In response to my blog defending the Ayn Rand Institute against slander , one Objectivist curiously asked me (and others) about how anarcho-capitalism would work. It is refreshing when someone new to the concept of anarcho-capitalism (or propertarianism, or plum-line libertarianism) approaches it with an open mind, as you are doing. Let me try to
It is always interesting to see to what lengths pro-Bush supply siders will go to in order to deny the existence of problems in the U.S. Economy. Just take Alan Reynolds’ latest townhall.com article . In it, he attacks those of us who believe in a housing bubble and more specifically Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Roach. First he attacks a straw
Gates taking a seat in your den : Q: In recent years, there’s been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, “We’ve got to look at patents, we’ve got to look at copyrights.” What’s driving this, and do you think
Tin Whiskers: The Next Y2K Problem? My company (we make semiconductor lasers) is scrambling along with other high-tech electronics and laser manufacturers to meet the growing wave of regulations—from Europe, Japan, and probably others—requiring lead to be phased out of various types of electronic products. As this article points out, this is
The latest legislative insanity comes from HR 1677 , sponsored by Delegate John Cosgrove (R-78) . The latest judicial insanity comes from Bastine: Apparently, pregnant women can’t get divorced in Washington. Shawnna Hughes had hoped to divorce her abuse husband by Christmas of 2004, but when the Judge Bastine found out she was pregnant, he gave
The Heritage Foundation has recently released a new Index of Economic Freedom . Yet the flaws of this index are so serious that the index cannot be taken seriously. First of all, they often use incorrect facts. They claim for example that Denmark has a 26,5% top income tax rate. The real number is 54%. But even setting aside they do not have their
At the barbershop, I sat down to the house computer and found it unusable, crammed with spyware/adware with no obvious way to run a program to clean it. After speding an hour with the machine and realizing it would take another few before it was clean, I began to ask questions about how it became this way. Well, it turns out that this is the
A discussion on a private email list brought up a familiar topic: When is it permissible for self-described anarchists (let’s restrict ourselves here to anarcho-capitalists) to take government money? This is a tricky question, and I have yet to see someone offer a satisfactory list of necessary and sufficient conditions. Usually when an-caps argue
Britain’s National Association of Pension Funds wants a Citizen’s Pension (the report is here ). Every UK resident over State Pension Age should get £105 a week from the State. Linked to average earnings, it would provide “adequacy, simplicity, inclusion, encouragement to save, efficiency, and certainty”. That’s really going some. Let’s start with
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.