In 1981, when I was thinking about starting the Mises Institute, the two things that really motivated me were, one, that I thought that the Austrian school was diminishing in influence in this country and other countries. The other thing: I thought that Mises, who I thought was such a great hero, was no longer being recognized. I thought that was an alarming and quite a terrible thing.

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) represents a misguided attempt to regulate digital marketplaces, resurrecting the outdated and deeply flawed Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) paradigm. This essay argues that the DMA’s structural approach is not merely ill-suited to the dynamic nature of digital markets, but actively harmful, threatening to stifle innovation, impede market progress, and ultimately harm the very consumers it purports to protect.

Many historians have commented on the extent to which Abraham Lincoln centralized federal power in the course of his war against the South. Less often remarked upon is the fact that this trend continued during the Reconstruction era, 1865 to 1877. In his essay “Wichita Justice? On Denationalizing the Courts,” Murray Rothbard observes that the Reconstruction Era provided convenient cover for the expansion of federal authority and further centralization of political power.

September 29, 2024, is the one-hundred-and-forty-third anniversary of the birth of Ludwig von Mises, economist and social philosopher, who passed away in 1973. Von Mises was my teacher and mentor and the source or inspiration for most of what I know and consider to be important and worthwhile in these fields of what enables me to understand the events shaping the world in which we live. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to him, because I believe that he deserves to occupy a major place in the intellectual history of the twentieth century.

Opponents of the Trump campaign are having fun this week with some year-old comments from vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance. Apparently, in a Senate hearing during March 2023, Vance stated that car seat laws have an impact on the number of children parents feel they can afford. As quoted in the Ohio media site cleveland.com:

The phrase “old school economics” is often used positively or approvingly by many, but is rarely explained. What is this school and where is it located? 

You can be sure that it is not what is taught in most college classrooms today. It’s definitely not Keynesian or Marxist economics. But what is it?

September 2024 marks the eightieth anniversary of the publication of the British edition of Friedrich Hayek’s great book The Road to Serfdom. In the book, Hayek makes a powerful argument in defense of the rule of law, the principle that the same legal rules must be applied to everyone who is in a given situation and that the application of the rules must not be subject to governmental discretion.