Recycling: What a Waste!

09/22/2005 Mises Wire Mises.org

School kids across the country will again be taught a chief doctrine in the civic religion: recycle, not only because you fear the police but also because you love the planet. Jim Fedako, however, explains that if recycling were really efficient and not wasteful, people would not have to be browbeaten, and trash companies wouldn’t have to undertake this charade that they are helping preserve the planet by picking up sorted garbage. Reusing and reducing are viable market activities. Recycling is not. FULL ARTICLE

What Is The Mises Wire?

Mises Wire offers contemporary news and opinion through the lens of Austrian economics and libertarian political economy.

Submitting articles to Mises Wire

Reprints, Permissions and Copyrights

The views expressed on Mises Wire and mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

Subscribe to the Mises Wire RSS feed

Latest Articles

Frédéric Bastiat: The Unseen Role of Intermediaries

11/25/2025 Mises Wire Ulrich Fromy

Bastiat emphasized that much of what goes on in the economy involves things we don’t see directly. Intermediaries often fall into Bastiat’s category of things “not seen.”

Intellectual Property Laws Violate the (Free) Market

11/25/2025 Power & Market Alejandro A. Tagliavini

No one can legitimately create a monopoly on ideas. The problems of freedom are solved with more freedom and worsened with less.

History Is Not a Science

11/24/2025 Mises Wire Wanjiru Njoya

Some modern historians claim they are “doing science.” However, Ludwig von Mises in Theory and History decried what he saw as “scientism” instead of real scientific inquiry.

We’re Approaching the “Blame the Consumer” Stage of the Boom-Bust Cycle

11/25/2025 Mises Wire Ryan McMaken

In a recession or a crisis, the right approach for individuals is to save. So too for the national economy. Saving does not cause the economy to fall into recession any more than more spending can save it from recession.

Legal Nonsense to Justify Non-Judicial Killings

11/24/2025 Power & Market Jacob G. Hornberger

Often “reasoning” commits to a conclusion, then finds argumentation to justify it.

Meet the Writer

Mises.org

Misesians on 9/11, Then and Now

09/11/2014 Mises Wire Mises.org

Libertarians were virtually alone in opposing the planned expansions of government power in the wake of 9/11, and then as now, we saw the attacks for what they were: criminal attacks on human persons...

Chris Matthews: Wages

06/14/2014 Mises Wire Mises.org

David Brat, the economist at Randolph -Macon college who defeated Eric Cantor in that GOP primary in Virginia, said recently that wage increases are only appropriate when a worker’s productivity...

Subscribe to our Mailing Lists

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Become a Member