Life is full of hidden costs, taxes, and other annoyances that hit us hard in the wallet, but one gnat in particular has been biting at me since the day I set up my first residential telephone line. It’s the “phonebook fee,” a monthly charge BellSouth, GTE and other telephone companies exact for the privilege of keeping our private information out
The Pony Express riders of yore must have been unhappy when the railroads took their jobs. But just as the Iron Horse replaced the flesh and blood horse in the nineteenth century as the preferred method of mail delivery, today, email is supplanting regular mail. Yet instead of graciously riding off into the sunset, the Postal Service is fighting
Bill Clinton’s unpaid legal bills now exceed his net assets by several million dollars. And now, just as the president is getting ready to pack his bags, Franette McCulloch has seen to it that he’ll have one more lawsuit to deal with, one more charge of sexual harassment, and one more demand for $1 million on his way out the door. It started in
As you read this, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is deciding whether the Internet file-sharing service Napster will continue operating or be shut down by a lower court’s injunction issued last July. The injunction was stayed by a two-judge panel of the same appeals court and allows Napster to keep
Beside signing appropriations bills containing $20 billion in pork before leaving town last week, the 106th lame-duck Republican Congress left another nasty surprise for individuals wanting to save money on their health care expenses: it failed to renew the pilot program for medical savings accounts (MSAs). MSAs were introduced in the U.S. four
What was once a center stage, winning issue for Reagan-type Republicans now fails to strike a responsive chord with the electorate. As if to advertise the tax issue’s demise, the GOP recently coupled a minuscule tax reduction with an increase in the minimum wage. Pundits offer various reasons for the demise. One is the healthy economy. The
In a U.S. presidential election where about 100 million votes are likely to be cast, what is the probability that your vote will be decisive in determining the outcome? Like it or not, the probability is pretty small---zero for all practical purposes. The probability hurdle is twofold. First, the presidential vote tally in your state would have
Pollsters tell us that potential American voters see Al Gore as being “better” on the healthcare issue. I’m not sure what “better” means, but I think that voters believe that the Stiff Who Wants to be President will “give” us a better healthcare system than what currently exists. Al promises to provide less costly medical care. I have serious
The judge in the Microsoft antitrust trial, Thomas Penfield Jackson, recently stated that he “didn’t see a distinction” between Bill Gates’s Microsoft Corporation and John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. The judge is right, but for the wrong reasons. Like Gates, Rockefeller was the victim of a vindictive political assault on his company for
Joel Klein, the third-rate lawyer/political hack who is in charge of the government’s Microsoft persecution, recently tried to rationalize the lawsuit by saying that it was in keeping with the long history of consumer protection regulation, beginning with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. In reality, the history of antitrust has been a history of
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.