting traditions: one, begun by Alexander Hamilton, favoring a centralized government and the other, best personified in Thomas Jefferson, supporting decentralized government and the rights of the states and local communities.  Hamilton favored building up American industry artificially through high tariffs, as well as a national bank and a system of costly “national improvements.”  He also supported high government debt to stimulate industry.  Jefferson opposed all of these measures.  Henry Clay’s “American System” continued the Hamiltonian plan, as did Clay’s follower Abraham Lincoln.  In the twentieth century, Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” fits into this paradigm. 

~ David Gordon, "Alexander Hamilton's poisoned legacy," Mises Wire, July 19, 2024

Thomas Sowell on why the elites hate the free market

One of the problems with the market from the standpoint of those who think that they are the brightest, the best, and ought to be telling the rest of us groundlings what to do, is that the market allows ordinary people to go out there and make their own decisions.  And people who think they have the Truth and the Light don't want that; they want no part of that.  It's really what they hate most, I think, about a market system.

~ Thomas Sowell, "Interview with Thomas Sowell," Reason, December, 1980

Anthony Esolen on civilization

... Goodness and beauty spring from a care for the small and the local, and not from a fascination with grand political and social abstractions.

~ Anthony Esolen, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, p. 268

Grant's: the trend toward urbanization meets Covid-19

Before the bug bit, the long-running trend toward urbanization - in particular, the trend toward human clustering in the biggest, most crowded, most electric cities - seemed one for the ages.  But the worldwide lockdown has created a natural experiment in the alternatives of dispersal and re-suburbanization.

~ Grant's Interest Rate Observer, June 12, 2020

Friedrich Hayek on how knowledge is dispersed

To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralising decisions, and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order.  Yet that decentralisation actually leads to more information being taken into account.  This is the main reason for rejecting the requirements of constructivist rationalism [socialism].  For the same reason, only the alterable division of the power of disposal over particular resources among many individuals actually able to decide on their use - a division attained through individual freedom and several property - makes the fullest exploitation of dispersed knowledge possible.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, p. 76

Phil Duffy on the Covid-19 scare and telecommuting

The electronic cottage idea was at first opposed and mocked by the old order.  Today, during the COVID-19 scare, many organizations are requiring employees to telecommute and use the Internet from their electronic cottages.  At first we rushed to mob grocery stores to hoard staples such as toilet paper, then realized that we were compounding our exposure to this newly discovered risk.  Reacting, we started to return to a method of acquiring groceries abandoned in the 1950’s ordering on line for delivery...

Futurists, curiously, do not predict the future – they open our eyes to the possibilities.  But only if we allow our minds, which are certainly capable, to consider the deeper forces of progress and resistance that are in constant conflict.  We are in the middle of the newer force for decentralization against the old order of centralization.

~ Phil Duffy