Economics takes ends and goals of action as a given and—in matters of value judgments—it assumes neutrality (i.e., non-normativity), which is characteristic of a science. However, questions of suitability of means and various policies adopted to attain chosen ends are not beyond the scope of economic analysis.

The “Dismal” Task of the Economist

The competent economist—when presented with a proposed plan of action—always asks: Is the means adopted suitable for the attainment of the end in view? He critically analyzes the means in question and declares their fitness or unfitness on the basis of logical demonstrations that are unassailable and apodictly true. This peculiar task of the economist is often misapprehended as an expression of his value judgments and an attempt to frustrate the attainment of ends chosen. Thus, the economist is often met with disapproval.

More significant in the history of the science are the several attempts to discredit the economists through a denial of economics as a universally-valid science, applicable for all peoples, times, and places. This is a pernicious attempt because the social, political, and economic consequences tend to be disastrously far-reaching. This article attempts to establish a connection between a denial of economics and the emergence of totalitarianism.

Historicism as a Precursor of Totalitarianism

Historicism was one of such concerted attempts at denying the universal validity of the body of economic theorems. The historicists advanced the view that economic theories are not valid for all peoples, places, and times; and thus, are only relevant to the specific historical conditions of their authors. The German Historical School’s rejection of the free trade theories, propounded by the classical economists, was not on grounds of inherent inadequacies in these theories—given that they never unmasked any logical errors as to the untenability of these theories—but motivated by ideological pre-possessions. Mises puts it very succinctly in Epistemological Problems of Economics:

The historian must never forget that the most momentous occurrence in the history of the last hundred years, the attack launched against the universally valid science of human action and its hitherto best developed branch, economics, was motivated from the very beginning not by scientific ideas but by political considerations.

Historicism is bound to lead to some form of logical relativism, and it is not surprising that the doctrine of racial polylogism gained a general acceptance among many Germans in the early twentieth century. In order to invalidate the relevance of a theory on grounds of historical or racial origins of the author, one has to proceed with the indefensible assumption of differences in the logical character of the human mind amongst different peoples and within the same people at different historical epochs. But in fact, there is no scientific evidence as to the existence of these differences in the logical structure of the human mind. Thus the historicists’ arguments against the universal validity of economic theory are unfounded.

The social, economic, and political significance of a denial of economics would also imply the denial of insights from economics about the preservation of society—concerted action in voluntary cooperation. Economic theory asserts that there is greater productivity to be obtained from social organization under the division of labor than would be obtained in individual self-sufficiency. The Ricardian Law of Association explains the tendency of humans to intensify cooperation given a rightly-understood interest in better satisfying wants under the social order of the division of labor. While there are many ways for people to coexist in the world, there are fewer ways for them to coexist peacefully and prosperously. This is the central lesson of classical economics about human society.

Historicism’s denial of the universal validity of these theories on non-logical grounds betrays a prejudice for policies aimed at attaining the alternative of autarkic self-sufficiency and the substitution of the social apparatus with coercion and compulsion. In fact, the Nazi totalitarian regime, whose intellectual precursor was German historicism, never relented in applying force to induce cooperation while simultaneously pursuing autarkic self-sufficiency by means of disastrous policies. Thus, German historicism, in denying the universal validity of economic theory and the general laws of human action as advanced by praxeology, played a causal role by creating a favorable intellectual climate for arbitrariness and the subsequent emergence of Nazi totalitarianism.

Marxism as Pseudo-Economics

Marxist socialism, on the other hand, denies the validity of economic theories on grounds of the “class origins” of the economists. Like historicism, it subscribes to a variant of polylogism in which it asserts the existence of a difference in the logical structure of mind for the respective social classes—even though Marx never defined what he meant by “class.” Consequently, for the Marxians, the science of economics becomes mere ideological expression of the class interest of the exploiting class—the bourgeoisie.

