(From the November 1998 issue of The Free Market ) Big media outlets are ignoring the quiet revolution that is taking place across America. Politicians don’t talk too much about it for obvious reasons. This revolution is building incredible momentum. It now threatens the legitimacy of every level of government, the viability of government
Murray Rothbard called the central puzzle of the business cycle the “cluster of entrepreneurial error.” During the boom, most entrepreneurs and investors appear to be geniuses, earning extraordinary profits year after year. During the bust, their fortunes are suddenly reversed, and they seem like dunces and suffer losses year after year.
Submitted to the Wall Street Journal October 14, 1998 To the Editor: What is missing in the debate between proponents of a fixed-exchange-rate regime, such as the editors of the Wall Street Journal (”Reforming the World,” 7 October), and proponents of a floating-exchange-rate system, like Milton Friedman (”Markets to the Rescue,” 13 October), is
Contrary to what Krugman says in his attack on Austrian business cycle theory in Slate , the Austrian or Misesian business cycle theory is not about the creation of too much capacity, but rather about the generation of uneconomic investment or malinvestment. It is about the use of scarce real funding contrary to the wishes of consumers i.e. the
Mark Thornton, adjunct scholar on the Mises Institute and economic advisor to the Office of the Governor, Alabama, writes the following response to an editorial in the Investor’s Business Daily on Japan. IBD correctly argued, with regard to Japan’s economic problems, that flooding the market with newly credited money is no solution. However, in
“Good corporate citizenship” is a familiar song that has topped the charts for far too long. Every two decades, it comes back with a slight variation, finding wild popularity. The new version arrived in the mid-Eighties with suggestive lines about corporate behavior. The traditional corporate enterprise, it sings, should modify its goals not only
Milton Friedman, interviewed in Barron’s (August 24, 1998), was asked: Q: You were acquainted with the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and also are familiar with the work of Ludwig von Mises and his American disciple, Murray Rothbard. When you were talking about bad investments, you were alluding to Austrian business-cycle theory. There is a
The failure of a major hedge fund, in concert with the lingering shrinkage of Asian markets and the further slide of Russians into corruption and chaos, is ripe for the symbolic pickings. The anti-capitalist crowd, the people who never respected the market, has found their whipping boy. After spending the last two decades downtrodden by the
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“Neither economists nor engineers can decide the most efficient size of a firm in any situation. Only the entrepreneurs themselves can determine what size of firm will operate most efficiently, and it is presumptuous and unwarranted for economists or for any other outside observers to attempt to dictate otherwise.” --Murray N. Rothbard Man,
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.