Market economies are not only efficient but just, founded on individual liberty, division of labor, and private property. Free markets produce every product and every service desired. Free markets distribute all products and services through voluntary exchanges. Centrally planned economies all experience problems caused by government interventions
This article originally appeared in The Free Market , September 1999. The Mississippi River Basin is the largest river basin in the world, and stretches from New York to Idaho and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In the course of American history, the river often flooded, but not until 1927 had so many people been killed and left homeless and
[This article is excerpted from chapter one of The Economics of Prohibition .] Prohibition has an ever-increasing impact on our daily life. In the United States, prohibition against certain drugs, involving “wars” on them, has become one of our most visible and hotly debated national problems. The purpose of the following investigation is to
Introduction [ previous article ] The Origins of the “Economics” of Prohibition In Defense of Prohibition Prohibition’s Blue Monday The Economics of Heroin Prohibition The Economics of Addiction [This article is excerpted from The Economics of Prohibition .] Economists and Prohibition “I hold that there is nothing much wrong with standard economic
Congress purported to act to protect the values of the American people when it passed the “Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.” The result has been a serious blow to a growing industry. Whose values was Congress protecting? It had nothing to do with the American people at large. Congress was protecting the “values” of casino owners and
[This talk was delivered on October 27, 2006, at “Imperialism: Enemy of Freedom,” the Mises Institute Supporter’s Summit. It is available in MP3 audio from Mises Media .] People poke fun at Austrian economists because we support the gold standard. They cannot understand why we would “cling” to this “relic” of history. They view it as going
The purpose of this paper is to show how the “system” works, why it generates bubbles, why they eventually burst, and the macroeconomic effects of bubbles. Here we apply the economic understanding of bubbles derived from the Austrian business cycle theory (ABC theory) to the current case of the housing bubble and show that this aspect of the
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.