It is precisely the fact that Marxism rejects the essential teachings of economics in favor of utopian ideas which fail to achieve the ends sought wherever it was tried. The ultimate goals of Marxians—improvement in material and social conditions of its adherents—are no different from those of their liberal counterparts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who enjoyed considerable improvements in standard of living; it is in the choices of means that they differ. But it is the unsuitability of the means adopted by the Marxians that always and everywhere frustrated the attainment of ends sought by Marxism.

Furthermore, as with the capitalist system, based on private ownership of the means of production, the pure socialist commonwealth must be faced with the problem of allocation of resources in view of satisfying the most urgent wants of its citizens. And in this regard, Mises, in his irrefutable criticism of the socialist commonwealth, exposes the impossibility of socialism. He argues that, given the absence of a price structure for factors of production, the problem of impracticality of economic calculation must emerge in a socialist community. The planner, without recourse to tools of economic calculation, would be lost amid the sea of economic possibilities.

That capitalism has succeeded in improving the lives of men wherever its institutions are left unhampered is because those societies recognize the validity of economic theory about the potential benefits of the free market. They did not adopt arbitrary policies that economists declared unfit for the ends they sought to attain. Thus, the horrors brought about by the series of abortive attempts to implement the utopian ideas of socialist thinkers are the logical consequences of a denial of economics.

The Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Totalitarianism

The doctrine of interventionism wrongly conceives of a compatibility of the market and violent interventions by the state, between social cooperation and the apparatus of coercion and compulsion. It purports to be a third economic system—a compromise between capitalism and socialism. But, as the logical demonstrations of the economists show us over and over, interventionism, so-called middle-of-the-road policy, inevitably leads to socialism. Interventionism is, in fact, a denial of economics in that economics recognizes that interventions of any sort in the market tend to produce outcomes that—judged from the point of view of their initiators—are even more dissatisfactory than the previous problems that they pretend to fix.

Mises clearly remarks in his short book The Historical Setting of the Austrian School of Economics that “the worst illusion of our age is the superstitious confidence placed in panaceas, which—as the economists have irrefutably demonstrated—are contrary to purpose.” Interventionism, carried to its logical conclusion, is bound to lead to totalitarianism, given that the more its policies fail to produce the desired outcomes, the more the statesmen who wrongly believe in the appropriateness of interventionist measures find it necessary to employ the coercive state apparatus to compensate for their failures.

Economics and the Free-Market System

The science of economics is a rational science that recognizes the primacy of the laws of human society. Economics teaches that the market is a system of logically necessary relations brought about by the actions of individuals seeking to satisfy their most urgent wants. It teaches that any instance of coercion aimed at influencing the actions of individuals is disruptive to the market process. A denial of these teachings would inevitably lead to the state of affairs in which force becomes the only means of eliciting the cooperation of individuals in society.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

Journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who are famous for reporting on Watergate while working at the Washington Post, released a statement stating their disappointment. Former executive editor Martin Baron called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” Nineteen Washington Post columnists signed an op-ed calling the lack of an endorsement a “terrible mistake.” And the unions of both publications released statements expressing their concern over such a move.

Across the board, the cited concern is that we are just days away from a consequential election where one of the candidates poses a major threat to democracy itself. The rest of the media see the billionaires who own each outlet as “preemptively self-censoring” themselves to avoid offending Donald Trump. This “self-censorship” then, we’re told, makes it more likely that Trump will get elected.

The assumptions that underlie these concerns are worth unpacking. The first, and perhaps most foolish notion, is that an endorsement from the LA Times or Washington Post will be a consequential factor in this election. The audience of both papers already skews heavily Democrat. Also, it is no mystery to anyone who spends as little as thirty seconds scrolling through editorial headlines that the papers’ editors support Harris over Trump, and why.

A short look at the opinion and news stories in either paper is also enough to dispel the notion that either outlet’s executives are worried about displeasing Trump. Even in the “hard news” sections, Trump is framed as an unhinged fascist set to destroy the country to nurse his fragile ego, while Harris is a serious, stern, problem-solving public servant who, at worst, has made a few tactical mistakes on the campaign trail. No honest observer can seriously say these papers are “staying silent” about this election.

