The only solution to increasing costs is to eliminate government interference in the market and to allow the price mechanism to work as it should. Consumers who pay out of their own pocket will search for the cheapest solutions to suit their needs, while providers of healthcare will compete, through constant innovation, to drive prices down and discover the most efficacious treatments.
This Libertas Award acceptance speech was delivered at the XXIII Forum da Liberdade, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on April 12, 2010. Tyranny ends when we cease to support voluntarily our own serfdom.
We can date the second Austrian revival almost precisely to the fall of 2008. From that point on, the use of online Austrian resources on Mises.org abruptly doubled from one year earlier, as investors, media commentators, and the public at large frantically sought answers from all quarters while witnessing one iconic financial institution after another topple into bankruptcy.
The recent improvement of the global economy, with particularly high economic- growth numbers for the United States, is just one more deception in a long series of deceptions that have plagued policy makers and investors.
The Mises Institute is pleased to announce the multimedia content on Mises.org— thousands of hours of audio and video—is now available through iTunes U, a dedicated section within the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com).
There is no secure foundation in climate science for the current policy rhetoric; governments simply lack the knowledge to operate climate-change policy effectively. Moreover, policy is based on the neoclassical economics assumption that climate change is a case of market failure. However, it is not markets that have failed but governments in failing to protect property rights.
Given that the official House version of Obama’s healthcare plan, HR 3962, has now passed, a close examination of the effects of “Obamacare” on the labor market is important.
Most people would admit to hoarding money only with a tinge of guilt, because to be a hoarder carries with it the suggestion of being a miser—a Scrooge. And yet, every participant in an economy based on indirect exchange holds some amount of money and can be said to be hoarding it; that is, declining to spend it. Hoarding is a strategy for achieving personal goals or for dealing with economic uncertainty.
