The Mises Institute is very pleased to re-issue Professor Roy Cordato’s book on efficiency in the Austrian tradition. The problem of externalities and efficiency is cited relentlessly in mainstream literature as the great rationale for government intervention. The Austrian tradition, however, takes another approach, viewing these supposed problems as having market solutions that depend on a view of economics rooted in an understanding of the competitive process.

Reason Papers No. 29 (Fall 2007) will hit the presses next week; selected contents are available online. This issue contains articles by, or about, Walter Block, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Tibor Machan, and Loren Lomasky. The full content of No. 27 (Fall 2004) has also now been put up online, including the full issue. Contents:

The recent Liberty Dollar raids raise the question: Why can’t people use any currency they want?

This lament is often heard today about medicine and education, among other fields. Business, however, is the last thing medicine and education have been turned into. Bureaus of the government would be a more accurate description. Why the confusion between bureaucracy and business? The simplest answer is that most people do not understand the difference between the two.

Mr. Anonymous and the Not-So-Spontaneous Birth of the Libertarian “Movement”

The May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, the organ of establishment policy, published The End of National Currency by Benn Steil. Steil begins with a discussion of currency crisis and the incompetence of central banks in managing them; then proceeds to ask:

I recently finished reading A Paper Life, the autobiography of the movie star Tatum O’Neal. I know, in a time of the ever-growing Leviathan, such a diversion is pure Hollywood puffery. However, tidbits of insight can be found in such a book, as seemingly inconsequential stories shed light on the fallacies of government.

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk was the student of Carl Menger and the teacher of Ludwig von Mises.