Mises Search

The Free Market 15, no. 10 (October 1997)   This summer, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it had effectively decontaminated dioxin-laced soil from what was once the community of Times Beach, Missouri. But while the dirt of this site may now be certifiably clean, it will take much more than an incinerator to decontaminate the

The Free Market 18, no. 5 (May 2000)   When one thinks of “death by government,” either those killed by armed members of the state or the millions who have perished in the vast gulags and prisons run by governmental agents usually come to mind. However, government has demonstrated far more creativity in eliminating people than just by shooting or

During a religion class in my junior year of college, our leftist professor showed us a series of films glorifying the communist revolution in China. The “liberation,” he told us, had saved the Chinese from a miserable existence and had both raised their standard of living and had given them new spiritual life. Like so many other stories of

As the once-formidable Enron Empire continues to implode--and new revelations appear daily about the inner workings (and apparent financial shenanigans) of this firm--we are treated, not surprisingly, to the wrong story by the mainstream news media and their associates from the political classes.  It is bad enough to see a huge firm go bankrupt,

With Enron, Global Crossing, and other debacles in the news, the usual hue and cry for “more regulation” is hitting full steam.  In a recent New York Times  column, Paul Krugman--always an apostle for expansion of the police powers of the state--says that the Enron collapse will have an even larger impact on the future of this country than the

During the debate on whether or not to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the U.S. Department of the Interior has posted Website pictures of the actual area where oil would be drilled--and those pictures conclusively demonstrate that the pictures of mountains and abundant wildlife shown on television news broadcasts are

I write these words while driving away from an interdisciplinary business conference that my colleagues and I attended this past week. One might think that business professors might have a handle on what happened with the collapse of the Enron Corporation and the implosion of other firms whose failures, while not as spectacular as the former

The recent federal indictment of former Enron Chairman Ken Lay seems to be quite popular with the political classes and the public at large, following the trend in prosecutions of “white collar crime” over the past few years. Attorney General John Ashcroft might be unpopular among Democrats and the mainstream media for many things, but the press

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision overturning the obstruction of justice verdict against Arthur Andersen Company comes too late to save the firm or the jobs of thousands of employees who found themselves out of work when the government destroyed the firm three years ago. Indeed, the Andersen decision—despite going against federal

For the most part, we know what happened — and what did not happen — after Katrina had battered parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast and flooded most of New Orleans. Despite promises of aid “around the corner,” adequate government assistance did not reach many of the refugees, and especially the people of New Orleans who were stuffed into the Superdome,