Perhaps you have received an e-mail such as the following (which I have edited): I am _____, the personal assistant/in-law to the late General Robert Guei of Cote D’Ivoire who was killed in an arranged military mutiny last week. I wish to solicit for your confidential assistance to receive the total of US$56M (Fifty-six Million United States
Is it mere coincidence that the movie “Frida” stars and is co-produced by Hayek (Salma, that is)? Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter of the early to mid 20 th century, renowned for her self-portraits. She and her on again, off again husband, Diego Rivera, himself a great muralist, were famous for their avante-garde lives and for their romance with
That some factors of production are mobile, says the new protectionist, “proves” that free trade is not as attractive as (supposedly) David Ricardo argued. But factor mobility is not new. It has long been accepted by economists that either goods or people (and other factors of production) move. Indeed, part of the argument for free trade between
There’s a movement afoot to place a portrait of our nation’s fortieth President, Ronald Reagan, onto one of the denominations of our currency. The last two changes, putting first Susan B. Anthony’s countenance, and then Sacagawea’s on the $1 coin, proved to be failures. The prior two changes, putting President John F. Kennedy’s face on the 50¢
In The Victorian Internet (New York: Walker & Co., 1998), Tom Standage makes the point that the telegraph was the nation’s first internet. Regarding this, Standage is correct. The telegraph did, as the mail had not been able to do, tie the nation together. The telegraph not only increased the speed of communication, and lowered its cost, but it
A disturbing trend after Katrina was summed up in George Bush’s promise to have the federal government completely rebuild the Gulf Coast better than before the storm, and do so with taxpayer money. Can we really expect government to create quality cities using redistribution, government programs, and regulations? The Bay Area Center for Voting
The attack on Wal-Mart essentially comes down to this: opposition to economic progress, defined as greater availability of goods and services people want, at ever lower prices, indicating an ever wiser use of resources in the service of society. It is hardly the first time such progress inspired opposition. In 1868, the Pennsylvania Rail Road
At my supermarket, there’s a machine that says “convert your coins into money,” for which service it charges “only” 3 percent. Aren’t coins already money? And, why should it cost money to convert one form of money into another form? As to whether coins are or are not money, perhaps it depends on their legal tender status. That is, how many coins
Following the Panic of 1819, the state of Kentucky sought to provide relief from the suddenly harsh burden of debt on many of its citizens, by creating the Bank of the Commonwealth, a new kind of bank, one completely owned by the state government and not at all bothered by specie, and by suspending foreclosure for up to two years upon the tender
The Islamic Republic of Iran has just issued a new 50,000 rial banknote. An eye-catching feature of the banknote is the atomic symbol on its reverse side, an orange-hued representation of six electrons in orbit. Money has been “backed” by a wide range of things, from silver and gold, to central banks, to assertions of raw power. This atomic symbol
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.