The law of unintended consequences surely isn't universal. Government often seeks to destroy things and truly does succeed in doing just that (alternative medicine, unlicensed professionals, and the like). What it taxes in order to punish, it truly does punish (cigarettes, alcohol, imports that compete with powerful domestic industries). What' [...]
This post is one in a series entitled Posthumous Refutations.
Back in 2005, Rainbough Phillips at Distributed Republic had the splendid idea of a Capitalism Appreciation Day. She walked the reader through her day expressing her appreciation for every for-profit entity that made her life more pleasant. It [...]
Dubai is delaying payment on its debts and that has sent stock markets around the world lower. This could be a trigger that reverses the remarkable bear market rally that has taken place since March.
Dubai was also the location of the crisis signal in the Skyscraper Index in [...]
Can you imagine how awesome a blog by Murray Rothbard would be? Or Mises Dailies by Mises himself? These great men were not given their full due in their lifetimes, because they were writing in the media era of the monolithic broadcast and the monolithic print run. With such a [...]
Anthropogenic global warming has been a dubious proposition from the outset to anyone with the slightest understanding of social science as it pertains to coercive government, science "science," and the nexus of the two. Even if you didn't read about it elsewhere (and there were places where you could), you' [...]
I got a chance to reconnect with former students and colleagues, and meet several people for the first time (even a few fans). I particularly enjoyed meeting Louis Carabini, the event's sponsor. FULL ARTICLE by Gary Galles
At the YAF convention in St. Louis, I organized the draft-card burning -- an event many regard as the birth of the modern libertarian movement. FULL ARTICLE by Don Meinshausen
Harding cut the budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third. The depression ended quickly. FULL ARTICLE by Thomas Woods
[...]Jason Rosenhouse over at Evolution Blog provides the following "breain teaser":
It is the month of August; a resort town sits next to the shores of a lake. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on [...]
When the state is recognized to be the enemy of society, then only will freedom come, and the citadel of power collapse. FULL ARTICLE by Frank Chodorov
[...]
Rothbard's detailed review of the many specific actors in the debate of the early 1800s, when the banking system was in its formative stage, suggests that policy discussions back then were more sophisticated than now. FULL ARTICLE by William W. Baker
The zero-interest-rate tax strips the interest income from savers and hands it to government, and morally justifies this as stimulating the economy through deficit funding. FULL ARTICLE by Sarel Oberholster
[...]As I mentioned in Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way, in in In re Bilski, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) modified previous holdings regarding the patentability of software or business-method patents in upholding the rejection of patent claims involving a method of [...]
A fascinating chart from J.P. Morgan provides a look at the percentage of cabinet level political appointees who have private sector experience from Roosevelt to Obama.
Of course there is a downside to private-sector experience. In government, these people tend toward corrupting partnerships between government and business. And yet, [...]
I've done a good deal of writing on Hoppe's argumentation ethics defense of libertarian rights and related matters (see Revisiting Argumentation Ethics, Mises and Argumentation Ethics). I was reminded recently of Guido Hülsmann's superb and unique presentation of argumentation ethics' [...]
The task of the theory of money consists merely in dealing with that component in the valuation of money which is conditioned by its function as a medium of exchange. FULL ARTICLE by Ludwig von Mises
[...]When I was in the Bahamas couple of weeks ago lecturing for the free-market, Nassau Institute, I appeared on one of the most popular and widely listened to radio talk shows in that country.
I spoke about the meaning and idea of individual liberty and the free society; [...]
I'm never surprised when a college professor embraces state censorship. Still, Rick Karcher makes a particularly laughable attempt. He considers it a violation of "journalistic ethics" for the Associated Press to report on, um, government activity:
' [...]
The possible damages of climate change should be compared with the possible damages of governmental bureaucratic intervention and political oppression. FULL ARTICLE by Francisco Capella
One increases production by making investments in more efficient tools. The free-swinging enterpriser, using capitalist savings, is the true hero of the war on poverty. FULL ARTICLE by John Chamberlain
[...]
