Two large works were published in the 1800s on the subject in question. The first, Protection or Free Trade: An Examination of the Tariff Question, with Especial Regard to the Interests of Labor, was written by Henry George in 1886. The second, The History of Protective Tariff Laws , was written by R.W. Thompson in 1888. Yet today, over one
Truth to Power Mises Review 10, No. 2 (Summer 2004) SPEAKING OF LIBERTY By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2003, 471 pgs. A great many people have learned from Mises and Rothbard, but Lew Rockwell belongs to a much more select class: he has developed their thought in an original way. His essay, “The Economics of
A Reluctant Purist Mises Review 10, No. 2 (Summer 2004) IN DEFENSE OF GLOBALIZATION Jagdish Bhagwati Oxford University Press, 2004, xi + 308 pgs. and FREE TRADE TODAY Jagdish Bhagwati Princeton University Press, 2002, ix + 128 pgs Neoclassical economists often make matters more complicated than necessary; but, fortunately, the best of them manage
Trade and the Iron Hand Mises Review 10, No. 4 (Winter 2004) IN PRAISE OF EMPIRES: GLOBALIZATION AND ORDER Deepak Lal Palgrave, 2004, xxvi + 270 pgs. Deepak Lal writes as a convinced advocate of American Empire. But in the course of the book, he undermines his own reasons for defending imperialism and offers a devastating criticism of democratic
The Free Market 24, no. 6 (June 2004) It is always the fashion among many intellectuals to blame society’s ills on the free market. One college newspaper recently argued that the market is “The God That Sucked.” The course summaries in my university’s catalog, the themes of the lecture series, and the editorial content of the student newspapers
The Free Market 24, no. 10 (October 2004) Just about everyone you talk to these days admits serious dissatisfaction with the election choices this year. And yet most people will eventually decide for the “lesser of two evils”—whatever that is, and there is probably no way to know in advance—realizing that no real viable option is going to
The Free Market 24, no. 10 (October 2004) I recently became a heart patient, something that a former collegiate distance runner finds hard to accept. One day, I am of the belief that I am invulnerable to heart disease, and the next day finds me in a cath lab having angioplasty to unblock three arteries, a sobering turn of events. My article,
On April 21, the Supreme Court heard arguments in U.S. Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen (yes, that’s Nader’s group). Its ruling is expected in June, and it could eliminate the last legal barrier against giving Mexican trucks full access to American highways, by overturning a ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California.
Ludwig von Mises is famous, among other things, for contending that a large-scale socialist economy cannot exist. As he put it , “ without calculation, economic activity is impossible.” He said that the absence of real (i.e., market) prices, in a fully socialist economy, would leave its planners without the means to perform the sort of calculation
Back in 1997, George Soros, a multibillionaire stock and commodities speculator, wrote an essay titled “ The Capitalist Threat” ( The Atlantic Monthly, February1997 . The essential substance of this essay is the claim that the main contemporary threat to a free society is a fully free society--i.e., a society of laissez-faire capitalism. It is a
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.