The Free Market 26, no. 1 (January 2008) Margaret Atwood’s poem “Siren Song” begins: This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons even though they see the beached skulls. Our rulers know how to sing that song, and they sing it day and night. The
The Free Market 25, no. 11 (December 2007) From time to time over the last 30 years, after I have talked or written about some new restriction on human liberty in the economic field, some new attack on private enterprise, I have been asked in person or received a letter asking, “What can I do”—to fight the inflationist or socialist trend? Other
The Free Market 26, no. 2 (February 2008) Years of spending, inflating, taxing, and redistributing has left the US economy teetering on a recession that our best and brightest—meaning the ones who created this mess—claim requires a multibillion-dollar economic-relief package to quell fears, promote confidence, and spur recovery. And, one might
The Free Market 26, no. 3 (March 2008) We all want to live well and no one wants their living standard to decline. No one likes recession. It’s just the way we are made. This is one reason that the official environmentalist movement has an uphill battle. The poverty that comes with living without industrial civilization lacks public support—once
The Free Market 26, no. 5 (May 2008) Punditry is seriously exercised about the worldwide shortage of food, which is real enough, but not an act of nature or a result of market failure. Rather, it stems from the combined failures of government, and with results that are potentially catastrophic. Paul Krugman suggests that this has come about
The Free Market 26, no. 7 (July/August 2008) A quick scan of any newspaper suggests that high fuel prices have disrupted our daily affairs. While politicians and pundits across the political spectrum are fretting about the need for a national energy policy, wringing their hands about the apparent un-American-ness of our dependence on foreign
The Free Market 26, no. 8 (September 2008) You are uptown in a shopping district of a small community, and you pass by the meat shop, the wine shop, the coffee shop, two churches side by side, a coin shop, an antique store . . . and hold it right there. A coin shop? This is irresistible, because, as implausible as this may sound, all political
The Free Market 26, no. 9 (September 2008) The Paulson bailout failed in the House. It wasn’t a death blow to the plan, but it should have been. This wasn’t an economic plan: it was a heist. It will go down as The Great Bank Robbery of 2008. The economics behind it were nonsense, but we are naïve if we spend much time even considering the
The Free Market 26, no. 10 (November 2008) Writing the introduction to Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt was a labor of love for me. You know how women sometimes say to each other “This dress is you!”? Well, this book is me! This was the first book on economics that just jumped out and grabbed me. I had read a few before, but they were
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.