During the press conference on May 19, 1998, announcing the broad range anti-trust action of the Department of Justice against Microsoft, there was just one piece of evidence cited against the company that pointed to some effort to subvert consumer choice. In an internal memo Microsoft employed the phrase “make the customer” use one of the
One way to prove that someone’s idea makes no sense is to show that it entails something absurd. So you say none of us can know anything. Doesn’t this mean you cannot either? So how then do you know none of us knows anything? You know the rest. This is called the “reductio ad absurdum” argument and it is used all the time to discredit flawed
Sparks flew on the United States Senate floor on Thursday and Friday, October 14 and 15, when Senators from Kentucky, Utah, and Washington took umbrage at Senator John McCain’s allegations of corruption supposedly directly tied to the policy of soft money contributions to senatorial campaigns. Senator McCain had a tough time dodging his three
The only good tax is no tax. Why? How would we fund government without taxes? Those are good questions to ask. But first let’s understand what taxes are. Throughout most of history, governments--usually monarchies headed by kings, emperors, pharaohs and other major or minor tyrants--actually owned everything under their rule, including, believe it
Back in 1980, I applied to become a Congressional Fellow under a program that would place a philosopher or two into some Representative’s office and be in on brainstorming various public policy proposals. I made it to the final list and was invited to go to John Hopkins University in Baltimore where we were interviewed by a selection panel. When
In Tipton, Iowa, a teacher resigns because, reportedly, superiors were about to reprimand her for allowing a student to do research on rapper Eminem. In Mishawaka, Indiana, more than a thousand students were reported to have walked out of school because they didn’t welcome a virtual complete ban on music in response to a parent’s complaint about
The idea of freedom has always had its critics, those who believe that coercive force is required for society to flourish and that the rule of law needs to be supplemented by proactive government policies. Michael Kelly, editor of The Atlantic Monthly magazine and a very fine writer–thinker on many fronts, has offered his own criticism of the
The Free Market 16, no. 5 (May 1998) For years I received the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes mailing and just tossed it. No way would I waste my time for what amounts to a minuscule chance to win a bundle of dough. Sure, some folks win, but they are extremely few. The gimmicks were too obvious. (”When you win, do you want a red, green,
Walter Block has penned a response to my paper in which I argue that there isn’t much more than a verbal difference between limited government (minarchist) and defense-insurance agency (anarchist) libertarians. Block disputes my thesis for one reason: He defines government as necessarily coercive. Volume 21, Number 1 (2007) Machan, Tibor R.
Back in the mid-’80s, I had a very brief stint as a civilian employee with the federal government of the USA. It was actually my second gig with the government, my first having been four years of military service in the U.S. Air Force. Both experiences taught me about a good deal, including public finance. Let’s start with that Air Force
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.