Earlier today, Dr. David Gordon took to the Mises Institute’s Facebook page to answer questions submitted by our followers. Here’s the transcript: Q: Would Mises have advocated for socialism if it turned out that it was better than capitalism at satisfying people’s ends, encouraging economic growth, etc.? What about Rothbard? Dr. David Gordon:
Jason Brennan, a remarkably prolific libertarian political philosopher, has a good eye for the essence of an argument. He puts this ability to effective use in Why Not Capitalism? In the book he challenges the defense of socialism in Why Not Socialism? by G.A. Cohen, whom Brennan rightly considers “the leading Marxist philosopher — and one of the
These United States: A Nation in the Making, 1890 to the Present , was published last month, and already it has attracted attention and acclaim. The book was written by two eminent historians, Glenda Gilmore of Yale and Thomas Sugrue of NYU. According to one reviewer, the book “wears its leftist politics on its sleeve.” Whether one likes such
The Economist reports that economist and Nobel Laureate Douglass North has died: Mr North’s work tended to focus on the biggest questions in economics, namely, how it is that some countries in some places became rich while others remained poor. His research came to emphasise the role of institutions in shaping long-run economic outcomes. While the
Last week, Matt Zwolinski, a philosopher from the University of San Diego, argued on the Tom Woods show that libertarians ought to support a basic income guarantee. Woods, genial but sharp and relentless in his questions, brought out the full extent to which Zwolinski’s proposal differs from libertarianism as commonly understood. Zwolinski thinks
Christian Human Rights . By Samuel Moyn. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 248 pages. Samuel Moyn could take for his own Lord Acton’s remark that “few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas.” Moyn, a distinguished intellectual historian, has in several books argued that appeals to human rights in recent
Irwin Schiff, imprisoned for his resistance to the federal income tax, died yesterday. Efforts by his son, the noted financial commentator Peter Schiff, to secure his release from prison so that he could die with his family were unsuccessful. Schiff’s sad passing illustrates an essential truth about the state: if you resist its orders, you will be
Today is Ralph Raico’s seventy-ninth birthday. He is the greatest living historian of classical liberalism and a leading libertarian theorist. He was a member of Murray Rothbard’s legendary Circle Bastiat and one of Murray’s closest friends. Ralph has been my friend for more than thirty-five years, and his learning, analytical abilities, and
Today is Hans Hoppe’s birthday. He is an outstanding libertarian theorist, in the tradition of Murray Rothbard, and his strikingly original work ranges widely over philosophy, history, and economics. He is a scholar of the highest integrity and courage, and all lovers of liberty are in his
[This review of Charles Murray’s new book “By the People” appears in the September-October 2015 issue of The Austrian .] Charles Murray thinks that government has become arbitrary and tyrannical. In doing so, it has betrayed the “Madisonian” heritage of America, which strictly limited the power of the government to interfere with individual
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.