This book explores the intersection of constitutional law and political economy, specifically addressing how economic factors affect legal decision-making. It examines topics such as property rights, taxation, and regulation, as well as the role of government in promoting economic growth. Raymond's insights continue to inform debates on these issues today, making this a valuable resource for scholars, policymakers, and anyone interested in the fundamentals of constitutional law and political economy. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"Political economy themes have - directly and indirectly - been a central concern of law and legal scholarship ever since political economy emerged as a concept in the early seventeenth century, a development which was re-inforced by the emergence of political economy as an independent area of scholarly enquiry in the eighteenth century, as developed by the French physiocrats. This is not surprising in so far as the core institutions of the economy and economic exchanges, such as property and contract, are legal institutions.In spite of this intrinsic link, political economy discourses and legal discourses dealing with political economy themes unfold in a largely separate manner. Indeed, this book is also a reflection of this, in so far as its core concern is how the law and legal scholarship conceive of and approach political economy issues"--

Revamping the Political Economy after the Impending Collapse No country can borrow indefinitely without fatal consequences. But that is just what the United States is doing; adding nearly a trillion dollars annually to its already massive debt, as overseen by a Congress with an approval rating in the 10-to-14 percent range. In the process, the mind-set that spawned the sub-prime mortgage now renders the entire economy sub-prime. This book explains why and how resolution might obtain after the collapse. The essence is termed polity economics, given that the bifurcated concepts of capitalism and socialism have lost their utility yet persist as incompatible political touchstones. This perspective includes some twenty explicit elements, all addressed at length. Yet by itself, it too will also eventually fail. For it is also essential to restate the Constitution so that it becomes efficaciously aligned with the evolved culture and ethic of the United States, especially to instill stability within the fiscal operations that have come to dominate the country. The ABC's of that admittedly profound document simply do not address the D-through-Z's that have devolved over more than two centuries. Excerpts On fiscal carrying capacity. Isn't the United States simply too big to fail? History laughs. Every empire and nation has been laid waste when it continuously reached for more than it could grasp, which leads to the primary argument in this book: --Every economy has a substantive need for just so much money and fungible assets: a carrying capacity, so to speak. When that capacity is exceeded, money becomes a commodity in its own right. Given propensities to accumulate money and inflate values over a bread-and-butter baseline, the econ-omy degenerates in three successive tiers. The first tier harbors the inevitable dis-tensions of economics, such as periodic business cycles and recessions. Yet money remains a tool, not the essence. But if recessions are avoided, money begins to compete with the substantive aspects of an economy. This is the second tier, where leveraged val-ues inherently devolve unstable, followed eventually by a depression. Yet even de-pres-sion can be staved off by massive bailouts and unsustainable debt. This is the third tier. Money takes pri-or-ity over substance, until, that is, the economy collapses. On political versus supposed economic rights. There may be free speech; there is no free lunch."

In his foreword, Robert D Tollison identifies the main objective of Geoffrey Brennan and James M Buchanan's THE REASON OF RULES: "...a book-length attempt to focus the energies of economists and other social analysts on the nature and function of the rules under which ordinary political life and market life function." In persuasive style, Brennan and Buchanan argue that too often economists become mired in explaining the obvious or constructing elaborate mathematical models to shed light on trivial phenomena. Their solution: economics as a discipline would be better focused on deriving normative procedures for establishing rules so that ordinary economic life can proceed unaffected as much as possible by social issues. In THE REASON OF RULES, Brennan and Buchanan sketch out a methodological and analytical framework for the establishment of rules. They point out that the consideration of rules has its roots in classical economics and has been hinted at in the work of some contemporary economists. But the enterprise of applying the analytical rigor of modern economics to the establishment of effective rules is the little-traveled road that bears the most promise. In fact, the basic idea of the importance of rules is a thread that runs through virtually the whole of Buchanan's distinguished career, and it is one of his signal contributions to the contemporary discipline of economics. THE REASON OF RULES is an elaboration of the potential for rules and the normative process by which they can best be devised.

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