Mises Wire

For all of the talk about the need for “limited government,” we should always remember that the government has a legal monopoly on violence, and it uses that legal privilege often.

People (including most mainstream economists) assume that only a government bureaucracy can effectively deal with predicting disasters and alerting people in harm's way. However, this is an area of enterprise that is ripe for free markets.

This is all a reminder that one should never take what Fed mouthpieces say as reliable insights into present or future economic trends.

Since the Progressive Era, American foreign policy has seen one military intervention after another, leading to disastrous consequences. Historian Charles A. Beard understood the dangers and futility associated with these interventionist policies.

While many historians claim slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War, they are overlooking the role of tariffs in creating the economic and political divides between North and South before the war began.

In the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln offered an interpretation of the Declaration of Independence which reinterpreted a declaration of secession into a justification for crushing secession.

While Cantillon used the effects on family life to illustrate monetary theory, Degner lingers to employ sound monetary theory to trace out the effects on the family.

Socialism may have failed, as it always does, in Bolivia, but that unfortunately does not mean that it is turning toward the free market.

In this age of the growth of the state, free speech increasingly becomes a casualty. However, elites are unwilling to protect free speech rights and, all too often, it is the elites that are suppressing speech in the first place.

As we look at the current sad state of affairs of American governance, we ask how we got to this point in the first place. The presidency of George H.W. Bush is a good place to start.