For as long as I can remember, this country has gotten itself all worked up every four years or so trying to pick just the right person to be in charge of the executive branch. It’s always a mess, and it always turns out the same way: We elect a president, and everything goes to pot. And now I hear we’re going to have to go through this again! We
US Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns recently said that Australia should end its wheat export-marketing monopoly. In a statement that proves at least one lawyer does understand economics, he stated: “By the nature of things, monopolies tend to be trade distorting.” We can only wait with bated breath for the US government to call for the end of
The thoughts of Ludwig von Mises will not be completely absent from the American Economic Association’s annual meeting this year. Besides a session on “Buchanan and Hayek on the Constitutional Order” where he may make an appearance, Edmund Phelps of Columbia University has a paper where he begins by discussing Mises’s insight on the economic
A paper by Ray Fisman and Edward Miguel for the National Bureau for Economic Research postulates that the number of parking tickets that legally-immune foreign diplomats acummulate in NYC and refuse to pay is a great measure of how corrupt their home countries are . The list of violations per diplomat was led by Kuwait, Egypt, Chad, Sudan, and
I posted the following perhaps intelligent, somewhat educational comment in response to a plethora of posts denouncing Chuck Hagel’s stand on the Israeli-Lebanese conflict and his call for a withdrawal of US troops in Iraq within 6 months: Hagel is a real hero. Many of you seem to be lacking an education of what conservatism really is and have no
In response to Stephen Kinsella , since the comments section was getting a little bogged down in other matters: The Top 12 History Books for Libertarians The Rise and Decline of the State, Martin Van Creveld Conceived in Liberty, Murray Rothbard The Triumph of Liberty, Jim Powell Modern Times, Paul Johnson Reassessing the Presidency, John Denson
In this age of internet-enabled politics the smoke-filled backrooms of politics as usual are having a hard time keeping the answer to “cui bono” a secret. One site has observed that currently the government has no “system for assimilating, organizing, and releasing information on the hundreds of billions of tax dollars that are spent each year on
John Tierney of The New York Times has finally found the economic miracle that is Estonia and has the intestinal fortitude to discuss it in the “paper of record” in an op-ed piece from September 5th: It’s a boomtown with a beautifully preserved medieval quarter along with new skyscrapers, gleaming malls and sprawling housing developments: Prague
With the recent news that Bill Gates will give up stewardship of Microsoft in the next two years to concentrate on his foundation work. And, the news that the second-richest man in the world will give his fortune to the richest man in the world, it is important to recall that things actually get done absent government involvement. As Samuel Pepys
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.