Many media outlets emphasize discrimination as the leading barrier to women’s achievements, capturing widespread attention despite empirical evidence that suggests otherwise. Proposed solutions often include gender quotas, anti-discrimination laws, and other interventions aimed at addressing institutional sexism.

James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent—published over sixty years ago in 1962—has been one of the most influential books that apply economic ideas to politics. The authors were by no means libertarians, but they favored, for the most part, a limited state and the free market. An additional point in their favor was that both authors read my book reviews.

Seemingly defying logic and common sense, many fashionistas vie to pay $12,000 (and even up to as much as $100,000 for versions made of exotic skins such as snake or alligator), for a women’s leather purse known as the “Birkin bag.” Handmade by the French firm Hermes, and named after British pop star Jane Birkin

After the media complained nonstop for months about Donald Trump offering a dark message on the presidential campaign trail, a New York Times headline bewailed his election victory on Wednesday morning: “America Hires a Strongman.” So anyone who cast a ballot became the moral equivalent of a mafia don hiring a hitman?

Mises Summer Internships at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, are available to current graduate and undergraduate students interested in obtaining professional experience at an Austrian economics nonprofit institution. 

The 2024 election is over, and in some states, big majorities voted for the winner Donald Trump. In Wyoming, Trump won 72 percent of the vote. In fact, more than 60 percent of the voting population went for Trump in 13 states.

Fortunately for the majorities in those states, they’ll get the president they voted for.

However, the outcome would have been different if fewer than a million people—in a nation of 330 million—had changed their votes in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan. Then, Kamala Harris would now be the president-elect.

It is not often admitted, but it is nevertheless the case, that the people can be never successfully represented politically. However, public opinion influences politics, at times even strongly. In all political systems, the ruling minority must take into account, to varying degrees, the public mood as expressed in town halls, polls, elections, demonstrations, and now, social media.