I occasionally see libertarians who advocate the decriminalization of marijuana and other illegal substances as being preferable to outright legalization. The logic is one to which we might be sympathetic: decriminalized substances cannot be taxed, while legalized substances are more easily subjected to sales or excise taxes, as well as a panoply of other regulations. Therefore, according to this argument, decriminalization would represent a freer market than the tax-and-regulate environment of legalized sales.

With your support, the Mises Institute can send the students home with a stack of Austrian classics such as America’s Great Depression and Where Keynes Went Wrong. After the week has destroyed every preconceived, state curriculum notion of how the world works, Mises U grads have another month before returning to their college classes. Fresh from the exhilaration of Mises U, our graduates can continue to dive into their Austrian education before sitting in classrooms where Democratic Socialists of America are the norm and universal basic income is the hottest policy trend.

The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy has cranked-up DC political hysteria to 11. When we have grown adults weeping in their offices over the retirement of a judge, it is perhaps high time to question whether any group of nine individuals should ever have so much power over the political landscape. Ryan McMaken was making this very case in the aftermath of Antonin Scalia’s passing:

Calls for civility in politics are nothing new, and the incident involving White House spokesman Sarah Sanders at a restaurant has yielded plenty of smoke but little heat from both phony sides of this non-debate/non-issue.

Growth in the supply of US dollars fell again in September, this time to a 116-month low of 3.4 percent. The last time the money supply grew at a smaller rate was during January 2008 — also at a rate of 3.4 percent. 

Money supply growth fell to a three-month low in May this year, continuing a general downward slide in growth rates that’s been in place since late 2016.

In May, year-over-year growth in the money supply fell to a 3-month low, growing 4.2 percent. That was down from April 2018’s rate of 4.3 percent, but remains up from November 2017’s low of 2.6 percent:

[Originally published in The Freeman, May 1, 1959.]

Coercion marks the beginning and corruption the conclusion of the march of union power observ­able in the McClellan Record. The process begins with the use of compulsion to secure members. Thereafter new and different coer­cive devices are used to bind the unwilling employees to the union. After a union has learned the use­fulness of coercion in increasing membership, it falls into the habit of using even more in disputes with employers.