Above all, the intensity of the meltdown we’re seeing from media figures both inside and outside of these two publications reveals how profoundly out-of-touch most of the establishment media is about their own importance.

There was a time, mainly back in the mid-to-late-1800s, when the public got virtually all its news from newspapers. It’s hard to overstate how much power that put in the hands of the printers, and later editors and executives, who produced these papers.

As we go about our lives, we are constantly building and refining an internal model of reality that helps us better act to achieve our desired ends. Much of this model is fashioned from our own experience or the experience of our friends and families—which gets shared with us through advice and stories. To understand all parts of the world that exist outside the experience of ourselves and those we personally know, we rely on media. In the nineteenth century, the media consisted almost exclusively of books, pamphlets, and newspapers.

Because our internal models of reality are indistinguishable from reality itself and newspapers were effectively the sole source of information about current events, newspaper editors exerted an enormous amount of control over how the population saw the world. And their near-monopoly over public discourse about current events gave them a lot of authority when analyzing or endorsing the actions of politicians.

As other forms of media gained traction, however, the dominance of newspapers began to wane. That started with magazines—the first truly national news outlets—and it really accelerated with the rise of radio and television news. But the high cost of starting a new publication and the government’s early seizure of the airwaves kept control over the information space mostly in the hands of a small, establishment-friendly group.

That changed in the 1990s with the introduction of internet blogs. Suddenly, anyone with an internet connection could reach readers without filters, editors, or space constraints. It wasn’t obvious at first, but with this one seemingly-innocuous development, the establishment’s monopoly on the information space was shattered forever.

Now, three decades later, the consequences of such a change are much harder to ignore. From Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, and the campaigns of Ron Paul and later Donald Trump at home, to the Arab Spring and the passage of Brexit abroad, the internet has changed the world. Not only because it allowed people to see and hear dissenting views, but because it showed people that those views were popular.

In an election this close, neither candidate has been able to ignore the new reality we find ourselves in. Both Harris and Trump have appeared on popular podcasts, with Trump making such appearances a central part of his campaign. Last week, Trump sat for a three-hour discussion on the Joe Rogan Experience, which is technically the most-watched talk show of any kind in the world by far.

Trump’s appearance on Rogan has been viewed nearly forty million times on YouTube alone (Spotify and Apple Podcasts don’t publish download numbers, but both also account for a large portion of Rogan’s listenership, so the total number is likely much higher.) The interview towers over Kamala Harris’s recent interview with Fox News, which, at 8 million viewers, had been celebrated as the highest-rated interview of the 2024 election. The internet is no longer a sideshow in our media environment. It’s the main stage.

Which is why it’s absurd to see an absolute meltdown over whether two newspapers print formal endorsements for one of the candidates. The panic can only be understood as a symptom of the legacy media being unable or unwilling to face the fact that they are no longer the main force influencing and controlling how the public sees the world.

The establishment press does still pose a serious threat with all the various ways they distort our perceptions of the truth in ways that are politically-expedient for them and their friends in government. But the hysteria last week over the withdrawn editorial endorsements demonstrates that many are still hyper-focused on some media practices that today are largely irrelevant. And that’s grounds for optimism.

Those numbers are not surprising to anyone who consumes a lot of political media. Tune into the establishment-friendly press and you’ll be inundated with stories about voter suppression in red states, recaps of the most dramatic skirmishes that happened outside the Capitol on January 6, and warnings about how Trump and his allies could actually take power after losing the upcoming election.

The fear, from the establishment’s perspective, is that after losing, Trump will successfully pressure Republican legislators in battleground states to appoint “alternate” electors that will keep Harris below the 270 electoral votes needed to win, which would send the election to the likely Republican-controlled House.

