The Economics of a Free Society

The following are excerpts from an article titled "The Economics of a Free Society"

Can you tell me who said the following?

Mr. Speaker, I have a deep concern for the direction in which our country is going. I have expressed this concern by pointing out the political and economic contradictions that surround us and have suggested that these contradictions merely are manifestations of philosophic errors made by our intellectual leaders....

...The odds of a significant change in attitude occurring in Washington in the near future are utterly remote. Repealing the welfare-warfare state may be popular with a growing number of frustrated American citizens, but that attitude is not yet reflected in Washington. The constituency for the monolithic state is alive and well in the US Congress. When disagreement exists in areas such as welfare versus warfare, the poor versus the rich, labor versus business, compromise is always reached and both sides receive an increase in funding. This is a policy of utter folly and is tragically locked in place.

Government is literally out of control. Spending, taxes, regulations, monetary inflation, invasion of our privacy, welfarism to both the rich and the poor, military spending, and foreign adventurism around the world will one day precipitate a crisis that will truly test our will to live in a free society. If government were not so much out of control... the real threat under the conditions to come will be the potential loss of our personal liberty. Without liberty, prosperity is lost and equality of poverty prevails.

We have a cancer in the land — the malignant growth of big government — and we can ignore it, treating only the symptoms, hoping they are not reliable signs that a horrible disease has struck our nation. But if we do, we are treating our problems as some foolishly deny the early signs of cancer, by taking aspirin and hoping the pain to be only that of inconvenience and that the symptoms will go away in the morning. Instead, the pain gets worse requiring more and more narcotics to numb the pain. Magic cures are sought and tried. Although big government is the disease, attempts to solve all the problems by making government even bigger and more intrusive in our lives are continually tried...

Price inflation, although difficult to predict on a month-to-month or even year-to-year basis, will reach unbelievable heights in this decade. Currency destruction, through the insatiable desire to create massive new fiat monetary units, eventually brings higher prices. Wage and price controls will return regardless of whether a Republican or a Democrat occupies the White House. Free-market rhetoric will do nothing to protect us from the pressure the administration will receive to "do something," even if it's the wrong thing. Nixonian Keynesianism will continue to dominate, and abusive people-control in the form of wage, price, currency and credit controls will return, more vicious than ever before.

There will come a day that the world financiers will rush from dollars just as they have recently rushed into dollars, causing even worse chaos in the international financial markets. Without a stable monetary unit, the speculation will continue and worsen. Overreaction is now becoming more commonplace, but this is a predictable consequence of a world gone mad with fiat currencies, debt creation, and overspending.

Who said this? None other then the former Presidential nominee Ron Paul. Now can you tell me when he said this?

The Answer: Congressional Record — US House of Representatives September 20, 1984

It really is too bad the guy was a virtual nut job on foreign policy. I kind of like his logic otherwise. Guess it's time to check out Bob Barr. Scary thing is I heard him on Glenn Beck and not only did I like what he had to say but I liked how he said it.