Minnesota Somali Scammers Prove That Politics Is a Spoils System

12/12/2025 Notes in the Margin

Christopher Chantrill: Most every corrupt government program begins as a moral crusade and ends up as a spoils system: Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, etc.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

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Latest Articles

QJAE: A Note on “Desired Money Balances” and Menu Costs

12/12/2025 Power & Market Jonathan Newman

From the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics : This note argues that the monetary disequilibrium framework mistakes frustrated plans for genuine market disequilibrium (in the sense of a lack of...

JLS: F. A. Hayek’s Thinking in the Light of Evolutionary Science: A Vindication and a Warning

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From the Journal of Libertarian Studies. Abstract: Friedrich Hayek developed a novel evolutionary theory of institutions and society in his last decades of life that was at odds with the prevailing...

Most Economists Still Don’t Understand How Inflation Is Destroying our Economy

12/12/2025 Mises Wire Hal Snarr

Mainstream economists are at a loss to explain why the current regime of inflation and central bank interventions have been so economically devastating. Understanding Cantillon effects is vital to making sense of the current madness.

The Problem with Defaulting in Argentina: A Response to Murphy

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Precedents for sovereign default exist, but they are double-edged.

Our Secret Constitution

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Through the most bloody war in American history to date, Lincoln unleashed an inchoate “secret constitution” that began to bring the US into closer alignment with equality and democracy, which many view as a good thing.

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The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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