Without very explicit evidence of decisive voter fraud that the political class outright ignores, it’s hard to see a scheme like this working—considering that Trump isn’t already in power, Democrats have passed laws in recent years making it harder to appoint alternate electors, and many of the Republican legislators Trump would rely on have shown a reluctance to go along with the former president absent strong pressure from their constituents. But that hasn’t stopped the fear-mongering.

On the other side, the Trump-friendly alternative media is full of stories about local and state officials overturning election security laws, deleting drop box surveillance footage, actively registering non-citizens to vote, losing entire trays of mail-in ballots, and other tales of vote manipulation and even outright fraud.

Pair these stories with all the left’s freakouts about “voter suppression” in red states and the various assertions of foreign influence operations and it’s easy to see how so many voters became convinced that a victory by the other side would be illegitimate. Now add the establishment panic about a MAGA plot to overturn the election if they lose and the right’s awareness of the political establishment’s preparations to do the exact same thing had they lost in 2020 and it becomes clear why many are worried about what awaits us after election day.

The collapse of the public’s trust in elections mirrors the collapse in trust in several other institutions, like the federal judicial system, public health authorities, and the news media. While uncomfortable, the public losing trust in untrustworthy institutions is a good thing. It’s a necessary first step if the country is ever going to get on a better path.

The federal justice system has been used to go after the establishment’s political enemies since the beginning, public health authorities demolished any credibility they may have had with their deadly, totalitarian response to COVID-19, and the American news media has been actively misinforming the public in politically-expedient ways for essentially it’s entire history.

In the past decade or so, the American public has developed a much healthier level of skepticism toward these institutions. It is perfectly reasonable for that skepticism to carry over to federal elections.

After all, the political class—which includes politically-connected businesses—is making trillions of dollars in revenue thanks to various wars, innumerable regulations that protect them from competition, easy money from the Fed, and other lucrative government programs. It is not much of a jump to assume that, if able, the very people who have repeatedly lied us into unnecessary wars to line their pockets would be willing to use whatever means necessary to expand and protect their power and profits.

Together with the establishment-friendly media, the political class has placed a very high social cost on questioning the security of our elections in every instance except when it conveniently places the blame on a foreign government that Washington wants to demonize. Questioning the legitimacy of elections is “dangerous” unless you’re accusing Russia or Iran.

And whenever someone with a big enough voice casts doubt on past elections in an “unacceptable” way, the establishment is quick to shout them down with the same meaningless denunciation that there is no evidence of “widespread” election fraud.

Of course, if there were to be a conspiracy to either foment or permit voter fraud in a way that successfully flipped a national election, it would not be “widespread,” it would be targeted. Elections like this one come down to a handful of precincts—most of which are toss-up suburban and rural areas that surround blue cities in swing states. A conspiracy to commit or allow “widespread” voter fraud would be pointless and all but guarantee its discovery.

This is not to say you should accept every claim made about voter fraud or even that there is definitive proof that any previous elections were stolen in this fashion. And it’s certainly not to say that violence is an appropriate or productive response if the upcoming election appears like it was stolen.

Only that it would be healthy for more members of the American public to start questioning whether our system really works the way we learned it did in elementary school—where the president represents our collective will and acts as we would act to address the problems we face at home and abroad.

That simple story is an illusion that conveniently frames whatever the government is doing to us as an embodiment of everyone’s wishes and any opposition as a selfish stand against what everybody else wants. Many Americans are appropriately questioning a lot of what they’ve previously accepted as true. They ought to question this too.

Image Source: Mises Institute. Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The Politico article, “The ever-widening gender gap,” sketches a more specific picture,

In 2004 and 2008…that gap was seven points. By 2012, that number increased to 10 points and it grew to 11 four years later. In 2020, it rose again to 12 points, powered by Trump’s 15-point loss among female voters — 57 percent to 42 percent. Polling ahead of the 2024 race shows signs the divide has widened even further…The most recent New York Times/Siena College poll in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin revealed that 55 percent of registered men support Trump compared to just 39 percent of women — a staggering 16-point difference. The Times/Siena poll conducted last week in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina likewise found the exact same difference.

