Ludwig von Mises on the meaning of laissez-faire

Excerpt from Human Action, posted at Mises.org:

“The truth is that the alternative is not between a dead mechanism or a rigid automatism on one hand and conscious planning on the other hand. The alternative is not plan or no plan. The question is whose planning? Should each member of society plan for himself, or should a benevolent government alone plan for them all? The issue is not automatism versus conscious action; it is autonomous action of each individual versus the exclusive action of the government. It is freedom versus government omnipotence.

Laissez faire does not mean: Let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: Let each individual choose how he wants to cooperate in the social division of labor; let the consumers determine what the entrepreneurs should produce. Planning means: Let the government alone choose and enforce its rulings by the apparatus of coercion and compulsion.

Under laissez faire, says the planner, it is not those goods which people “really” need that are produced, but those goods from the sale of which the highest returns are expected. It is the objective of planning to direct production toward the satisfaction of the “true” needs. But who is to decide what the “true” needs are?”

Or, put another way, who do those clamoring for greater control over the lives of everyone else despise voluntary interaction?  Why do they desire the ability to drive a wedge in between the voluntary associations of free individuals?

Bernie Sanders is right on the crony Ex-Im Bank

From Reason.  Relevant chunks: “The Export-Import Bank is an outfit that mostly extends loans to powerful foreign companies in exchange for buying products from large and well-connected U.S. companies. As Sanders asked Clinton, “Do you know what the other name of the Export-Import Bank is, what it’s called in Washington? It’s called the Bank of Boeing because Boeing itself gets 40 percent of the money discharged by the Export-Import Bank.” Sanders is right.

Moreover, close to 70 percent of the bank’s loan guarantees benefit Boeing alone. In spite of what most Democrats in Congress try to argue, the Ex-Im Bank is indeed in the “big business” business, with about 65 percent of its activities benefiting 10 domestic firms. The same is true for the bank’s beneficiaries abroad. The Ex-Im Bank’s own data show that such wealthy companies as Mexican state-owned oil giant Pemex and the airline Emirates are the top beneficiaries of the U.S. taxpayers’ largesse.”

Hillary, of course, supports the Ex-Im Bank, as this Washington Times editorial explains.