American economist Henry George is best known for his 1879 treatise Progress and Poverty , for which Albert Einstein designated George a “beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic forum, and fervent love of justice” (George 1879, cover). Progress and Poverty became a huge success, and in 1886 George followed up with a far more
“Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.” – Ludwig von Mises Personal character and money are linked. No, we are not implying that a person of great wealth is necessarily an individual with high character. All one needs to do is look at the moral sewer known as Wall Street in order to comprehend how a whole host of elites
Nonprofit organizations play an integral role in a free market economy. The establishment of a voluntary nonprofit organization is not merely an exercise for obtaining tax-exempt status for wealth protection within a burdensome tax system, though that is a splendid end in its own right. Instead, nonprofit organizations are concerned with
One reason I so loved Murray Rothbard was his ability to pick out that which was blindly hailed by the mainstream, critically examine it, and produce unique and honest insight as to the real nature of such. In his Economic Thought Before Adam Smith , in an essay titled “Physiocracy in mid-eighteenth century France,” he presents some great insight
There are a legion of stories of the demise of accounting in corporate America running around out there—loose and undaunted, and perhaps somewhat exaggerated. As one corporate accounting bungle after another makes its way to the top of the headlines, the media reports on them as if detailing out a home brewing recipe. Accounting snafus are not
Oftentimes, Peter Drucker’s philosophy on business ethics and corporate social responsibility has been misrepresented to attempt to support the modern, Ivy League-MBA version of the stakeholder theory. Drucker is most certainly not perfect, but always interesting. Indeed he placed emphasis on normative standards within business practice,
Maybe. On behalf of the Free Enterprise Fund, Mr. Starr is challenging the burdensome and tyrannical Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Of course, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is an absolute monster given that it has the powers of subpoena and disciplinary action. Starr & Company are challenging the powers of this board as a violation of “the
New House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulatory monster at the top of her list of things to tackle in January 2007. Well wait, isn’t this exactly what the Dems are in favor of? A massive regulatory state that hogties big business? Not if your most financially supportive constituents are being hurt by such
From Jason Hollon comes an interesting quote on Sarbanes-Oxley that made it to the mainstream Business Week (pay only): (BusinessWeek, January 23, 2006). Maria Bartiromo interviewing Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone Group: Q: The buyout boom in the ‘80s was fueled by opportunistic buyers of broken companies. But today corporations are lean and flush
Jim Cook has an outstanding column that posted today , wherein he notes Mises and Drucker: Financing Excess A lot has been written recently about the late Peter Drucker, who passed away in November. For many years Mr. Drucker was the preeminent authority on business management. He wrote 35 books, including his groundbreaking Practice of
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.