'We Can Do Better With Peace Than With War'

<blockquote>Political Class Has Vested Interest In War

The reason "95% of the Political Class support Obama" over Ron Paul is the political class in both parties are mostly war mongers. Enough already!
- Mish, Ron Paul: "We Can Do Better With Peace Than With War"</blockquote>


'...the Third Republic, lent to Imperial Russia. The Tsars used the capital borrowed for armaments, not for an improvement of the Russian apparatus of production. They did not invest it; they consumed a great part of it.

<blockquote>'The inflow of foreign capital did not harm the receiving nations. It was European capital that accelerated considerably the marvelous economic evolution of the United States and the British dominions. Thanks to foreign capital, the countries of Latin America and Asia are today equipped with facilities for production and transportation that they would have had to forego for a very long time if they had not received this aid. Real wage rates and farm yields are higher today in those areas than they would have been in the absence of foreign capital. The mere fact that almost all nations are vehemently asking today for American credit explodes the fables of the Marxians and the nationalists.

However, the mere lust for imported capital goods does not resuscitate the international capital market. Investment and lending abroad are only possible if the receiving nations are unconditionally and sincerely committed to the principle of private property and do not plan to expropriate the foreign capitalists at a later date. It was such expropriations that destroyed the international capital market.

Intergovernmental loans are no substitute for the functioning of an international capital market. If they are granted on business terms, they presuppose no less than private loans the full acknowledgment of property rights. If they are granted, as is usually the case, as virtual subsidies without any regard for payment of principal and interest, they impose restrictions upon the debtor nation's sovereignty. In fact such “loans” are for the most part the price paid for military assistance in coming wars. Such military considerations already played an important role in the years in which the European powers prepared the great wars of our age. The outstanding example was provided by the huge sums which the French capitalists, pressed hard by the government of the Third Republic, lent to Imperial Russia. The Tsars used the capital borrowed for armaments, not for an improvement of the Russian apparatus of production. They did not invest it; they consumed a great part of it.'
- Ludwig von Mises, Some Applications of the Time-Preference Theory (The Scholars Edition <i>[<a href="[mises.org];]</i> is the original, unaltered treatise (originally published in 1949))</blockquote>