Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Walter Block

“Many people consider a monopoly to be any business with a high market share. But the historical definition is rather different.” (10/21/24)

https://fee.org/articles/what-makes-something-a-monopoly/

Source: TomDispatch
by Tom Engelhardt

“He’s the man of the hour (and you can choose your hour), win, lose, or draw. I mean, who can deny it? Certainly not the crowd at his debate with Kamala Harris that, as he reminded us recently, absolutely ‘went crazy’ over what he had to say. (And it couldn’t matter less that the event had no live audience whatsoever.) In a sense, he isn’t wrong. After all, it’s still all too possible that, in a couple of weeks, he could once again be elected — yes! — president of the United States. Indeed, it’s as yet unclear whether American voters will decline The Donald, but what is increasingly clear — there can’t be a doubt on the subject — is that he himself is on the decline in a typically wild and mad sort of way.” [editor’s note: And we libertarians continue to ask, what is the downside of an “empire going down,” if a republic is rising from the ashes? – SAT] [additional editor’s note: I doubt I’d like the prospective “republic” any more than the current one – TLK] (10/21/24)

https://tomdispatch.com/the-empire-is-going-down/

Source: Bitcoin.com
by Corbin Fraser

“Nearly all countries are up to their ears in debt. Since austerity measures are not politically acceptable, they must find other ways to manage that debt – and the easiest path is just to inflate it away! If you make the value of each dollar of debt worth less and less each year, it naturally becomes easier to find the money to pay it off. … Of course, central banks know all about inflation, which is why they try to minimize the amount of currency they hold in reserve. Instead, they opt for hard assets – ie. assets that don’t get devalued year after year. Gold is one such asset, and so are stocks, and even some kinds of bonds. Bitcoin is also an inflation-resistant asset, which is why central banks are probably scooping it up right now.” (10/21/24)

https://news.bitcoin.com/central-banks-are-secretly-buying-bitcoin/

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith

“John Law, the early eighteenth-century Scottish gambler and financier, thought the best way to revive an ailing economy was to remove the ‘great scarcity of money,’ as he wrote in a 1705 monetary tract. A decade after its publication, he took his ideas to the Continent and sold them to Philippe d’Orleans, the regent in charge of France’s finances, who needed a scheme more sophisticated than his failed program of coin clipping and confiscation to save the nation from bankruptcy. … In 1716, Philippe set Law up as head of the Banque Generale, the country’s central bank, giving it and him monopoly control of the note issue. Having won the nation’s trust with declarations of allegiance to sound money principles — he had promised his banknotes would be ‘payable on sight’ in unadulterated gold coin — Law proceeded to apply another element of his theory.” (10/21/24)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/birth-irrational-exuberance

Source: Foreign Policy In Focus
by Atal Ahmadzai

“The recent natural disasters caused by the Helene and Milton tropical cyclones in the Southern U.S. have triggered unfounded and ill-informed conspiracies about the origin of the disasters and the government’s involvement in weather modification. Despite being based on ill-informed claims that defy common sense, these conspiracies have historical contexts. In a broader sense, the modern state’s drive to dominate nature and its rich history of accumulation by dispossession are the prototypes and contexts for such conspiracies. Environmental conspiracies have long been an integral part of the larger conspiracy against nature, which treat nature as a cornucopia of resources external to human identity and society that must be dominated to maximize its utility. Environmental conspiracies have long served the interests of power structures, enabling them to control people and societies by dominating nature.” (10/21/24)

https://fpif.org/environmental-conspiracies-the-state-and-nature/

Source: Foreign Policy
by Keith Johnson

“Dethroning the dollar has been, and will remain, a central goal of BRICS; last year’s summit concluded with the explicit mission of drafting a blueprint to make that a reality. BRICS members have different beefs with the centrality of the dollar, which serves to unify them for now but which also highlights the fissures just waiting to widen. For some, such as China, Russia, and Iran, an alternative to the dollar means a way to sanction-proof their economies. … Russia and China haven’t spent the last few years building alternatives to Western payment systems out of altruism. They are building escape pods. The other BRICS members also bristle at the dollar’s dominance but not because they fear sanctions per se (though some, such as Ethiopia, do as well). What they worry about is that the dollar dominates their economic life and they have no say over it.” (10/21/24)

https://archive.is/yAhX4