The political scientist and sociologist Max Weber defined the state as any “human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” There are variations on this definition, with historian of the state Charles Tilly preferring the word “coercion” to “legitimate use of physical
The Liberty and Ethics Center at Lindenwood University is headed by Prof. Rachel Douchant, a former Mises Fellow and Mises U alumnus. This year, the Center welcomed Robert Higgs for its keynote address: Higgs was also interviewed for the Center’s video series, Free Exchange:
Ravi Wu reports the completion of several volumes in Traditional Chinese: 該做什麼。What Must Be Done by Hans-Hermann Hoppe 自由與財產 Liberty & Property by Ludwig von Mises 私有防禦 The Private Production of Defense by Gustav de Molinari 年輕人的經濟課 Lessons for the Young Economist by Robert Murphy 國家解剖學 Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard 搞懂經濟 Making
In a recent speech to the Council of Institutional Investors, Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin outlines who’s to blame for the current collapse. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t even mention the Federal Reserve or Fannie or Freddie. Here are some of his bigger howlers with my comments in brackets: Wolin Remarks before the Council of Institutional
Homeowners have started to get wise to the fact that, even if they don’t bother making payments, lenders won’t be evicting the residents any time soon. For a while now, more and more articles have been appearing the press noting big increases in the number of people who simply stop paying their mortgages. In the past, however, the attention has
The national debt will soon be 100 percent of GDP. This isn’t a magic number, of course. Not a whole lot will be different than when the debt is 95 percent of GDP. But it does show that economic growth simply hasn’t been strong enough in the last decade to keep the debt below 100 percent in spite of all the claims that debt means nothing because
The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has now cost the taxpayer at least 146 billion. By the end, the bailout will likely cost anywhere from $500 billion to $1 trillion. The damage done by Fannie and Freddie is not limited merely to the bailouts. Fannie and Freddie were the main engines behind the securitization drive that drove so much of the
We’ve seen plenty of them in the totally ravaged markets like Las Vegas of course, but some have begun to wonder where all the commercial foreclosures are? We don’t hear about a lot of foreclosures in apartment buildings, for example. Well, apartment buildings won’t foreclosure in large numbers, because, as a substitute good for for-sale housing,
MSNBC today features an article on the job disaster that the GenY/Millennials are facing. These are people born in the 1980s and 1990s who who were unfortunate enough to enter the job market at one of the worst possible times in history. The piece features one person, but if you were wondering how this nice person isn’t able to find a job, you
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.