Mises Daily

The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny; the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also ... "You shall do as we will, and not as you will," is in either case the declaration.

"The few independent thinkers who have the courage to question these dogmas are virtually outlawed, and their ideas cannot reach the reading public. ... 'progressive' propaganda and indoctrination has well succeeded in enforcing its taboos. "

Hamilton was "so bewitched & perverted by the British example," wrote Jefferson, "as to be under thoro' conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation."

It is striking that the major resurgence of Scholastic ideas came out of Austria in the late 19th century, a country that had avoided a revolutionary political or theological upheaval. If we look at Menger's own teachers, we find successors to the Scholastic tradition.

Could there be a more doleful proof of the sterility of European civilization than that it can be spread by no other means than fire and sword?

Hardly anyone talks of the table of virtues and vices anymore, but in reviewing them, we find that they nicely sum up the foundation of bourgeois ethics, and provide a solid moral critique of the modern state.

The intrusion of politics into the field of economics is simply an evidence of human ignorance or arrogance, and is as fatuous as an attempt to control the rise and fall of tides.

Although the system is inherently exploitative, it allows some leeway in the determination of which specific individuals will be the shafters and which the shaftees.

Once the economics profession embraced the "perfect" competition theory which, as Hayek has said, means "the absence of all competitive activities," it also embraced antitrust regulation. 

By 1715, the manipulation of the currency, the increase in public debt, and the mismanagement of state finances had left France in poverty and chaos. Such was the state of affairs when John Law appeared in Paris.