Mises Daily

Austrian monetary thought can be traced back right to the very founding father of monetary economics, the great Nicholas Oresme, the 14th century Bishop of Lisieux.

The characteristic feature of capitalism that distinguished it from precapitalist methods of production is capitalism's efforts to make goods and services available to everyone — not just the wealthy.

Things might have been much worse were it not for the efforts of a relative handful of intellectuals who have fought against socialist theory for more than a century. Without them, it might have been 99% in support of socialist tyranny.

The problem is that the capacity to imagine freedom is being eroded in our society and culture. The less freedom we have, the less people are able to imagine what freedom feels like, and therefore the less they are willing to fight for its restoration.

Any profitable inquiry into the character of the American State must therefore take into account the distinction between making a living by production and gaining a living by predation; that is, between economics and politics.

The characteristic principle of capitalism is that it is mass production to supply the masses. Big business serves the many.

Here are six common myths often heard about libertarianism.

There is no other means to attain full employment, rising real wage rates and a high standard of living for the common man than private initiative and free enterprise.

Liberalism has many meanings, but I wish to maintain that the most authentic form of liberalism has been concerned above all with two things: the expansion of a free functioning civil society and the restriction of the activity of the state.

"The problems of poor relief are problems of the arrangement of consumption, not of the arrangement of production activities."