The Prognostications of Ben Bernanke We now have the diametrical opposite of the famous “ Peter Schiff Was Right “ video (a compilation of 2006 and 2007 clips in which Schiff, a financial expert who subscribes to Austrian economics, predicted the deep recession that would follow the bursting of the housing bubble). The new, opposite video is a
Daniel Muffinburg couldn’t find something, so he asked his friend Zach the Lizard for help. (No this article isn’t a children’s story; Daniel and Zach are the usernames of two Mises Community members.) What Daniel couldn’t find was the phrase, “ Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ,” the motto of Ludwig von Mises and the Mises Institute, in
I recently purchased the new model of Barnes and Noble’s Nook eReader. (I reviewed the older Nook here and here .) It is a very new gadget, but it is now filled, almost exclusively, with very old books. A recent article in the New York Times argued that the tea-party movement is, to some extent, inspired by “long-ago texts” and “long-dormant
Robinson Crusoe and Friday are face-to-face on a desert island. How do they interact? Perhaps Friday will hurl a spear at Crusoe. Perhaps Crusoe will clap irons on Friday and enslave him. Perhaps Crusoe will declare that they both own in common all goods that each of them ever comes across or produces on the island, no matter what. None of these
In ancient Greek mythology, Eris, the goddess of strife, was often a villain. It was her scheming that led to the Trojan War, which, as Homer said, made “many a hero prey to dogs and vultures.” [1] In ancient Rome, Concordia, goddess of social harmony, was one of the most dearly loved deities. Often the Romans would dedicate a new shrine to her
“The only fully Misesian economists are Rothbardians, and most Rothbardians have abandoned Mises’s entire approach to the ‘why’ of liberalism.” Students of classic liberalism and Austrian economics might come across a curious inconsistency concerning the doctrine of utilitarianism in Austro-liberal literature. On one hand, you may find vigorous
A great deal of truth can be unveiled via “Crusoe economics” — the analysis of acting man in complete isolation. However, just as it takes two to tango, it also takes two to trade and two to fight; therefore, in the sciences of human action, it takes at least two (a Crusoe and a Friday) for questions of property , exchange , and justice to even
Robinson Crusoe is walking along the beach when he sees a little face looking up at him, half-buried in the sand. He digs it out, and finds that it is a little wooden statue of a pagan deity. Friday is on the same beach, looking through a chest full of odds and ends that has washed up from a shipwreck. He finds a thick book with a cross on it. It
The 20th century was a bleak time for the cause of liberty. The Age of Liberalism was over. Nobody wanted to hear the ideas of Jefferson, Cobden, and Bastiat anymore. Those who then called themselves “liberals” clamored for all-around planning: that is, the abolition of liberty. In America, the last echo of classical liberalism was the “Old
What was earth-shattering about the advent of economics, according to Ludwig von Mises, was its unprecedented discovery of regularity in the social realm. Just as Kepler, Galileo, and Newton had discovered that there were immutable laws that regulate the movements of physical bodies, the early economists discovered that there were immutable laws
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.