OK, so it’s not Rocky and Bullwinkle . But it seems like it. Bryan Caplan claims to have demonstrated that time preference is superfluous to the explanation of positive interest rates, since marginal utility all by itself explains positive interest rates. He says: “If you are stuck on an island with two bananas for two days, a perfectly patient
Writes Thomas DiLorenzo : “I just signed a contract with Random House which will publish my new book, Lincoln Uncensored, next year. It’s all new material, with nineteen chapters broken up into three sections: ‘Things You’re Not Supposed to Know about America’s Sixteenth President’; ‘Economic Issues You’re Supposed to Ignore’; and ‘The Lincoln
I think Paul Craig Roberts gets it wrong when using the subject terms. Let me clarify according to my understanding: An economic advantage is when one person or group can produce a given result with more economy than another. This is very general, and can be broken down into categories: labor advantage is when production can be carried out at
It was as simple as this. On Saturday evening, at 7:30 pm, I noticed that the air coming from the vents in the house was not cool. Checking outside, I found that my compressor was not working. Browsing through the yellow pages, my wife located and called an air conditioning repairman, and put me on the phone. He did a brief Q&A with me, and
Joe Kissell writes today on the Antikythera Mechanism , which seems to be an analog computer constructed by a Greek in 82 BC. Much of the technology embodied in the device was lost, only to be reinvented hundreds of years later. What does this teach us? It reminds us that the “historian’s bias” is conservative, but can lead us into error. Just
Davd Gelernter’s post confuses me. I think it is because he is confused. He says “capitalism strikes me as the spoiled brat of the political and philosophical universe... Everyone knows about capitalism’s successes; we need to spare a little attention for its failures too.” And what is an example of the failure of capitalism? Why, the highly
While I have not read Hidden Order by David Friedman, he offers up this selection today on hawk-dove equilibria. I regard it as an error for such analysis to be silent on internal motives for behavior. In particular, lots of people wish to be virtuous, and work at it; and lots of people struggle against their vices. A great number of people are
On p.557 of Steven Landburg’s Price Theory and Applications (6th international edition), I find this: It is widely believed that Treasury bills carry essentially no default risk and that the U.S. Treasury has never defaulted on its obligations. This is untrue. For example, the Treasury defaulted on bill #GS7-2-179-46-6606-1. In order to purchase a
This post is in response to Stephan’s . My objection to limited liability is actually one that he passes over quickly, and is not quite the same as van Eeghen’s. He says, “As for voluntary debts being limited to the corporation’s assets; this is no problem since the creditor knows these limitations when he loans money.” This is a bit of legal
In my work as an engineering manager, I recently received a very nice letter from an instrumentation and electrical contractor that has several offices from Bakersfield, CA to Pascagoula, MS. Responding to an inquiry we had about mobilizing instrumentation and electrical craft workers to a site in the panhandle of Texas for a major revamp, he
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.