Mises Wire

The Americans were willing to disperse, but not to disarm. So on April 19, 1775, they took up arms against one of the most powerful regimes on earth.

South Vietnam ceased to exist as a separate country 50 years ago. What followed was an object lesson on the failures of socialism, as Marxist ideology turned Vietnam into one of the world's poorest countries. Vietnam‘s “second revolution” was successfully embracing a market economy.

The first 100 days of the second Trump administration have made it clear that those who want the foreign policy status quo to continue are serious about doing what it takes to accomplish their goals, while those who want to change it are not.

How can we determine if a private company is a true partner of the state—truly benefiting from state power—or if the private company is really a victim of the state?

Higher education has become unaffordable and its curriculums hopelessly politicized. We should remember that all of this is a result of programs developed more than a half-century ago to make higher education more accessible.

When modern progressives claim to support equity, what they really mean is the confiscation of wealth and transferal of private property to politically-favored groups. These policies have a sorry history from Reconstruction and continued through the 20th century communist regimes.

The US government has long pushed to establish government-sponsored cartels and monopolies that weakened free-market competition and enriched incumbent businesses, unions, and other interest groups.

Carl Menger wrote, “All things are subject to the law of cause and effect.” Unfortunately, modern academic economists all too often confuse correlation of economic phenomena with causality.

The welfare state is supposed to signal the existence of the “compassionate” society that provides care for all. However, this “compassion” has resulted in the proliferation of social pathologies that undermine civilization itself.

People claim to support “equal opportunity” over the idea of equal outcomes, but when one examines both concepts, it becomes obvious that neither is possible or even desirable. Murray Rothbard understood more than most that equality of opportunity is a chimera.