Intellectual property is inherently disruptive to the market mechanism, as the latter is understood by Austrian economics, and is thus prejudicial to human welfare. To understand why, one must first understand the social function of entrepreneurship in the market economy. Entrepreneurs arrange and deploy the factors of production in order to
The excellent personal tech columnist Walter Mossberg discusses the marketing genius exhibited by Steve Jobs (who just announced his retirement ) throughout his career (see video below). About Jobs and Steve Wozniak’s introduction of the Apple II, he says, They popularized the idea of the personal computer. () But after bringing the personal
The city of Salem, Oregon invoked a law that prohibits residents from having more than three yard sales per year to shut down a woman with terminal bone cancer who was trying to raise money to pay her medical bills. The Reddit community is aghast at such heartlessness. Yet they do not realize that most of them support policies that result in
Mises wrote , “No foreign aggressor can destroy capitalist civilization if it does not destroy itself.” This implies that the sole way a foreign aggressor can contribute toward capitalist civilization’s destruction is to goad it into destroying itself. That was what Osama Bin Laden was trying to do all along. And the war party (along with its
Genghis Khan . Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history – after his murderous conquests killed so many people that huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest. The Mongol leader, who established a vast empire between the 13th and 14th centuries, helped remove nearly 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, claims
Here is a first go at a new podcast: “Mises Weekly”, a two-hour discussion of all the previous week’s Mises Daily Articles between myself and Abhi Mallick. Sorry, audio quality on this one is not too good. But let us know if this is something we should pursue
This is brilliantly done. Topic for discussion: what is Papola (who, it is clear now, is a creative genius) trying to say by structuring the outcome of the fight the way he does? The way Hayek’s “Who plans for whom?” question is worked in as a lyric is superb. The question is the topic of an entire chapter in Road to Serfdom , which is the subject
Brendan O’Neill writes: What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are ‘rising up’ – actually they are simply shattering their own communities – represent a generation that has been more suckled by the state than any generation before it. They live in those urban territories where the sharp-elbowed
The holiday season has just passed; so, many readers of Mises.org may have recently butted heads with statist family members. One might think that, in our endeavors to change minds, our own family members and friends should be the easiest conquests. Do we not have frequent opportunities for lengthy conversations with them? Does not their respect
A 3.5 hour discussion between myself and Abhi Mallick about last week’s Mises Dailies. Click to stream, right click to download. Mises Weekly, Episode 2 The following articles are discussed in this episode: The Rationale for Total Privatization Mar 14 2011 by Hans-Hermann Hoppe The End of Sound Money and the Triumph of Crony Capitalism Mar 14 2011
What is the Mises Institute?
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.