Question 76

Question 76

We forgot the 1970s, so active industrial policy is back, from Beijing to Brussels. Therefore, the new book “Questioning the Entrepreneurial State”, eds Karl Wennberg and Christian Sandström, is a blessing. 30 scholars explain the state of knowledge about industrial policy, and remind us that it usually fails, big time. The problem with picking winners is that losers are so good at picking governments.-Norberg

US refineries are already operating at 94 percent of their capacity, with US refineries in the Gulf of Mexico running at 98 percent, which is the highest rate in 30 years.

Basing law on false presumptions and utopian goals is bound to undermine the natural rights of life, liberty, and property that each individual can share in without depriving others of their equal rights. Adam Smith, in his 1762 lecture “Of Jurisprudence,” called these “perfect rights”—because they are rights that all individuals “have a title to demand and if refused to compel another to perform.” In contrast, “imperfect rights” relate to “those duties which ought to be performed to us by others but which we have no title to compel them to perform.” Smith emphasized that only perfect rights are consistent with “commutative justice,” while imperfect rights, which he called “metaphorical” rights, are associated with “distributive justice” (Dorn)
As Bastiat wrote, human law is different from Holy Commandments. Law is defensive. "When law and force confine a man within the bounds of justice, they do not impose anything on him but a mere negation. They impose on him only the obligation to refrain from injuring others. They do not infringe on his personality, or his liberty or his property. They merely safeguard the personality, the liberty, and the property of others. They stand on the defensive; they defend the equal right of all. They fulfill a mission whose harmlessness is evident, whose utility is palpable, and whose legitimacy is uncontested."" (Bastiat, "The Law")

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall exercise all duties and functions in a manner that fosters the elimination of disparities across racial and ethnic groups with respect to employment, income, wealth, and access to affordable credit.--Maxine Waters' bill to put racial equity into the Fed's charter.

Since people will differ in many attributes which government cannot alter, to secure for them the same material position would require that government treat them very differently. Indeed, to assure the same material position to people who differ greatly in strength, intelligence, skill, knowledge and perseverance as well as in their physical and social environment, government would clearly have to treat them very differently to compensate for those disadvantages and deficiencies. (Hayak)

Obsession. This search in Mar-a-Lago better not end up looking like the poor guy who shot up the pizza shop looking for the kids enslaved by Hilary.

A resurgence of a modern problem seen years ago by the Founding Fathers: the belief that the government is us. It is not.