Competition is not a mode of conduct that anyone has to promote institutionally. It develops naturally and necessarily among persons who are free to pursue their own interests. FULL ARTICLE by Sylvester Petro
At a time when belief in collectivism and paternalistic government is threatening to diminish even more of our shrinking freedom, we need to recall that this has all been tried before. And how it is the free individual, secure in his right to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property that [...]
Frederic Mishkin believes that the Fed should continue with its loose stance, even if doing so blows more bubbles. Mishkin is known as a close confidant of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. FULL ARTICLE by Frank Shostak
Focus on the devastation caused by outbreaks of the Black Death in the mid-14th century is partially correct, but superficial, for these outbreaks were themselves partly caused by an economic breakdown. FULL ARTICLE by Murray N. Rothbard
[...]
Laura was born in 1867 and lived for 90 years. Her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, who died in 1968, is well known to libertarians as the author of The Discovery of Freedom. FULL ARTICLE by Robert M. Thornton
[...]It is sad to see a once-thriving city deserted. The heart-breaking sight of a handful of forlorn stragglers and struggling businesses remaining from what once was a bustling community makes us wonder, "why, why?" Only the most cold-hearted could be indifferent to the painful legacy of broken families, the [...]
I was invited to be a guest on The Peter Mac Show last night and ended up staying on for both hours. It was a pretty in-depth interview. The host asked impressively intelligent questions for someone who had just started coming around to the anti-IP position (after reading my [...]
NewLiberty on the LvMI Forum shares a bevy of links covering the recent climate scandal that seems likely to become even bigger than the Yamal Controversy...
"So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of" [...]
NYT: New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step
Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say.It [...]
Defenders of patents commonly say they are against innovators' ideas being "stolen" or "plagiarized." This implies that patents simply permit an innovator to sue those who copy his idea. This position betrays either disingenuity or ignorance about patent law. Let me explain.
Under copyright law, someone who independently creates an' [...]
"Also, I don't think von Mises and Hayek and the other Austrian economists have gotten enough credit for.. . their theory of the business cycle. I really do think we are experiencing. .. what Austrian business cycle predicts. If you print a lot of money and you send it through'" [...]
I posted the following comment to Cory Doctorow's BoingBoing post Competition and Google Book Search:
Cory, Google is not perfect but the attacks on them for attempting this seem to me to be demonizing the wrong party. The problem is copyright law--a state legal system. The state is, as usual, [...]
Libertarian Press owns the rights to Omnipotent Government by Mises, and we couldn't strike a deal to publish it ourselves, so we did the next best thing: we designed a great cover for it and asked them to do a special print run. This is an amazing work by Mises,' [...]
The far-left is worried that Obama is excessively influenced by Ludwig von Mises.
I know. It's nuts. Discussion on the forum.
[...]
The most important single step on the road to economic recovery is the establishment of a 100-percent reserve system against checking deposits. Ideally, the 100-percent reserve would be in gold. FULL ARTICLE by George Reisman
[...]
The writers and intellectuals who made up the most visible contingent of the "Old Right" were in no meaningful sense on the Right at all. They were on the Left, where they had always been. FULL ARTICLE by Jeff Riggenbach
[...]
Cash-economizing inflation is benign because it is an outcome of individuals striving to optimize their property holdings through the voluntary exchange process. Indeed, it improves economic welfare. FULL ARTICLE by Joseph T. Salerno
While the debate is revving up in Washington this week to decide how the government intends to take over the healthcare industry, the passing of my childhood doctor has me remembering how it used to be.
"For four decades, untold numbers of Abilene area residents called Dr. Rorabaugh their" [...]
If you want to buy a book or DVD from the Web site of Writer David Irving, you'll no longer be able to use your American Express card, and that wasn't Irving's idea. It was the idea, evidently, of New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the district' [...]
Given our dismal reputation, I am happy to report that some economists' recent defenses of the efficient-markets hypothesis are laugh-out-loud funny. Just watch EMH economists try to defend their theory from either refutation or triviality. FULL ARTICLE by Robert P. Murphy
While the book primarily concerns itself with the economic consequences of the strike-threat in our labor market, it presents an equally devastating argument for the superiority of the free market in the determination of the wage rates of labor. FULL ARTICLE by Robert G. Anderson
[...]
