Many people find themselves mystified as to why the Mises Institute puts books online for free that it is also trying to sell (elaborating now on some thoughts first put on the blog ). For example, here is Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.’s Speaking of Liberty (which you can also purchase ). Here is Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s The Myth of National Defense
With great art, genius looks effortless. Think of Fred Astaire dancing or Jascha Heifitz playing violin. A whole symphonic work can appear graceful and natural, even easy, but it is merely a mask: you do not observe the blood, sweat, and tears. The audience only participates in the thrill of achievement at its final stage. This is as it should be.
Gary North recently suggested that we count our capitalist blessings and name them one by one, while inviting people to add to a list that would be inexhaustible. My addition: shoes. For years I’ve read to my kids a story about a cobbler and his wife who can’t seem to make enough shoes to bring in enough revenue to put food on the table. One day
The skinny on Spiderman 2 is that this is a movie that even movie snobs can love, and there’s certain truth in this view. Its characters are more introspective and thoughtful than other superhero fare, and its social-critical undercurrent isn’t overtly political enough to become annoying. In fact, its leftist core is barely discernable to most
The gym has Fox television on, and perhaps I should be grateful, because otherwise it would not have dawned on me just how popular and widely embraced stupid is. By stupid, I don’t really intend insult. Stupid is a mental outlook that affirms the crude and base while eschewing the noble and thoughtful. It is an attitude of mind that can be adopted
You may have had a sense lately that something is just not right in your domestic life, not calamitously bad but just bad enough to be annoying on a daily basis and in seemingly unpredictable ways. You are not alone. In fact, a huge variety of personal and social problems trace to a single source. First an inventory to establish what I mean: You
Ads like this one make me shudder, mainly because I once thought of myself as a conservative (for both good and bad reasons). The ad runs, “3 Conservative Books for $1 each,” and examples of such conservative books flash by, all of them screaming for blood, exalting the imperial state, decrying the very basis of civilization (peace), and demanding
A Thanksgiving visit to my Texas hometown provokes the question: it is possible to adore the people and enterprising ethics of a place while abhorring its politics of nonchalant imperialism? There are plenty of theoretical problems with combining laissez-faire economics with the belief that the Texas political establishment ought to otherwise run
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.