[Transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Libertarian Science Fiction”] One day in the late spring of 1951, something rather astonishing happened in an otherwise nondescript shopping district in a medium-sized city somewhere in the American Midwest. Right there, right smack in the middle of the block, where Aunt Sally’s Lunch
[Transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Libertarian Science Fiction II”] This essay is about four writers, none of whom was a libertarian, but each of whom wrote something back in the 1960s that made a significant contribution to the libertarian tradition. The first of the four was a science-fiction writer, though only
[Transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Friedrich Hayek and American Science Fiction”] Friedrich August von Hayek was born in Vienna on the eighth day of May 1899. When he graduated from the University of Vienna in 1921, at the age of 22, he applied for a job with the Austrian Office of Claims Accounts, the government agency
[Transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Ambiguous Utopias”] The mid-1970s — meaning, let us say, the five-year period encompassing the years 1973, ‘74, ‘75, ‘76, and ‘77 — was a heady time for the modern American libertarian movement. To those of us who were involved back then, it seemed we were on the verge of a major
[Transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “C.M. Kornbluth (1923–1958)”] The late Samuel Edward Konkin III was a firm believer in the power of science fiction to spread the libertarian message. He himself had been converted to libertarianism partly by reading the works of Robert A. Heinlein , and Heinlein remained his favorite
[Transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Libertarian Journalism in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s”] As seasoned denizens of the libertarian blogosphere know well, libertarians and libertarianism turn up pretty frequently these days in the writings of mainstream journalists. Sometimes we get an entire article devoted to us; when we
[Transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Conjecture and History”] All history is partly conjectural. If we think about the enterprise of history for a moment or two, we can easily see why this must be so. For when we walk outside our dwellings and take a look at the world around us, one inescapable fact is that much of the
In a recent conversation with a younger libertarian, I heard something that I found somewhat surprising and somewhat disturbing at the same time. But later, on reflection, I realized that what I had heard should not have surprised me, however much it may still disturb me. My young friend had said, and I paraphrase here, that he was surprised to
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.