USA - A interesting website swim found - Lew Rockwell

[old hippie 56]

Swim found this site a couple of weeks ago, let us see what ya'll think about it. Here is the link:http://www.lewrockwell.com/index.html

[Forthesevenlakes]

Found the same site recently. SWIM is extremely wary of people who think that burgeoning lassiez-faire capitalism will be a cure for all of society's ills and stop wars. More often, it seems that businesses who have a vested interest in starting wars will do so. That's not to say SWIM thinks capitalism is totally evil, or that this site doesn't contain anything valid, because SWIM thinks they make some interesting points here. However he is going to take these articles with a grain of salt. Good find though, as always!

[zera]

Swim's been reading Lew Rockwell's site for years, Lew Rockwell is basically the most prominent member of the anarcho-capitalist movement and the Austrian school of economics, so as an anarcho-capitalist and a subscriber to the Austrian I love his stuff. The sister site that's more scholarly is http://www.mises.org

Anyway, forthe7lakes, be careful not to confuse capitalism with pro-businesses, there are many businesses that as a capitalist I consider terrible such as the military-industrial complex, the heavily subsidized agri-businesses, any sort of businesses that use artificially constructed government monopolies to keep competition out (like how many cities have taxi medallions that limit the number of cabs that can operate), or pretty much any government contractor.

Yes you're absolutely right that war is often supported by business interests, but only because war offers a convenient way for the state to subsidize the businesses. There has never been a war in the history of the world that didn't involve a government party. If we remove the state, or limit it's power to such a degree that it can barely act at all, then virtually all wars would not happen, because no matter how much businesses wanted them to the government simply would not have the power or resources to do so.

The easiest reform you can support if you want peace is to lobby for a gold standard. With the Federal Reserve system the government basically has fiat money (meaning they can control the supply of money). When they want to take on any major new task such as a foreign war or a domestic "war" on whatever the current ill of the day is, instead of just running their printing presses and raising the funds to do it, they would have to come hat in hand to the tax payers and ask for the funds.

Besides for the Revolutionary War there has never been a war in American history that wasn't waged without the use of artifically inflated money supply. If you want peace the surest way to get it is to suppor the gold standard. And the only people doing that today are the Austrians economists like Lew Rockwell.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Great post, you even taught a politics student a thing or two!