John Humphreys

_{Published in The Drum ABC Online on 14 December 2011 under the title “Who is Ron Paul?”.}

In November next year, Barack Obama will go up against a Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States, and defacto leader of Planet Earth.

But before then, the Grand Old Party (GOP) of the Republicans will need to pick their candidate, which involves an eight-month marathon of rolling mini-elections in 55 states and territories (including Guam and American Samoa) starting in Iowa on January 3, 2012.

Continue reading “Who is Ron Paul?”

_{Published on the ALS Thoughts on Freedom blog on 13 December 2011 & republished on the LibertyWorks blog on 1 August 2017.}

At the recent Mises Seminar in Sydney there was a speech by Chris Leithner that explicitly called for the banning of fractional reserve (FR) banking. Leithner and other Australian libertarians (including Michael Conaghan & Benjamin Marks from Liberty Australia) follow the lead of some American libertarians (Walter Block, HH Hoppe, JG Hulsmann — BHH) and argue that FR-banking is fraud and should be banned, and further that it is economically damaging and causes inflation.

These two issues need to be addressed separately. The first is a deontological issue about whether FR-banking is consistent with a free world. The second is a consequentialist issue about whether FR-banking leads to bad outcomes. It is possible that FR-banking is consistent with freedom and yet leads to bad outcomes, and then those libertarians who accept the “non-aggression principle” would have to tolerate FR-banking even if they don’t like those outcomes. But before delving into that debate, it is worthwhile quickly explaining what we are actually talking about with FR-banking.

Continue reading “The unforgivable stupidity of anti-banking libertarians”

_{Published in Menzies House blog on 15 August 2011 under the title “Farmers, miners & private property rights“}

The debate about mining on agricultural land has long frustrated me. While one side argues to help the “farmers” and the other side wants to help the “miners” it seems everybody has abandoned the most obvious solution — clear allocation of private property rights. As Nobel prize winner Ronald Coase explained, conflicts over resources can be solved by allocating private property rights and then allowing trade so that the resources end up going where they are most valuable.

Continue reading “Farmers, miners & private property rights”

_{Published in Menzies House blog on 8 August 2011 under the title “Economic troubles & the decline of social democracy“}

The most surprising thing about the economic troubles around the world is that they are considered surprising. The economic story is actually quite simple — western governments around the world have been consistently spending more than they have, and just hoping that continued economic growth would save them. The very obvious problem with this approach is that when debt gets too high while you have an economic slowdown, then the government faces a budget crisis. Then you have Greece getting bailed out and America extending their government credit card from $14.3 to $17.7 trillion.

But that’s only the start. Bailing out the Greek government does not solve the underlying problem of excessive European debt. And going into more debt does not solve the underlying problem of excessive American debt. These problems are currently being delayed, but not solved.

Continue reading “Runaway debt & unsustainable welfare”