"Special temporary measures that may not be appropriate in normal times" /  by Nathan Jones

“All political projects that neglect human nature and disregard the lessons drawn from centuries of political experience have to compensate for their lack of realism by a disproportionately high degree of intervention in both the social fabric and in human minds. It often means annexing those areas of human existence in which [freedom from coercion] typically expresses itself and is most needed, such as education, rule-making, culture, thinking, social practices, and language.”
— Ryszard Legutko in The Cunning of Freedom: Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols

The Prime Minister has neither self-confidence nor the confidence of the Canadian people. Resorting to the Emergency Act demonstrates his cowardice and desperation.

Repeat after Milton /  by Nathan Jones

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

“Inflation is a disease. It’s a dangerous disease for a society. It is sometimes a fatal disease for a society. It’s a disease that if allowed to rage unchecked can destroy a society, and we have many such examples.”
— Milton Friedman, winner of the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

And one of these examples is the once beautiful country in which I was born.*

Viruses do not wreck economies. Government overreaction wrecks economies. People do not “lose their jobs” to a pandemic. People’s jobs are stolen from them by governments which enforce scientifically and morally unjustifiable lockdowns. Governments follow this injury by printing enormous sums of money to support the people that they have forced into unemployment. In this one-two punch, governments decrease the production of goods while simultaneously increasing the supply of money chasing those goods. This causes inflation. Inflation is not merely a disease. It is theft on a grand scale. Government reserves to itself the monopoly right to print money, and therefore only government can debase the currency. Debasement does not happen by accident. It is carried out as a willful act by those in power over us. It is morally corrupt. It is evil.

Related reading: The Ethics of Money Production by Jörg Guido Hülsmann.

*In Zimbabwe, inflation rose from an annual rate of 32% in 1998, to an estimated high of 11,200,000% in August 2008 according to the Central Statistical Office. This represented a state of hyperinflation, and the central bank introduced a new 100 trillion dollar note. In January 2009, in an effort to counteract runaway inflation, acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced that Zimbabweans would be permitted to use other, more stable currencies to do business, alongside the Zimbabwean dollar. In an effort to combat inflation and foster economic growth the Zimbabwean dollar was suspended indefinitely in April 2009. In 2016, Zimbabwe allowed trade in the United States dollar and various other currencies such as the rand (South Africa), the pula (Botswana), the euro, and the pound sterling (UK).