A common rejoinder to the program of laissez-faire is that market failures require government intervention. Just what does market failure mean, and how can such claims for or against it be evaluated? A well-accepted definition of market failure is “a case in which a market fails to efficiently provide or allocate goods and services” in comparison
In Recollections from the University of Vienna , given at New York University, 1962 (33:43), Mises says (my transcription): “All universities in central Europe, continental Europe, are state universities. Even the idea that a university could be a private institution is foreign to most of these countries. And the universities are operated by the
Interesting article by Dr William Coleman on the “anti-economics” movement. C oleman says, among other things: “I want to put the possibility — not the likelihood, but the genuine possibility — that anti-economics could succeed. I want to put the possibility that economics — real economics — might die. Why do I say this? Because real economics has
Today, LibertyGuys criticizes the YMCA : When a local YMCA decides to build a state-of-the-art fitness center in affluent communities instead of providing programs for underserved individuals and families, the organization is deserting the very elements of the entire community that it is legally bound to serve. When the federal government, in
A mini-debate has ensued, starting with Michael Mandel weighing in on the chief methodological problem with game theory — its presupposition of the adoption of perfectly mutually-adjusted strategies by actors. Tyler Cowen ignores this critique by taking the somewhat dialectical position of saying that if it improves our ability to think through
OK, so it’s not Rocky and Bullwinkle . But it seems like it. Bryan Caplan claims to have demonstrated that time preference is superfluous to the explanation of positive interest rates, since marginal utility all by itself explains positive interest rates. He says: “If you are stuck on an island with two bananas for two days, a perfectly patient
Writes Thomas DiLorenzo : “I just signed a contract with Random House which will publish my new book, Lincoln Uncensored, next year. It’s all new material, with nineteen chapters broken up into three sections: ‘Things You’re Not Supposed to Know about America’s Sixteenth President’; ‘Economic Issues You’re Supposed to Ignore’; and ‘The Lincoln
I think Paul Craig Roberts gets it wrong when using the subject terms. Let me clarify according to my understanding: An economic advantage is when one person or group can produce a given result with more economy than another. This is very general, and can be broken down into categories: labor advantage is when production can be carried out at
It was as simple as this. On Saturday evening, at 7:30 pm, I noticed that the air coming from the vents in the house was not cool. Checking outside, I found that my compressor was not working. Browsing through the yellow pages, my wife located and called an air conditioning repairman, and put me on the phone. He did a brief Q&A with me, and
Joe Kissell writes today on the Antikythera Mechanism , which seems to be an analog computer constructed by a Greek in 82 BC. Much of the technology embodied in the device was lost, only to be reinvented hundreds of years later. What does this teach us? It reminds us that the “historian’s bias” is conservative, but can lead us into error. Just
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.