Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 18, no. 2 (Summer 2015)

Symposium: Is There A Missing Element in Economics?

Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 18, Number 2 (Summer 2105)

Murray Rothbard told us that liberty is what allows human flourishing, that liberty requires private property rights and the non aggression principle (NAP), and that this nation was conceived in liberty.

Damian McBride is the former head of communications at the British treasury and former special adviser to Gordon Brown, erstwhile Prime Minister of the U.K. Yesterday he tweeted some surprising advice in response to the plunge in global equities markets.;

Science doesn’t happen in an economic vacuum. There’s no Platonic laboratory where “pure” science occurs independent of human ideas, motivations, and institutions. Like other parts of the economy, scientific inputs and outputs are influenced by a complex system of ideology, regulation, and monopoly, and consequently, science faces many of the same challenges as for-profit business.

I know, it’s nearly September, but I forgot to post July’s Top Ten Mises Daily articles, so here they are (based on site traffic):

Following the Crash in 1987, many myths circulated about the nature, causes, and remedies for the crash at the time. Rothbard’s debunking of many of these myths is still informative today. Originally published in the January 1988 issue of The Free Market:

Ever since Black, or Meltdown, Monday October 19th, the public has been deluged with irrelevant and contradictory explanations and advice from politicians, economists, financiers, and assorted pundits.

[First published in Inquiry, November 12, 1979.]

A half-century ago, America — and then the world — was rocked by a mighty stock-market crash that soon turned into the steepest and longest-lasting depression of all time.

It was not only the sharpness and depth of the depression that stunned the world and changed the face of modern history: it was the length, the chronic economic morass persisting throughout the 1930s, that caused intellectuals and the general public to despair of the market economy and the capitalist system.

In late June of this year, President Obama signed an executive order and presidential directive clarifying the administration’s hostage policy. Afterward he gave a statement to the press, in which he condemned threats of prosecution against families trying to pay ransom: “the last thing we should ever do is add to a family’s pain with threats like that.”

In civics and government books, “how a bill becomes law” shows multiple steps during which representatives consider bills before enactment. Unfortunately, such responsible deliberation, necessary to even a minimal prospect of legislation advancing the general welfare, is violated by “gut and amend” bills at the end of legislative sessions.