[Originally published May 2016]

Although it is sometimes imagined that a world based on gift-giving rather than market exchange would be a world without scarcity or want, we are still left with the problem of manufacturing and producing complex goods that require markets to allocate resources.

Moreover, if we remember that the act of gift-giving requires both the giver and the recipient to agree to the exchange, we quickly find that the situation is more complex than we initially thought.

Last week, I examined how obesity among low-income households cannot be explained by simply claiming that low-income people don’t have access to healthy food. It is claimed that supermarkets and other places that sell food are too far away from low-income neighborhoods for households to access them. It is assumed that low-income people will eat fast food instead. This is known as the “food desert” concept in which some places are devoid of food choices. 

Liberals will generally concede the right of every individual to his “personal liberty,” to his freedom to think, speak, write, and engage in such personal “exchanges” as sexual activity between “consenting adults.” In short, the liberal attempts to uphold the individual’s right to the ownership of his own body, but then denies his right to “property,” i.e., to the ownership of material objects. Hence, the typical liberal dichotomy between “human rights,” which he upholds, and “property rights,” which he rejects.

The NSA was too busy spying on your family to stop the Orlando gunman. But why aren’t night clubs keeping tabs on people who walk in with rifles? 

Writer Neal Gabler recently “confessed” his “secret shame” in an Atlantic Monthly article on how a huge percentage of middle-class Americans are living beyond their means, existing paycheck-to-paycheck, and are mired in personal debt. He writes:

The First World War was ferocious in its first years. But the combination of sustained and enormous losses of the enormous battles of 1916 and the strains on the home fronts brought the “deeper forces” to emerge, in the words of historian René Albrecht-Carrié. The number of enormous battles—and casualties—across the military theaters in the year 1916 staggers the imagination: Verdun, the Somme, Jutland, the Brusilov Offensive, the Siege of Kut, and five of the Isonzo front battles, as well as other actions. The death toll was barely fathomable.

This week graduate students from around the world gathered at the Mises Institute for our annual Rothbard Graduate Seminar. The subject this year focused on Ludwig von Mises’s seminal treatise Human Action, with the students receiving instruction from Professors Guido Hülsmann, Jeffrey Herbener, David Gordon, Peter Klein, Joseph Salerno, and Mark Thornton. The discussion and debate among both students and faculty has been intense and instructive, with Dr.

The debate surrounding the EU referendum in Britain, scheduled in two weeks, and the fate of the UK outside of the EU, is now in full swing. Unsurprisingly, little of substance has been said so far on the issue. One would expect that both sides would be better prepared with arguments to support their cause, but many aspects discussed have not only been erroneous, but have appealed to people’s fear rather than their intelligence.

Unlike other leftist South American regimes, the Venezuela regime has intentionally crushed even the middle and working classes.

The economic disaster in Venezuela has prompted many to take a look at the country and attempt to understand what it is that has made things so bad in Venezuela.