The Free Market 14, no. 6 (March 1996) In 1984, at a Mises Institute conference in Houston, some of us met O.P. Alford, III, for the first time. He was a quiet gentleman dressed in unassuming khaki trousers and shirt. His intelligence was evident and his manners were strikingly aristocratic. Those who visited with him that weekend noticed
The Free Market 14, no. 6 (June 1996) “Every great statesman must necessarily fail,” wrote Andrew Lytle in a moving tribute to John C. Calhoun. The reason: the statesman is driven by high ideals like freedom, self-government, justice, and constitutionalism, which will never be perfectly realized. Yet even in failure, the statesman preserves
The Free Market 17, no. 3 (March 1999) In this year of Millennium Lists (”Best Ten Songs of the Millennium,” etc.), the Wall Street Journal tried its hand at the ten economists--whom it called the “best and brightest”--who have “made a difference” in the last thousand years. Of course, the big problem in twentieth-century intellectual history is
The Free Market 18, no. 1 (January 2000) “The trouble with socialism,” Oscar Wilde once wrote, “is that it takes too many evenings.” Indeed, the private lives of socialists are highly politicized. They must not be interested in anything-not even their families-other than socialism. The theory must inform every aspect of their lives, which must
The Free Market 21, no.4 (April 2003) Lecturing at the London School of Economics from 1931 to 1950, F.A. Hayek was nicely positioned to counter the rising influence of J.M. Keynes. Keynes’s new vision of macroeconomics was a resurrection of old fallacies but with a modern twist: an open call for a consolidated state to manage investment. More
The Free Market 24, no. 12 (December 2004) H ans F. Sennholz, winner of the 2004 Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Liberty, is one of the handful of economists who dared defend free markets and sound money during the dark years before the Misesian revival. He did so with eloquence, precision, and brilliance. He has never tired
The Free Market 26, no. 7 (July 2005) The 20th century was a time when the world sang the praises of despots and despotism. The more wars government leaders fought, the more they centralized their control, the more they hobbled the economy, the more liberty they stole, the more they cut off trade and exchange with other nations, the more their
The Free Market 26, no. 9 (September 2005) [Originally written as an introduction to For A New Liberty] There are many varieties of libertarianism alive in the world today, and they owe a great debt to the work of Ludwig von Mises. His top American student was Murray N. Rothbard, and Rothbardianism remains the center of its intellectual gravity,
The Free Market 6, no. 8 (August 1988) In primitive societies, witchdoctors legitimized tyrannical government by naming it the mandate of heaven. In return, they got a cut of the earthly loot. In the U.S., some economists serve the same function. For promoting government intervention as scientific, and advising on the most efficient forms, they
The Free Market 5, no. 8 (August 1987) To most Americans, economists don’t leap instantly to mind as treasures, let alone national treasures. Whether making arrogant and fallacious mathematical predictions; filling the minds of college students with Keynesian and socialist buncombe; or giving a theoretical cover to State inflation, taxation,
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.