Mises Daily

State intervention and a crushing fiscal policy made the whole empire groan under the yoke; more than once, both poor men and rich prayed that the barbarians would deliver them from it.

There are two clear and present dangers to liberty. One is known as the Left, and the other is the Right. They seek to use government to mold society into a form they seek, rather than the form that liberty achieves if society is left on its own.

The question is not whether economic progress makes people happy. Most mothers feel happier if their children survive, and most people feel happier without tuberculosis than with it.

According to the usual justification for government regulation of externalities,almost everything we do is ripe for regulation. Even worse, regulators never admit their prohibitions prevent an incalculable number of positive externalities.

The fundamental error of the interventionists is that they ignore the shortage of capital goods.

It is not the people we elect who are in charge. They are only the human face on the machine. If they don't know this before the election, they quickly discover it after the election.

People do not save and accumulate capital because there is interest. Interest is neither the impetus to saving nor the reward or the compensation granted for abstaining from immediate consumption. It is the ratio in the mutual valuation of present goods as against future goods.

Mises was not one to praise individual economists very often. But he still had his favorites.

A central benefit of the marketplace is the ability to choose the products and services that the "experts" tell us are not "the best."

"Herein lies the key to changing society — changing public opinion or people's preferences toward government. And the only way people are likely to change their preferences is through education and persuasion; force is ineffective."