Mises Daily

There will always be "political pilgrims" who say otherwise. This is a phrase coined by the sociologist Paul Hollander, who documented the absurd travels of Western leftists to remote parts of the world where communism was being tried out. They invariably found a future of prosperity, freedom, and justice for all, and developed an incredible blindness to terror, starvation, and despotism of all sorts, dismissing it as necessary to block the work of evil dead-enders. Also, in another famous excuse, if the government has to expend so many resources on fighting off dissidents, it couldn’t make basic provisions for the masses – or so goes the claim.

Thomas DiLorenzo has written a masterpiece, says Laurence M. Vance. We have not only a great reference source, but a great weapon in our arsenal against all varieties of socialism, interventionism, and anticapitalism.

The continuous invention of new regulatory frauds undermines the gravity of real fraud, writes writes Pierre Lemieux. What we have seen since the beginning of the 21st century looks like a repeat of the witch-hunt of the 1980s.

Is the Mafia like a state that uses violence to enforce its agenda? Or is it more like a private business that specializes in the market provision of security? Robert Murphy reviews a book on the topic.

You know why so many men walk around with sloppy hair? We hate haircuts. You have to drive there to get one, which represents decline, because if you know about Figaro from Rossini's "Barber of Seville," the barber came to your home (but then he also pulled out your teeth and passed on furtive notes arranging encounters of various sort, etc.).

As they say in the South, writes Chris Westley, you can stick a fork in organized labor. Its implosion is a reminder that, in the long run, market forces trump state power.

Pierre Lemieux makes the argument that bribes to state officials can serve a purpose of permitting more freedom from oppression.

Can there be such thing as too much saving? Frank Shostak says this is like asking if can we have too much real wealth. 

Can free enterprise be the sole provider of law and justice? Robert Murphy, author of Chaos Theory, writes that the idea is often dismissed out of hand.

Eminent domain is the best example of how government is not the protector of private property but its main violator, writes Lew Rockwell.