This article was originally published in the New York World Telegram & Sun, May 7, 1951. It will be included in the forthcoming book, Why Mises Matters Today, edited by Shawn Ritenour, and available spring 2027 from the Mises Institute.

The government provides a part of the funds required for rearmament by inflation, that is, by increasing the quantity of money in circulation and the amount of bank balances subject to check.

The recent death of Jason Arday has been met with widespread grief, but also with a disturbing rush to assign blame. Much of the media narrative has positioned Nathan Cofnas as the villain, the man who exposed plagiarism and, in doing so, supposedly hounded a vulnerable academic to his death. This is a convenient story, but it is not the truth.

We must address the totem that is “nationality.” It is an essential part of understanding our reality and preparing for the future. After all, administrative nationality is a relatively recent invention, following the concept of the nation.

I also distinguish between two types of nations. The first—in its ancient sense—is almost biblical: an extended community, or even an extended family. It is the “sédimentation de milliards de choix libres, empilés génération après génération.” It is this nation that must be protected.

[The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control, Jacob Siegel, March 24, 2026, Henry Holt and Co., 336 pages.]

Jacob Siegel visualizes that, in an information-state form of government, a republican form of government’s ultimate control by voters would get replaced by the digital monopolization of voters’ attention, adjustment of voters’ perceptions, and conditioning of voters to see certain outcomes as inevitable.

One of the standard holy doctrines of modern macroeconomics is the claim that the only way to end a recession is to increase government spending. John Maynard Keynes formalized this doctrine in his infamous The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money and his disciples then spread the word in the halls of academe and government.

There is a basic and probably familiar tension in the economics of innovation: competition is regarded as desirable because it disciplines incumbents, reallocates resources toward more productive firms, and limits the rents associated with market power; however, innovation itself is an activity undertaken in pursuit of rents. If the innovator cannot expect to appropriate at least some of the surplus created by a successful innovation, why incur the cost and risk of producing it?

The “perp” was charged with causing $1,000 in damage, but what he actually destroyed was a 3D-printed decoy that was likely far cheaper.