Thomas DiLorenzo’s letter in defense of Microsoft appears in the Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, July 29, 1998: Robert Bork is decades behind the times in antitrust scholarship if he believes there is no efficiency rationale for product bundling (”it produces no significant efficiencies”) or exclusive dealing contracts (”their sole function is to
The Clinton administration and its friends are using global financial problems to push an antiquated agenda. These unreconstructed Keynesians are calling for a “Global New Deal,” ostensibly to put an end, once and for all, to the business cycle. President Clinton championed this view in a speech before a joint meeting of the World Bank and IMF. He
Any settlement between “Big Tobacco” and various state governments would cement in place two destructive precedents: that government has the “right” to control virtually all that we consume and that individuals need not be held responsible for their own foolish behavior (like smoking) as long as a corporation with deep pockets can be blamed
If there were justice in the world, Joan Claybrook, the head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration during the Carter administration, would be handcuffed to the steering column of a Volkswagen Beetle while an air bag was repeatedly blown up in her face. While in the government Claybrook forced on us the mandatory air bag
The journalist, television commentator, and former presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan has been sharply criticized by his fellow Republicans for allegedly betraying Republican party “free-market” principles in his book, The Great Betrayal . In the book Buchanan argues for protectionism and claims to have presented the strongest case ever
Two winters ago back-to-back Nor’easters slammed the mid-Atlantic coast in Maryland and Delaware, causing significant beach erosion and damage to vacation homes, boardwalks, and businesses. Being the owner of a condo in Ocean View, Delaware, I went down to check on any damage. Although it was the middle of February, the ocean resort towns were
The nauseating and psychophantic blather in the media about “America’s Royal Family” and its “tradition of public service” seemed to go on forever after JFK, Jr., “America’s Prince,” killed himself, his wife, and his sister-in-law in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard. The media circus ended its “coverage” with its anointment of Kathleen
*Presentation prepared for the Mises Institute’s conference, “Austrian Economics and the Financial Markets,” Toronto, Canada, September 16-17, 1999. In 1978 Michael Jensen and William Meckling, writing in the Financial Analysts Journal , offered an extraordinarily gloomy prediction for the future of capitalism: “The most spectacular period of
[This article originally appeared in the Austrian Economics Newsletter , Summer 1991, pp. 1–6. You read can also read it in PDF .] Today regulation is generally recognized as a mechanism by which special interests lobby the government to create barriers to entry or other special privileges. Research has shown, for example, that the Civil
Al Gore’s 190-page “economic plan,” as detailed as any of the former Soviet Union’s vaunted “Five-Year Plans,” demonstrates that the American Left still does not accept the worldwide collapse of socialism. As extreme as the Gore economic plan is, with its record spending increases, social engineering through the tax system, environmental
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.