The Free Market 16, no. 1 (January 1998) Competition is a process, the Austrian economists have long said, not a moment frozen in time. Today’s dominant company could be tomorrow’s rubble. Whether the winner can stay on top is dependent on its management, its ability to innovate, and, above all, the will of the consuming public. But since the
The Free Market 16, no. 2 (February 1998) The conventional wisdom on the defeat of Fast Track trade legislation is dead wrong. As the press would have it, the failure of Fast Track reflects the rise of grass-roots protectionism. The vote in Congress to deny Clinton the authority to negotiate trade deals is a response to constituent pressure.
The Free Market 16, no. 3 (March 1998) President Bill Clinton called on nine opponents of affirmative action during his manipulative “national dialogue on race,” and asked a reasonable question. “What do you think we should do?” The right answer is nothing. Do nothing at all. To achieve that ideal, government must get out and stay out of the
The Free Market 16, no. 4 (April 1998) The Clinton administration, applying its theory that all good things should be subsidized with tax dollars, proposes new spending to upgrade the Internet. But it’s not the government that has turned this medium into the most promising venue for free-market exchange in our time. It’s the astounding power of
The Free Market 16, no. 5 (May 1998) When the three top dogs of the U.S. global empire went to Ohio University, hoping to explain why we needed to drop bombs on Iraq, they were met with fierce resistance. This event, broadcast worldwide, caused the Clinton administration to rethink its bombs-away strategy. A war was averted and untold numbers of
The Free Market 16, no. 6 (June 1998) G.K. Chesterton called the family an anarchistic institution. He meant that it requires no act of the state to bring it about. Its existence flows from fixed realities in the nature of man, with its form refined by the development of sexual norms and the advance of civilization. This observation is consistent
The Free Market 16, no. 7 (July 1998) When Clinton declared he would use budget surpluses to “fix” Social Security, the ruse was obvious. He was trying to forestall the only moral use of any surplus: cutting taxes. But a few days later, a very strange trend began to develop. Clintons words were endorsed and echoed by D.C. conservatives and
The Free Market 16, no. 8 (August 1998) Janet Reno couldn’t get the hang of computers. By her own account, she couldn’t tell “what was on the hard drive, what was on the soft drive.” So she prefers “paper and pencil.” Then she arrogantly sets herself up as Americas computer czar, claiming to know better than tens of millions of consumers about
The Free Market 16, no. 9 (September 1998) Can government do a better job than private markets in any area of the economy? Consider: The tax-funded Human Genome Project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, has been the toast of the scientific elite for nearly a decade. It held out the promise of mapping of the entire structure of
The Free Market 16, no. 10 (October 1998) In the midst of an economic boom, strange things were happening at General Motors. Huge swatches of its highly paid, coddled, unionized labor force were on strike. The result was catastrophic: GM plants all over North America shut down. In a free market, the management (serving at the behest of 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.