Philosophy and Methodology

Ever wonder where Tang and Teflon came from?

Paradoxical as it might first seem, the more liberal a state is internally, the more likely it will engage in outward aggression. Internal liberalism makes a society richer; a richer society to extract from makes the state richer, and a richer state makes for more and more successful expansionist wars

If Alabama really wants to convert itself into a haven for prosperity and worker well-being, it would — as a start — repeal any and all wage legislation, and nullify all federal legislation when it is proposed.

But it should be clear that what distinguishes libertarianism from all competing political theories is its scrupulous adherence — informed by sound, i.e., Austrian, economics — to the idea that property rights in scarce resources must be assigned to the person with the best, objective link to the resource in question; and that, in the case of bodies, the link is the natural connection to and relationship between the occupant and the body, while for all other resources, the objective link is first use.

Free-market capitalism allows for a degree of coordination that no other system can match. Those who hold capitalism to a standard of perfection ignore the fact that activist governments have failed to attain anything better, and have often made matters worse.

The lead article in today’s New York Times/Pravda is titled

Let us remember that we live in a world of scarcity, that economizing on information can be efficient, and that sometimes the reason stereotypes exist is because, well, they're true.

Apart from the saving grace that the companies are adding value to the society, it is a jamboree of politically correct, anti-development, guilty, and dishonest people — those who have no concept of how wealth is created. They have no interest in the environment or the poor.

Recorded at Mises University 2006.

The various sources of error that come into play in the social sciences suggest that the error in economic observations is substantial. Morgenstern shows that the solution of a system of economic mathematical equations or econometric models is, due to the quality of the data, completely devoid of meaning.