Those possessing the anti-capitalist mentality — so ascendant in our culture today — often critique market actors as being solely motivated by “greed.” Surely economic systems based on nobler motivations, they say, would better promote the long-run interests of the planet. The Voluntary Marketplace Uses Greed as Motivation to Serve Others This is
In their recently published paper, “The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate” (Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Vol. 21(1), April 2005, pp. 1-19), Harvard economists Glaeser and Shleifer argue that democratic leaders can mix incendiary rhetoric and the redistributive powers of the state to encourage political
I recently heard from Jason McBride, who was the subject of my last Mises.org article, “The Right to Set Your Own Price” . McBride, a gas station owner from Aliceville, Alabama, was arrested for violating Alabama’s “anti-gouging” law on the day that Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast. Jason told me that there was more to the story than
Time magazine reports on the Degania kibbutz’ decision to abandon socialism and allow the private ownership of property, a move many kibbutzim in Israel have been making in response to low productivity and the abandonment of their youth. From the article: The kibbutz was a socialist dream. But Degania’s manager, Tzali Koperstein, says, “From the
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.