In his recent interview, Jeff Deist nicely sums up what the Mises Institute does and what it aspires to continue doing:
We want the Mises Institute to serve as the intellectual home for the worldwide Austro-libertarian revolution. We want to be a place that incubates young (and not so young) minds. We want the Mises Institute to be the MIT or Stanford of the liberty movement — a place where people learn theory and first principles, so that they can go out into the world as entrepreneurial libertarians and apply what they’ve learned in academia, business, civil society, and beyond. And we are moving, slowly but inexorably, toward making virtually everything we offer free to the consumer.
We are a school, but school is being radically redefined. School is not necessarily a place you attend only when you’re young. School is not necessarily a place you attend physically. School does not necessarily involve a one-way lecture and a textbook. School does not necessarily mean long hours of study. One size does not fit all. Some may want to spend whole weeks at the Mises Institute absorbing advanced Austrian theory, reading copious amounts of economics texts, and building an academic career. Others simply may want to monitor our twitter feed and click on the occasional link. This may be all the “education” they need or desire in their busy lives. The point is that people learn in different ways, and our efforts should reflect that.
Our mission is narrower and deeper than most think tanks and advocacy groups. While many wonderful liberty-minded organizations focus on much broader social topics, on the full gamut of libertarian issues, on political activism, or on public policy, we want to be known as the place to get the economics education you can’t get in traditional schools. But we hope what individuals learn at the Mises Institute will spill over into everything they do.
