One of my favorite illustrations of the different incentives private enterprise and government face when it comes to the provision of security is an incident that took place in a Philadelphia Starbucks in April 2018. Two black men who said they were waiting for a potential business partner wanted to use the restroom, though they hadn’t purchased anything. They were asked to order something or leave.
Despite its humble origins in 1930s Jamaica, Rastafarianism has evolved into a global liberation movement. Rastafarianism’s impact on popular culture has been phenomenal, and its message resonates with people across the globe. Even in death, Bob Marley, probably the most famous symbol of Rastafarianism, continues to inspire the world with his revolutionary music. Today, anthropologists officially recognize Rastafarianism as a religion.
There is an astounding number of historical phenomena with explanations lacking economic reasoning. Such is the case with the observed “divine right of kings,” or “divine monarchy,” commonly discussed in history textbooks.
Rothbard’s two-volume An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought contains a lengthy reference list, but a close look at the books reveals that Rothbard continually cited certain authors and borrowed his theses from them. One of them was Emil Kauder. Kauder appears to be quite an important figure: a member of the third generation of Austrian economists in Vienna and a prolific scholar whose publications appeared in many academic outlets.
A monopoly is often seen as one of the gravest and most concerning manifestations of market failure. In the neoclassical tradition, the existence of a monopolist in a market is generally seen as sufficient justification for government intervention to put a halt to the monopolist’s exploitative ways. The Austrian tradition, however, has historically remained skeptical of this alleged problem of monopoly.
“If you don’t expect too much from me
You might not be let down.”
— Gin Blossoms, “Hey Jealousy”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the media reported the inflation rate—that is, the Consumer Price Index‘s rate of increase—to be 1.3 percent for June 2022 and 9.1 percent year over year (for the last twelve months).
Although sometimes dubbed “the ivory tower,” the academy is anything but a quaint exception to or ancillary adjunct of the real world. Quite otherwise, academia is an ideological state apparatus. I maintain that the academy is the dominant ideological state apparatus.
Perhaps one of the more astute observers of Russian foreign policy in recent decades has been John Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago. He has spent years warning against US-led NATO enlargement as a tactic that would provoke conflict with the Russian regime. Moreover, Mearsheimer has sought to explain why this conflict exists at all. Why, for example, doesn’t the Russian regime just accept US-led expansionism in the region? Or perhaps, more precisely, why have so many Russians continued to support Vladimir Putin in his efforts to counter US influence in the region?
