Pope Francis and Ludwig von Mises do not see eye-to-eye on the value of consumer choice. The Pope condemns what Mises defends, and their disagreement goes beyond the obvious. As everyone knows, the Pope condemns what he calls “consumerism.” In a speech delivered in 2015, for example, he said: “Today consumerism determines what is important.
Today is Hans Hoppe’s birthday. He is an outstanding libertarian theorist, in the tradition of Murray Rothbard, and his strikingly original work ranges widely over philosophy, history, and economics. Among his many contributions are a defense of self-ownership and property rights through argumentation ethics and a trenchant criticism of
A recent article in American Affairs by Cass Sunstein illustrates a cast of mind that poses a great danger. Sunstein is a legal academic, well-known for his work in behavioral economics. In his book Nudge , written with Richard Thaler, he informed us of the benefits of having experts like him “nudge” us into making choices that they regard as good
Walter Block has reached an amazing milestone. He is dedicated to his students, and I have often marveled at the way students throng around him whenever he is at Mises University. He is also one of the most prolific economists of our time. He often co-authors papers with students, and these now number 100 peer-reviewed contributions. For anyone
Eric Posner and Gen Weyl claim that economics has become too timid. Posner is an influential law professor at Chicago, and Weyl is a principal researcher at Microsoft. Their article appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education on May 6. Their diagnosis of economics is accurate, but their cure is worse than the disease. Economists today, they say,
The Secular Saints: And Why Morals Are Not Just Subjective . By Hunter Lewis. Axios Press, 2018. Vi + 435 pages. Hunter Lewis has set himself a difficult task: he endeavors to explain why morals are not subjective. To understand his project, we must understand what Lewis means by “subjective” and its contrasting term “objective.” Consider the two
Today would have been Ralph Raico’s eighty-second birthday. He was a foremost historian of classical liberalism and a leading libertarian theorist. He was a member of Murray Rothbard’s legendary Circle Bastiat and one of Murray’s closest friends. Ralph was also my friend for thirty-seven years, and his learning, analytical abilities, and devotion
It is hardly a secret that Pope Francis opposes the free market. On what grounds does he do so? Do any of these grounds have merit? What are the sources of his ideas? How similar are his views to those of previous Popes? These are among the questions addressed by the contributors to an important new book, Pope Francis and the Caring Society ,
[ The Road to Freedom and the Demise of Nation States . By Peter B. Bos. Free Trade Press, 2015. Xxv + 620 pages.] This remarkable book reflects the author’s enthusiasm for liberty and his vast intellectual curiosity. I propose to discuss only a few of the book’s central insights, but only reading the book will adequately convey Peter Bos’s
Nineteenth-century European liberalism stemmed from two main sources. First, John Locke developed traditional natural law theory in a new direction. In his Second Treatise on Government , he argued that everyone has a property in his own person; this is exactly the self-ownership principle of Murray Rothbard’s libertarianism. On this basis,
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.