Maybe it was the holiday spirit. Or maybe it was the impatient line of holiday shoppers anxiously waiting for me to finish paying the cashier. Regardless, I let an economic fallacy slide without comment. As the cashier was totaling my bill, she asked if she could pack some of my goods in the plastic bag I was holding; a plastic bag that previously
The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain’s orders. The captain is the consumer. Neither the
Art Carden’s great article on windfall profits brings up an issue that really gets under my skin. Carden notes, “People often point to the run-up in gas prices — some gas stations were charging over $3 a gallon — after the September 11 attacks as an example of firms enjoying windfall profits.” Ah, yes, the price gougers. In the late morning and
The nature of man being what it is, the desire for fun and leisure is limitless. After a hard week of working and saving, Friday night is enough reason to open the barn door for music and celebration. Farmer Bob woke Monday to face another week of reaping that which he had sown. He knows the routine: out to the fields in the morning for a long day
Does government function as a club or a prison? In particular, are local taxing districts — local governmental entities — simply clubs where residents voluntarily pay fees set by an elected board? Or, are these districts nothing more than prisons, so to speak, where the governing body extracts fines and penalties from land and labor? First, let us
Two articles from a recent edition of The Columbus Dispatch make use of meaningless aggregations. First off is the collective political force. A columnist writes , “But in November, voters elected a Democratic House and a Republican Senate to safeguard Ohio’s cashbox.” As if voters across the state conspired to split the Ohio legislature.
“In all the general assemblies Marin always demands that the older boys like him shall have more work than the younger ones. There is always a big discussion on this; sometimes it is settled one way, sometimes another. “I can work all day from sun-up to dark,” boasts Marin, “and it won’t hurt me now. But when I was little, I sprained my wrist from
Hmmm. Some issues do not have a simple, straightforward answer. Consider this controversy being debated in Central Ohio. As reported in The Columbus Dispatch , “The graduation ceremony for Centerburg High School students has been canceled after school officials say many seniors cheated by obtaining copies of tests hacked from the school’s computer
The discussions over IP awakened a memory of an old NPR segment. The summary of “ Copyrighted Music and Phones “: Two Australian artists have written and copyrighted a composition that includes the notes corresponding to the touch-tone phone sounds for every conceivable 7- and 8-digit phone number. Therefore, they say that every time a phone
Just when the market cleans the air, in steps the regulators . The e-cigarette solves the smoke issue by atomizing a nicotine solution in a pen-size device. Pretty slick. But, wait. The feds consider the e-cigarette a nicotine delivery system. Sure, and Mountain Dew is a caffeine delivery system, just as Ho-Hos are a sugar and fat delivery system.
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.