Recently the classical liberal legal scholar Richard Epstein criticized “hard-core libertarians.” These extremists want to keep out of “foreign entanglements.” If, as the extremists propose, we act only when there is a direct threat to the United States, “it may be too late.” We should strike immediately against the “forces of death and
A recent column by Steve Forbes on money is a peculiar mixture of insight and error. Forbes rightly says, “The blunt truth is that an active monetary policy has never, ever led to sound, sustainable growth. Without exception it has always done more harm than good, the only variable being the degree of damage rendered...It’s truly amazing that
Today is the sixty-fifth birthday of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. In the Preface to his The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, Hans says: “My largest debt is to Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard, the twentieth century’s two greatest—though much neglected—economists and social philosophers.” Hans is the worthy successor of these great thinkers;
I recommend that readers begin with the essay by Murray Rothbard listed here. As Rothbard often stressed, one cannot infer a nation’s foreign policy from the nature of its domestic regime. Communist totalitarianism did not necessitate an aggressive foreign policy; and in the post-World War II period, Rothbard contended, Russian foreign policy was
Today would have been the eighty-sixth birthday of JoAnn Rothbard, the beloved wife of Murray Rothbard for forty-two years. In the dedication to America’s Great Depression , he called her “the indispensable framework,”and anyone who knew them could have no doubt why he said this. Murray discussed all his ideas with her, and she was a gifted
A young man who attended Mises University last week posted the following on Facebook: At Cato U in San Diego. Just saying: between the two there is NO COMPARISON. Mises remains the gold standard of ideas. The intellectual conversations, the overall decency of the people, and just the welcoming attitude just isn’t the same. Miss you
Dr. Marc Miles, a noted monetary economist, has now joined Mr. John Tamny in criticism of my review of Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames’s book Money . These authors write from a shared viewpoint, and I shall endeavor here to respond to both. In trying to understand my critics, I was puzzled. Forbes and Ames asserted, and I denied, that money
The philosophy of Roy Bhaskar, who died November 19, would ordinarily hold little interest for readers of the Mises Blog . Bhaskar was a Marxist, who in his later years veered off toward a fuzzy spirituality. It is worth taking note of him, though, because he was an extreme example of a besetting sin of the contemporary academic world. His prose
Nathaniel Branden died today. He was for many years the leading follower of Ayn Rand and lectured widely on her philosophy of Objectivism. He and Rand split in 1968, and after that his main work was in the psychology of self-esteem. He was by all accounts a dynamic and effective lecturer. For a brief time, Murray Rothbard and his followers in the
[ This is David Gordon’s introductory essay to Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s new book From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy . ] Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a master of theoretical history. He tells us that it is not my purpose here to engage in standard history, i.e., history as it is written by historians, but to offer a logical or sociological
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.