Mises Wire

The state is held together by violence and nothing else. There is no such thing as "the social contract." But even violence cannot make a state last past its time, as we saw with the USSR.

If Staten Island is allowed to secede, our national technocrats fear that might open up countless similar demands for self-determination across the nation. For the elites, the current status quo works quite well and they want to keep it that way. 

More than forty years ago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn urged his fellow Russians “not to live by lies.” In our politicized age, his words ring truer than ever.

Obamacare's forced electronic medical recordkeeping is denying patients the care they need.

The call for "price stabilization" was part of the recent Republican debate. Despite its attractive appearance, having the Fed try to "stabilize prices" is a very bad idea.

Slavery was driven into the heart of the new constitution: in the three-fifths clause, in the protection of slave importation for twenty years, in the fugitive slave clause, and even in the congressional power to suppress insurrections within the states.

Just-wage theory tells us that an employer cannot reduce his workers' wages below some presumed "cost of living." Yet, that same employer can be permitted to reduce the worker's wage to zero if the worker has been replaced by a machine. 

The Nigerian government should have seen the economic disaster the eNaira would cause. They didn’t, and chaos and rioting followed.

There are no more rabbits for the Fed monetary magicians to pull out of their hats. In an economy addicted to artificially low interest rates, any more moves by the Fed will trigger an economic downturn.

While Leo Strauss did not share G.W.F. Hegel's acceptance of historicism, nonetheless he gives Hegel a sympathetic review. David Gordon takes a closer look at both men.