Austrian economics in Mainstream Canadian Newspaper…!
April 21, 2011 3 Comments
I thought it was crazy enough to see the Canadian War Street Journal National Post to have a columnist calling out the Bank of Canada for its counterfeiting operations. The influence of Austrian economics hangs over this article like a halo.
Now shades of the Austrian School are back at National Post.
Peter Foster comes out citing Austrianism on the topic of monetary growth and inflation leading to malinvestment. Hayek’s name is dropped. Contra Keynesianism, which he calls a systemic failure, producing only debt and inflation and no real economic solutions. This is not too exciting by itself — this Peter Foster guy is nothing special as a commentator, other than his general favor of markets over governments. But the fact that it gets reference in a publication like this is interesting however.
I discovered Austrian economics in 1998, sort of by accident. You would have never, I mean NEVER seen a reference to Austrian economics in a mainstream paper back then. Austrianism was just … a complete non-issue. Fortunately, Austrian economics has become more mainstream, due in large part to the Mises Institute and Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign in America, and outspoken fellow travelers of the Austrian school on the financial news networks, such as Peter Schiff and Marc Faber.
The more people discover the Austrian school of economics, the more people will become impervious to the dogmas and deceptions that have made them blind to how the market makes them free and the government enslaves and impoverishes them.
CANADIAN MARKET REVIEW 
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It is good to see that Austrian-leaning free market folks are alive and well north of the border. What does the recent election of more conservatives to government in Canada foretell for free market economic policies in general? Was the cause of the shift in government prompted more by people’s economic or social concerns, or both?
The reality is less interesting than you could imagine.
This election did not reveal any “shift” in opinion or anything. It only meant that because the Conservatives have basically run the show the last few years, and they haven’t screwed anything up too badly yet, and because the economy is bad but not that bad compared to some really backwards places, people want to stick with what seems to be “working.” Crazy socialists like Jack Layton or blatantly elitist knaves like Ignatieff make the average voter (who still loves government handouts, don’t get me wrong!) kinda nervous. But only because Stephen Harper makes them less nervous.
The Conservatives stand for nothing that is a meaningful push towards more liberty in this country. Because they really aren’t pro-liberty. You will still be punished if you print a package without the right language on it, you will still be punished if you play the wrong thing on the radio, you will still have your “fundamental human rights” taken away if they are inconvenient to the government’s tyranny, you will still be punished for saying something politically incorrect that the Human Rights Commission does not like, the gun registry will never be repealed, you will still be punished if you start a business the Establishment doesn’t like, you will still have your tax dollars plundered to help America’s imperial occupation of Afghanistan and pay for fishermen in the Maritimes to work for four months of the year and collect welfare the other eight months.
The Conservatives are basically the same as the Liberals, but arguably slightly less corrupt just because they haven’t been in power as long. Both are pro-business (not pro-market, pro-capitalism…but pro-business — important distinction) centrist parties that are corrupt, like to help their friends, and tend to stick to the middle on most social and economic issues. The NPD, favorite of unions, socialists, and welfare bums east to west, will never form a government unless the ultimate scandal explodes and both the Liberal and Conservative parties go down with them. I’m talking about something like dead babies being found in the party leaders’ closets or something. That’s how small the NPD’s chances of gaining power happen to be.
“Conservative” is still a bad word in Canada. The reason the Conservative Party is politically acceptable at all is because they are not all that conservative, in terms of both social values and economic policies. And the Liberals just have terrible PR.