Where police fail, as at Ferguson and in Detroit, private firms and volunteers have stepped in. And yet the state continues to claim that its employed enforcers are a thin blue line between order and chaos, writes Julian Adorney. This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Dianna
Dating someone can come with a very high opportunity cost and can lead to great emotional distress and more, writes Julian Adorney. So why doesn’t the government regulate dating? This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Robert
States wish to gain monopolies and maintain them in all facets of life, while entrepreneurs strive to offer alternatives to the state. It’s our job to prevent the state from simply declaring the competition illegal, writes Julian Adorney. This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Dianna
[ Editor’s Note: Contrary to myth, Austrians are not opposed to quantitative or empirical assessments of history in light of economic knowledge. The confusion may arise from the fact that Mises regarded this not as economics, strictly speaking, but as economic history, or the work of historians. Nonetheless, discussions of measurements of economic
To defenders of the state, “anarchy” is a scary concept. They claim that we need government intervention to protect us or all hell will break loose. But in fact we live anarchy every day, in one of the most crucial aspects of our lives: dating. Every day people meet, date, have one-night stands, fall in love, and break up; all without government
The story of Sleeping Beauty always struck me as a libertarian fable. The central plot demonstrates the impotence of government: Aurora is cursed to prick her finger on a spinning wheel, and her royal father issues a decree that all spinning wheels should be burned. But all the king’s action does is put some poor weavers out of work. Aurora still
As governments expand their control over society, it can be easy for liberty advocates to get discouraged. As Obamacare imposes mandates and price controls on private health care, as the Federal Reserve manipulates currency, and as stories of police abuse become more common, one can be forgiven for thinking that freedom is on the decline. But in
In Ferguson, Missouri, when police and national guard failed to protect businesses from rioting protestors, a private organization called Oath Keepers stepped up to fill the gap. The presence of Oath Keepers , keeping the peace where police officers failed, helps answer a larger question: how necessary are police? The heart of the state’s
The rise of behavioral economics has long been seen by statists as a body blow to libertarianism. By arguing that people are irrational consumers who are easily manipulated, behavioral economics seems to argue for state intervention to save us from ourselves. In his best-seller Predictably Irrational , behavioral economist Dan Ariely claims that
As Bill Maher indicates, the issue of a maximum wage is one that simply will not go away . The comedian and liberal pundit recently expressed support for a maximum wage of $300,000, arguing that wages for the bottom 90 percent of Americans stagnated while worker productivity rose. Greedy executives, in Maher’s scenario, are robbing the worker and
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.