| Sumario: | The replacement of the failed ideal of Marxian socialism with the new ideal of libertarian laissez-faire is an unhealthy development. Economic history shows that the mixed-market economy has significantly outperformed the communist societies in Europe and Asia. However, electorates in many societies have more recently begun to shift away from the redistributional welfare state toward the ideal of a libertarian laissez-faire state. In essence, this ideal promotes the notion of the self-stability of macro-market mechanisms, with intervention from an independent central bank that is preoccupied solely with price-level stability. Although the U.S. and Western Europe continue to enjoy economic stability, recent economic crises in Asia, Russia, and Latin America have demonstrated that international capital movements fail to attain optimality through self-adjustment. Legislators should not wait for the self-destruction of fanatical libertarianism, but, having discerned its inefficiency, should take corrective action.
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