Writing in Barron’s, Associated Scholar Per Bylund reviews George Gilder’s The Information Theory of Capitalism and How It Is Revolutionizing Our World. Parts of Knowledge and Power are well argued. Gilder’s treatment of John Maynard Keynes and his disciple Paul Krugman is quite accurate, although it may seem intemperate and blunt. Considering
Since the earliest stage of human history (say, the time of Cain and Abel), human beings have been homicidal maniacs. Yet, for untold ages, something was missing, something with the capacity to raise their murderous mania to truly magnificent heights. Only very late in human history—perhaps 10,000 years ago or thereabouts—did the long-awaited
Mainstream economics has a tremendous ability to take any substantive idea and transform it into an ooze of technicalities from which an endless stream of competing theoretical and econometric models may be squeezed indefinitely, or until the researchers’ fancy shifts to a newer sexy issue on which they can lavish their talent for pyrotechnics. As
My greatly esteemed friend Vernon Smith turned 86 years of age yesterday. Vernon is, among other things, the leading figure in the development of experimental economics, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in 2002. For various methodological reasons, I have never been a fan of experimental economics. To me, it represents the sort of positivism
James M. Buchanan , one of the past century’s most distinguished economists and most compelling champions of free markets, died earlier today at age 93. His professional career spanned more than sixty years, during which he wrote extensively on public finance, economic philosophy, and other topics in related areas. With Gordon Tullock, he founded
Arline Alchian Hoel reports that her father, Armen Alchian, “passed away peacefully in his sleep early this morning at his home in Los Angeles.” He was 98 years old. Armen Alchian was a major figure in the economics profession for more than half a century. At UCLA, where he spent his academic career as a faculty member in the department of
In July 1940, when Ludwig and Margit von Mises made their way by bus from Switzerland across German-occupied France [Note: Mises was Jewish], the bus driver had to proceed very carefully and make many detours via back roads to avoid German checkpoints. If you would like to play with a fascinating exercise in counterfactual history, imagine how
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.