Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending, for the second time, the Austrian Student Scholars Conference at Grove City College. 22 students from various colleges gathered together to present and discuss their research. The topics ranged from abstract philosophical considerations of methodology and libertarianism to more concrete applications of theoretical insights to history and current political and social issues.
Thomas DiLorenzo’s book How Capitalism Save America has been awarded the Smith-FEE prize for best book (in 2003-2005) by the selection committee of the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics.Hey, the commies are attacking Mises! But the article has all the expected confusions, like conflating public and private bureaucracy. Some stuff here is actually quite right: “In spite of the move away from public ownership and toward private ownership, governments around the world have continued to take taxpayers’ money and essentially use it to subsidize private industry and to enhance the instruments of repression and war.”
Umm, right, and Misesians are against that.
I recently heard from Jason McBride, who was the subject of my last Mises.org article, “The Right to Set Your Own Price”. McBride, a gas station owner from Aliceville, Alabama, was arrested for violating Alabama’s “anti-gouging” law on the day that Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.Jason told me that there was more to the story than what had been reported in the newspapers.
Given the recent events in France, I thought it might be worth calling attention again to the film Hate on the Mises film list. Here is what I wrote about it a couple years ago (also see my related review of Once Were Warriors):
Well, surprise, surprise, yet another study detailing the chilling effects of patents on innovation and science. Patent advocates, take heed.
