The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

1972 TOWARD LIBERTY 127 ,Thus we export what we professto hate. A Mexican contributor,Alberto Salceda, speculates that itwas "Essene" corruption of Biblicaltexts that has made Jesus seemanti-capitalist. In the non-Esseneparts of the gospels Jesus frequentlyendorsed the· Commandmentthat says "Thou shalt notcovet," which means that he wasno supporter of the envy that is atthe root of modern efforts tospread "social justice" by force.The topic of GNP - gross nationalproduct - begets a sapientobservation from Giuseppe UgoPapi of Italy that a preoccupationwith macroeconomics keeps usfrom seeing that augmentationsof the GNP st~rt from below, inthe potential of the individual.When governments try to expandthe GNP by planning, they.. reallylead to its diminution in realterms. An Irish contributor,George Alexander Duncan, thinksit odd that the governments of theUnited States, the United Kingdomand the French Republic havedestroyed the economic basis oftheir Caribbean dependencies bysusidizing extravagant beetsugarproduction at home - andthen compound the idiocy by sending"aid" to the cane-sugar countriesto be wasted by politicos whoneither toil nor spin.Publishers and the MarketHenry Regnery, the dean of ourconservative publishers, obviouslyhopes he will not be condemnedfor lese majesty when he pointsout that Mises' great work, HumanAcUon, was originally publishedby a university press thatwas "neither subject to the disciplinesof the market nor to therestrictions that purely marketconsiderations impose." Actually,despite Mr.· Regnery's trepidation,there was no doctrinal contradictioninvolved in the fact that itwas a noncommercial publisher,the Yale University Press's EugeneDavidson, who accepted HumanAction back in 1948 withoutthe change of a single word. TheYale Press in Davidson's time(and maybe now, for all I know)was the recipient of support thatwas voluntarily donated by nongovernmental.benefactors, whichbrings it within the purview ofLeonard Read's "anything that'speaceful" test. A voluntarily subsidizeduniversity press is part ofthat wider market in which "allhuman values are offered for option."The voluntary subsidizersin the case of Human Action weregetting what they paid for, whichhappened to be the circulation ofa work which their chosen editorhad rightly approved. So let HenryRegnery stop worrying; he has