Clifford F. Thies

Articles

From Allentown to the Present: How the Iron and Steel Industry Changed

11/18/2025 Power & Market Clifford F. Thies

Billy Joel memorialized the workers of the steel industry in his 1982 song “Allentown.” While popular culture seems to dwell on tragedy, the creative-destruction of the market process also involves progress.

“The Public Be Damned”

10/14/2025 Mises Wire Clifford F. Thies

The famous phrase was uttered by William H. Vanderbilt, which was interpreted to mean that the capitalists didn’t care for their customers. Vanderbilt knew he worked for his stockholders, but in working for them, he had to provide for his railroad’s passengers.

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.