Bryan Caplan lists the 21 things Herbert Hoover mentioned in a 1932 speech just before the election that Hoover claimed help save the economy. Bryan is making the point that Hoover wasn’t a free market guy in the least. What I found chilling was the analogy to what the Bush administration has done so far. When Bush leaves office he’ll surely mention all that he has done to save the banks, the financial system, employment, and so on. A lot of the measures are awfully similar at least on paper. Nothing good came of them in 1932. I fear nothing good will come of them in 2008.
Bryan and Herbert
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Since the banking "crisis" picked up a full head of steam, there's been a lot of conversation about Bush and Obama being the modern equivalents to Hoover and FDR.
Hoover gave us the depression. FDR made it great.
And Obama has that same kind of emotional rapport with the public as FDR did, so there's no telling what will happen now.
It's still amazing to me that we just had an election where both candidates promised more intervention in the economy, because the market just wasn't grown up enough to handle being "free". By "free market", they must mean politically driven lending practices, price fixing in labor markets, price supports in agriculture, tarrifs in steel trade, illegals relegated to permanent underclass, artificially low interst rates, government enforced monopolies, and fake money.
This is what kills me most. The market is behaving exactly as it must. The market has not failed. On the contrary, it is working perfectly. It is the politicians and rent seekers who are attempting to defy gravity. Gravity simply is. The market has been fed false information for decades now, ever increasingly, so that we might trick it into giving us what we wish, without consequences. Like all pyramid schemes, it works for the first ones to get the money, but everyone down the line gets less for their trouble until a whole lot of suckers are left holding the bag. Because, there really is no free lunch, only stolen lunch money. We are witnessing a giant game of cups and ball. It is working precisely because too many people still think the world is flat, and that the sun orbits the earth. As far as accepting established economic truth, we are pitiful nuckle-draggers to this very day, and therefore dupes to be had. All in all, I'd say a lot like the early nineteen-thirties. We've learned almost nothing for all that trouble since.
All in all, I'd say a lot like the early nineteen-thirties. We've learned almost nothing for all that trouble since.
The perceptions of the time (progressive/leftist) are what filled the newspaper columns and the textbooks.
Quite a legacy.
I've never heard Herbert Hoover's voice. Yet somehow, when I read him quoted, in my mind he speaks with John McCain's voice.
Brian is drawing on much more comprehensive historical and economic research done by Rothbard. I recommend America's Great Depression for the canonical work.