The gap seems especially wide among Generation Z or those under 30 years old. The Brookings Institute reports, “In politics, we are seeing a gender gap amongst today’s youngest voters—aged 18 to 29—with young women being significantly more Democratic in their political leanings than young men.” Much of the young female vote is being driven by the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling, which reversed Roe v. Wade and returned jurisdiction over abortion to the states. Reproductive rights is now a passionate election cause.

Young men seem to be motivated, not so much by a specific issue, but by their resentment of the current culture. If true, the upcoming elections will express the “Breitbart Doctrine,” named after the late conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart. This doctrine states “politics is downstream from culture.” To change the politics of a society, you must change its culture because politics originates from culture which, in turn, originates from the values of individuals who constitute society. Simply stated, if a person’s values and culture are transformed, his politics transforms accordingly.

The culture surrounding young men is dramatically different from that of their fathers, and the change has not been kind. The Brookings Institute notes, “Young men increasingly feel as though they have been experiencing discrimination.” For decades now, prominent voices of political correctness, which is now called social justice, have blamed men as a gender class for a long slate of social wrongs. And, for young men, the past few decades constitute all of their lives. This means they have heard about their collective guilt since birth, and it would be natural for them to feel resentful for being castigated as a class for social wrongs. Such young men are reportedly turning to Donald Trump as a symbol of more traditional and proud manhood.

What grievances or sense of discrimination are young males likely to bring into the voting booths with them? The International Council for Men and Boys lists twelve:

1. Education. OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment’s states: “…boys are significantly more likely than girls to be disengaged from school, get lower marks, repeat grades, and play video games in their free time.” It also claims that, “Gender differences in achievement” are explained by “social and cultural contexts reinforce stereotypical attitudes and behaviours.”
2. Health. According to World Data, men in the US “will live to be 74.8 years old on average. On average, US women are 5.4 years older, reaching an age of 80.2.”
3. Child Labor. Globally speaking, International Labor Organization claims that, on a global level—of boys aged 5 to 17—11.2 percent are in child labor, compared to 7.8 percent of girls.
4. False Allegations, Violence, and Partner Abuse. An international survey by End to DV finds that men are the victims of most false allegations. An article in Cambridge’s American Political Science Review concludes that men experience more violence than women. For example, “Estimates across conflicts classify men as between 1.3 and 8.9 times as likely to be killed in war as women.” With Partner Abuse, most studies confirm that men and women are victimized at roughly equal rates, even though far fewer resources are available to male victims.
5. Parenting. In their work, Benevolent Sexism in Judges, a Cornell Law School professor and a Magistrate Judge detail the severe disadvantages divorced men face in family courts, especially regarding custody.
6. Crime. The results of the study “Does the Criminal Justice System Treat Men and Women Differently?” indicate that, “while men and women are treated differently by the criminal justice system, these differences largely favor women.”
7. Homelessness. Of the nations that keep sex-specific data on homelessness, Davia Research finds 76% of the homeless are men.
8. Work Place. Davia Research also indicates that men face 15 times the number of occupational deaths, compared to women.
9. Reproduction. A recent Newsweek article points out, “men are legally responsible to financially support any biological child, yet have never enjoyed the right” to refuse the responsibilities of legal fatherhood. Most women can choose to terminate their pregnancies.
10. Media. The International Council for Men and Boys offers the following stats on coverage: “Men: 69 percent unfavorable, 12 percent favorable, and 19 percent neutral or balanced.”

Whatever you think of the listed grievances, they may have power through young male voters.

Fortunately, the mainstream media is waking up to this issue and the need to address cultural alienation of men, which has too often been ignored or denied. No longer. The mainstream media is sounding an alert about how losing so much of the male vote could spell defeat for the Democrats. As early as 2020, USA Today discussed how male voters may have determined Biden’s election victory. Newsweek’s recent coverage of the issue, cited above, is an in-depth treatment of how male disillusionment leans into a Trump victory. A YouTube video inspired by a Wall Street Journal poll asked, “Why are young men turning Republican?” On CNN, left political commentator Michael Smerconish stated that men, especially white, working-class men, are the new swing voters. An Axios headline reads, “Boys vs. girls election intensifies.” The issue of male voters has received more attention in the last few months than it has in several years.

