From the great Spanish scholastic Juan de Mariana, writing in the late 15th century: “It is not rare for the iniquitous and equally useless suggestion of altering the value of money to be whispered in the king’s ear. With this measure, they say, no one will suffer direct harm. The intrinsic value of money will be lower, but the legal value will
Many thoughtful readers, responding to my Mises.org article “Mad Socialism Disease” , have pointed out that there is not much good science out there that supports the belief that anyone has died in Brtain due to Mad Cow, and that the widely held belief that this is the case is based on bad science and bad journalism. Writes Tony Baxendale: I am
The US Agriculture Department’s boorish manipulation of the mad cow scare last December is coming back to haunt it. Several reports are out today indicating that the single confirmed case of BSE at that farm in Washington State was not sick after all. Newsday reports that “[c]ontrary to the department’s account, three eyewitnesses at the
...Call your office. A reader wrote this morning in response to my Martha Stewart article on Mises.org: “[I]t is one matter to profess innocence when questioned by the media, it is quite another animal when someone intentionally sets out to deceive the public by voluntarily proclaiming their [sic] innocence in order to prop up their [sic]
A new series on the Traffic Security Administration, running in the Seattle Times , reminds us of something that is obvious to anyone who has flown after 9/11: centralized government property protection is always a bad idea. An excerpt: Four months ago, at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport, a conveyor belt jammed at 9 a.m. For 90 minutes,
For kicks, and to make sure that I don’t just buy libertarian “indoctrination” without listening to the opposition, I’m on the Heritage Foundation e-mail list. Today, I received an entertaining article on the PolicyWire. Marriage Amendment Protects Federalism by Edwin Meese III. The sad thing is, it’s not intended to be entertaining. But, when
This is how it goes . The government bungles its distribution scheme for flu vaccines, causing an unanticipated supply shock, and suppliers face an upward pressure on prices. If the high price is charged, then your anal neighbor, who regularly receives flu shots even though he is in a low-risk category for catching the flu, decides to forego the
Some quick ruminations on medieval and Thomist economic thought. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas is one of the world’s most reknowned masterpieces of intellectual thought. The medieval intellectuals prohibited the taking of interest, a philosophy fortified by earlier, Aristotelian doctrine. (The Second Lateran Council explicitly forbade usury
Most states and municipalities that lose business in spite of offering companies tax breaks walk away, but one town is fighting back. (Story in today’s NYT .) Point: In a competitive global environment, ... ...tax breaks can’t trump the adoption of competitive tax and regulation policies relative to those overseas, and as a result, states’ and
The computer glitches that stranded thousands of airline passengers on a busy Christmas weekend resulted when protected workers called in sick at numbers greater than anticipated, but don’t tell that to the New York Times . It is simply another case of market failure, and a reason to pine for the good old days when the Civil Aeronautics Board had
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.