Modern political economy is based upon a Machiavellian belief in might makes right. Yet, political power cannot accomplish what free markets and private property rights have done in lifting billions of people out of poverty.
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Audio recordings of Mises Wire articles, offering contemporary news and opinion through the lens of Austrian economics and libertarian political economy.
From time to time, the American people need to be reminded who is the boss. The boss is the US government. The citizenry are the serfs, the servants, the subordinates.
Restoring the rule of law and Constitutional government on immigration—something wrecked by Trump's rule-by-decree with federal agents—is vastly more important than expelling illegal immigrants.
The fact that the Republican and Democratic parties are allowed to circulate into key positions of government is proof enough that they are no threat to the true governing elites.
If California voters and politicians do not understand the current crisis, we will see the continuous march to perdition as California politicians refuse to acknowledge that they are killing the geese laying the golden eggs.
In most nations of any size, sectionalism is almost inevitable. How nations handle such divisions, historian Frank L. Owsley, determines if sectionalism is peaceful or becomes violent. It became violent in the US in 1861.
Politicians are touting “affordability” to describe the current regime of rising prices. However, most lawmakers who claim they are trying to make things more affordable demand policies that make things more costly.
A bad end is most likely though even in the best case scenario of AI increasing living standards. The build-up of asset inflation malinvestment and overleveraging will impose huge costs.
Thanks to the Federal Reserve, the US government will always have enough printed money to fund its tyrannical schemes.
Totalitarian societies do not become that way overnight. There are recognizable signs and stages which show how a society slides into that abyss.
There is no reason to be surprised by the total lack of commitment to any ideological standards. Nor is there any reason to expect anything better. That's just how American politics works.
Will the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) succeed? If the regulatory story of DDT is a prime example of government regulation in action, then the answer is a resounding no.
By hiring a communist as his main housing adviser, New York Mayor Zohram Mamdani is fully committed to driving out private ownership of rental properties and handing over apartments to the city and politically-connected organizations. It will only make housing problems worse.
The Bill of Rights transformed the Constitution from one of supreme and total national power to a partially mixed polity where the liberal anti-nationalists at least had a fighting chance.
While unity sounds like a nice thing to have, when it comes to politics and nation-states, experience repeatedly shows that unity is the tool of those who build state power at the expense of freedom.
The latest killing of a protester in Minneapolis by federal agents is reminiscent of the shooting of Vickie Weaver by a government sniper in 1992. In both cases, the government has refused to acknowledge wrongdoing and has engaged in legal coverups.
Constitutionalism gives us the expectation of governance according to rules that everyone from those that are governed to the ones that govern are expected to obey. But what happens if those that govern exempt themselves from those rules?
For all of the demands for reparations for blacks, the schemes so far have been unworkable and would not address the real wealth gaps between black and white Americans.
Murray Rothbard recounts how during the French and Indian War (1754–63), Americans continued the great tradition of trading with the enemy.
In the so-called world of strategic alliances, things often are not what they seem to be. It is that way with the Islamic State or ISIS, which supposedly is a deadly enemy of Israel. However, Israel has a symbiotic relationship with Jihadist groups that we cannot ignore.
