Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 18, no. 3 (Fall 2015)

In the introduction to this collection, Guinevere Nell applauds Austrian scholars for their noteworthy contributions to economics. However, in her view, contemporary Austrians are too often motivated—and constrained—by the search for free-market conclusions, leading them to neglect both the problems of unregulated markets and the promise of alternative forms of organization.

Days after the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado Springs, President Obama had the chutzpah to stand up in Paris of all places and declare that mass shootings don’t occur “in other countries.” As one blogger noted, this would be like Ariel Sharon visiting Manhattan in October 2001 and casuall

With Google’s dominance in the online search engine market we entered the Age of Free. Indeed, services offered online are nowadays expected to be offered at no cost. Which, of course, does not mean that there is no cost to it, only that the consumer doesn’t pay it. Early attempts financed the services with ads, but we soon saw a move toward making the consumer the product. Today, free and unfree services alike compete for “users” and then make money off the data they collect.

I’ve written before on the institutions of scientific research which, like other human activities, involve expenditures of scarce resources, have benefits and costs that can be evaluated on the margin, and are affected by the preferences, beliefs, and incentives of scientific personnel (1, 2,

The World Bank recently announced that the world had reached a new milestone. Extreme poverty, the Bank explained, is likely to dip below 10 percent worldwide for the first time in 2015.

In thinking about strategies for abolishing or radically diminishing government, many libertarians are led astray by using a false dichotomy. The State, they say, can either be smashed in one swift, fell blow or it can be rolled back gradually according to a predetermined plan. These are, they say, the only two alternatives.

As the Labour Party fights with Tories over the need to slightly rein in government spending in the UK, opponents of even the slightest bit of austerity have turned out to claim that there is no virtue in “living within your means.”

In the latest issue of The Austrian, Jeff Deist explores the intimate connection between authoritarianism and political correctness. It’s not about being polite. It’s about political control.

Also in this issue, David Gordon reviews Peter Simpson’s new book Political Illiberalism where Simpson, a non-libertarian, offers a trenchant critique of the state from his own perspective.

In a Mises Daily column last summer, I suggested that the proper strategy for addressing the immigration issue is to begin decentralizing decision-making and political jurisdictions.