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
Is money not absurd? Daily we give up perfectly useful goods and services for the sake of little green pieces of paper. But it is not just the fiat paper money we are familiar with that can seem strange in this regard. Even commodity money can seem weird when you think about it. Why would people give up goods and services for little disks of
In chapter 1 of his groundbreaking treatise, The Theory of Money and Credit , Ludwig von Mises explains what money is : a universally, or at least commonly, used medium of exchange. In chapter 2 , Mises stresses what money is not . Contrary to the common fallacy, it is not a measure of value. According to Mises, the notion of money as a measure of
Edgar the Exploiter is a wonderful animated short by Tomasz Kaye that defends voluntary employer-employee relations and demonstrates the harm that policies like minimum-wage laws inflict on the very people they are supposed to help. Edgar is a capitalist who hires Simon as an unskilled laborer, until a minimum-wage law impels Edgar to lay Simon
[ Free Market , January 2012. You can subscribe by becoming a member .] “We are the 99%!” This slogan of the Occupy Wall Street protesters has been called the most memorable quote of the past year. Those who rally to its cry do so in opposition to the villainous 1%. For a handful of the protesters, being a member of the 1% means being a wealthy
[ Free Market , June 2012. You can subscribe by becoming a member .] One hundred years ago, Ludwig von Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit was published. Because this was Mises’s first great contribution to human understanding, we should also celebrate this year as the centennial of the start of his career as a creative genius on the world
If there was any doubt that Ron Paul was not going to win the Republican nomination for the presidency, it was undeniably removed when on Tuesday Mitt Romney received the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch it. Does that mean Ron Paul failed? No. It is an open secret that the campaign was really about education all along. And in that regard, Ron
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.