It is a sad reflection on society if push-for-power elections are the spark that brings the general gender gap to the forefront of attention. Men are doing badly, and it is partly because society has been structured against them in favor of women. This imbalance hurts women as well as men. Women need healthy and well-adjusted men to be life partners, loving family members, friends, good neighbors, co-workers, and the peaceful strangers you pass on the street. The last thing women need is to live beside a generation of resentful men who act on their resentment, especially if the feeling is justified.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

Since then, we have seen a chain of fresh stimulus policies implemented by developed economies, adding to the large fiscal packages already in place. Multi-trillion-dollar investment packages like the EU Next Generation Fund now include massive deficit spending plans. However, money velocity is not rising. All these programs only lead to secular stagnation. Government projects and current expenditures are consuming money at an unprecedented rate.

Developed economies cannot live without new and larger spending plans. The result is more debt, weaker productivity growth, and declining real wages.

In a recent report, Bank of America showed that the rise of unproductive debt has created a significant problem for the United States economy. For every dollar of new government debt, the gross domestic product impact has slumped to less than fifty cents. The United States is drowning in unproductive debt. However, at least the United States has some productivity growth. If we look at the euro area, the negative multiplier effect of new government debt is extremely evident. Despite enormous stimulus plans and negative nominal rates, the euro area has been stagnating for years.

Many of you may believe that bad policies and careless government spending are to blame, but I think this is intentional. It is a slow process of nationalizing the economy. Slowly depleting the middle class’s savings due to consistently declining real wages, the government expands its influence in the economy, garnering support from a substantial portion of the populace.

Market participants love this. A new stimulus plan means more money printing, which will bring more liquidity to markets and fuel multiple expansions regardless of weak economic figures. However, my esteemed colleagues should be wiser when hailing the next stage of financial repression. Discontent is rising among citizens, and one way or another, this will end badly.

Debt crises may not appear the same way as they used to. It is not a cataclysmic event but a slow boiling that leads to the same impoverishment.

Neo-Keynesians look at the past four years of the United States economy and claim victory. However, for many in the United States middle class, their impoverishment over the past four years has been like that of Greek citizens in 2009.

When central banks think of a soft landing, they are looking at a gradual erosion of the purchasing power of salaries and deposits. This is precisely what we are experiencing, compounded by the additional burden of higher taxes. There is no such thing as a soft landing. Only government bureaucrats and those who can conceal their wealth from money destruction can benefit from a soft landing.

This new increase in money supply may not bring a fresh burst of inflation because money velocity is not rising as well. However, that means lower investment, lower growth, and lower productivity. Market prices, multiple expansions, and bubbles may appear again, while families and small businesses find themselves in a tougher spot.

The back-to-back chain of stimulus plans shows the failure of Keynesian policies. We used to witness the introduction of a new spending and rate-cutting program a few years after the previous one. Now, governments simply add new programs on top of each other and claim that the economy is about to turn the corner.

Government spending consumes the majority of newly created money, leaving the productive economy with decreasing access to credit, declining currency purchasing power, and wealth confiscation through taxes and currency printing.

According to the most recent OECD report, inflation will be 3.5% with a global growth rate of 3.3% in 2025. The introduction of massive new spending and financial repression programs has resulted in 80% of OECD countries experiencing annual inflation that exceeds their central banks’ target. There is a global policy of absorbing productive and private sector wealth. A few years ago, someone dared to say, “You will not have anything, but you will be happy,” and most people understood the dangers of that promise. Nowadays, no one says it anymore. They’re just implementing it slowly. You will be poorer. Protect yourself from inflation and financial repression, or you will be a dependent subclass.