This blog post originally appeared on lewrockwell.com. Just the other day, on 1/1/04, I wrote a piece called “ Is there a right to unionize? ” Soon after, I received dozens and dozens of responses. Many of them were either simply congratulatory, or raised interesting points I did not address in that article, or, at least, not fully enough. Some
Gentrification gets bad press. It would appear that the gentrifier (he who engages in gentrification) is a malign exploiter, a bully, someone who takes advantage of the weak and the poor. And these are the nice things said about him. What is the case against this practice? First and foremost, it pushes previous residents out of their homes. These
Summary by Luis Rivera III: In this video, Walter Block briefly goes over where rights might come from. He mentions Murray Rothbard’s natural rights theory, the utilitarian argument for rights and Hans Hoppe’s argumentation of ethics. Block, goes over what libertarianism consists of, namely, abiding by the non-aggression principle which he
It is important that the government bail out Fannie and Freddie. The free enterprise system, with its private property rights, profit and loss system of incentives, and market prices that allow individuals to rationally plan, works just fine for all other goods and services: food, clothing, health care, etc. The one exception is housing. Here,
Are supporters of the minimum wage law criminals? Possibly, but not necessarily. Consider the following contention. Merely verbally advocating for “public policies” like the minimum wage constitutes illicit threat, and the perpetrators of such speech should be charged with the “direct” crime of threat in the libertarian Nuremberg trial, not just
To many people, the slumlord — alias ghetto landlord and rent gouger — is proof that man can, while still alive, attain a satanic image. Recipient of vile curses, pincushion for needle-bearing tenants with a penchant for voodoo, perceived as exploiter of the downtrodden, the slumlord is surely one of the most hated figures of the day. The
Some fair-weather friends of free trade have been rethinking their positions in the face of supposed Chinese economic weaponization of pharmaceuticals. They are now embracing managed trade instead. Why? Consider the following threat made by Tsinghua University’s economics professor Dr. Li Daokui: “We are at the mercy of others when it comes to
Demand curves slope in a downward direction. This means that the higher the price, the less of an item, or good, or service will be sought. The more roadblocks, hurdles, thumbtacks, placed in the way of any given action, the less likely it will occur. Economists do not agree on many things, but on this insight there will be nary a dismal scientist
A U or V ? That is the question—whether the economic recovery from the COVID-19 shutdown will be a long, drawn-out process, a wide, flattish U ” or a sharp, upward-bound one, a V . To best wrestle with this question, let us look back a bit at some economic history regarding recessions and depressions, focusing on the US. Is this of interest to
En opinión de la mayoría de los analfabetos económicos, los especuladores no hacen el pan, no suministran medicamentos, se ausentan cuando se trata de trabajar en el taller, no enseñan matemáticas ni violonchelo. Por tanto, son parásitos de otros que sí suministran esos bienes y servicios cotidianos tan necesarios. He aquí una cita de la vida real
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.