Mises Daily

Social institutions matter most, and they are very wrong now: a huge improvement is possible, and freedom is the answer.

"They took care of themselves and recognized that having freedom means the freedom to fail as well as to succeed."

"So it is quite likely that in a free-market economy the threat of bankruptcy will bring to a minimum the practice of fractional-reserve banking."

Every government intervention creates new problems in the course of vain attempts to solve the old.

Finally, the freedom of wage rates and prices to fall must be established through the repeal of pro-union and minimum-wage legislation, and more fundamentally, the education of the public concerning the errors of the Marxian exploitation theory and their replacement with actual knowledge of what determines wages and the general standard of living.

"The 'two-party system' in the United States now consisted of two conservative parties and no liberal party."

The false belief that unions exercising the threat of strikes upon employers improve the welfare of labor is analyzed thoroughly and the conclusion is obvious.

The efficient-markets hypothesis is actually a tautology, or a way of viewing the world.

It is said, “There is no better investment than taxes. Only see what a number of families it maintains, and consider how it reacts upon industry: it is an inexhaustible stream, it is life itself.”

[This article is excerpted from the introduction to The Rise and Fall of Society, available in