One posting suggests that contemporary history is difficult, that perhaps we
must wait for official documents to be declassified. Others obsess over what
Mises may have meant or not meant by various obscure passages. Others worry
the ancient question whether altruism is just another form of egoism. I
suggest we can do most of what is needed with information we have using
ideas of our own.  Here is an example:

 

"This crash is The Big One; it has the signs of becoming a Category 5. How
do we know? We've "been there and done that" so many times before, roughly
every 18 years over the last 800 or more. Major wars and, rarely, plagues
have broken the rhythm, along with the little ice age, reformation and
counter-reformation, political revolutions and reactions, the rise of
nation-states, the enclosure movement, the age of exploration, massive
European imports of stolen American gold, the scientific and industrial
revolutions, the Crusades, Mongol and Turkish invasions, and other
upheavals. Yet, the endogenous cycle keeps returning, as soon as we find
peace, and economic life returns to its even tenors. What President Warren
Harding famously called "normalcy" soon evolved into another boom and a
shocking bust, as so often before. Calm and routine prosperity has never
been man's lot for long: it somehow leads to its own downfall, cycle after
cycle."

 

For the rest of this paper, with documentation, see www.masongaffney.org
<http://www.masongaffney.org/> .

 

Mason Gaffney