Mises Daily

Modern arguments for tariffs smack of the same old mercantilist arguments that have been refuted by economists going back to Adam Smith.

The current international monetary system is based on floating fiat currencies and is constantly subject to unsustainable distortions. This much has been known to Austrians for some time, and Robert Blumen provides the background from Bretton Woods to the current day. Awareness of the problem is now starting to spread to mainstream economists, as suggested by Richard Duncan's new book. He tells the story of how the dollar unsupported by gold has gotten led the world into a terrible mess.

The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, is the major educator, publisher, supporter, and promoter of Austrian School economics and libertarian ideas in the world today. The ideas we encourage and promote do not exist in a vacuum, however: they are constantly bolstered by government failures and freedom's successes. To explain why, the Institute publishes journals, supports students, holds conference, and maintains a website that draws more traffic than the UN. Our influence with students, and now even faculty, makes us competitive with the American Economic Association or any government bureaucracy you can name.

In a wide-ranging interview Sudha Shenoy comments on her decision to become an economist, the influence of Rothbard and Kirzner, the politics of Hayek, current trends in global trade, US protectionism, the bad turn in economic theorizing, and the need to resolve the conflict between Islam and the West.

The American people have not seen widespread bank runs since 1933. In that object at least, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has succeeded. But Scott Trask asks: at what cost? To insure deposits is to invite bad banking—and worse; it is to foster reckless speculation and unsound investments, help make inflation permanent instead of intermittent, obstruct the curative powers of economic contractions, and divorce freedom from responsibility.

Gold is the best money, because for centuries, as a result of countless individual choices, it has evolved as such. It was not imposed on the  market by force, but was cultivated in the soil of the market itself. Christopher Mayer explains.

By following U.S. Government policies from beginning to end, Bill Anderson writes, United and American airlines inadvertently aided those individuals who snuffed out nearly 3,000 lives through their vicious actions. Yet, we also know that to have thwarted those attacks would have turned some employees of United and American into felons.

James Ostrowski explains. Juries have been stripped of their rightful power to judge the law. They are packed with people who make a living from government work. Ninety percent of jurors were educated by government schools. Finally, they have been drafted. Is it any wonder that juries don't work to defend liberty and justice?

The new film starring Bill Murray, and directed by Sofia Coppola, has a message that is not hidden: the commercial marketplace is the enemy of true art. Matthew Hisrich says this is an old message, one refuted by Mises in the 1940s. The marketplace gives us more of everything, including good and bad art. 

Jobs are not being shipped, and Americans are not somehow being stopped from making TVs, writes Lew Rockwell. TVs can still be made in the US. Everyone and anyone is free to invest the money, hire the workers (bidding them away from other pursuits), buy the parts, build the sets, and put them on sale. That the same processes are undertaken in China has no bearing on anyone's freedom to do it here. If you want to make an all-American TV, no one is stopping you.