It is said, "There is no better investment than taxes. Only see what a number of families it maintains, and consider how it reacts upon industry: it is an inexhaustible stream, it is life itself." FULL ARTICLE by Frederic Bastiat
[...]Jeffrey Tucker will be giving a lecture on the evils of Intellectual Property this afternoon at Auburn University. He will be in the Student Center Room 2107 from 5:30-6:30. This should be an exciting event for those who are able to make it on such short notice.
The WSJ reports on an interview with a Fed official who says that the central bank will keep rates at 0% for two more years at least. But right now, banks have no reason to lend (zero earnings) and no one has any reason to save (zero earnings), and [...]
Hillsdale College is starting a Charter School, and while there is no mention of this in the press release, Charter Schools rely on government money. That's what makes them different from regular private schools. Here is a 1989 explanation by George Roche of the long struggle of this [...]
The late, great Dr. Petr Beckmann was editor of the great journal Access to Energy, founder of the dissident physics journal Galilean Electrodynamics (brochures and further Beckmann info here; further dissident physics links), author of The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear (Amazon) [...]
The CPI rose three tenths of one percent in October and one of the big factors was the rise in used car prices. Used car prices increased 3.4% in October. This is no doubt due to the hundreds of thousands of cars taken off the market and destroyed by [...]
Here is my interview with Lew Rockwell on Murray Rothbard's 60th birthday. Some hilarious moments and really great insights. You will enjoy this. The book we are discussing is Man, Economy, and Liberty. Here is the media page. If you like this and would like some more [...]
The free market possesses the means to regulate itself. Automobiles are not too important to be left to the free market to manage. They are too important to be left to government. FULL ARTICLE by Daniel Hewitt
[...]
No one has yet done what Murray N. Rothbard has so brilliantly succeeded in doing in The Essential von Mises. He has given us, in a brief but remarkably comprehensive form, an outline of Dr. Mises's outstanding contributions. FULL ARTICLE by Henry Hazlitt
[...]
Maynard was tapped for coveted membership in the secret society of the Apostles, an organization that rapidly shaped his values and his life. Keynes grew to social and intellectual maturity within its confines. FULL ARTICLE by Murray N. Rothbard
[...]In my last post on recent discussions in the Mises Institute Forum, I highlighted the "ardor for erudition" among Forum members. However, the Forum's gaze is not only drawn to timeless truths and aureate authors. Hot-button issues are also given their due.
Regarding such issues, there are a [...]
Barack Obama named his first two appointees to the Federal Trade Commission today. Befitting a body that has the unrestricted power to regulate every U.S. company without regard to the Constitution or the laws of economics, Obama named two career lawyers in good standing with the antitrust establishment:
President [...]
Not everyone should go to college, any more than everyone should try to be a concert violinist or a major league ball player. And Junior may be one of those who should not. FULL ARTICLE by F.A. Harper
[...]
Why did a sophisticated, international financial market, but not its insurance equivalent, evolve in the United States? One important reason is the absurdly restrictive US insurance regulation. FULL ARTICLE by Jan Iwanik
[...]
Can we really believe that the FDA bureaucrats are worried about our health and well-being? That these lifetime looters of the taxpayer are sincerely worried about our intake of caffeine and liquor? FULL ARTICLE by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Commentary by those familiar with IP law is usually devoid of libertarian principle. Most IP experts are, unsurprisingly, proponents of the status quo, just as government school teachers tend to favor government schooling and astronauts cheer NASA. FULL ARTICLE by Stephan Kinsella
[...]
Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr
I need to put on a hat just so I can take it off to GM's spin doctors. They are clearly among the best in the world. What other company can claim that losing $1.2 [...]
George W. Bush continues to re-capitulate the arch of the Herbert Hoover disgrace -- botching up the economy with massive government interventions and pathological mis-regulation, then positioning himself as the poster-boy and herald of free markets and limited government.
[...]In Jeff Tucker's superb article If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others?, he notes Rand's increasing focus on exalting the creator and elevating "intellectual rights" to such a height that they totally trump real rights. This is no exaggeration. As I noted in Against Intellectual [...]
An English translation of Adolf Reinach's "Adolf Reinach: The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law" (1913) was included in a special edition of the journal Aletheia in 1983. I've scanned in my copy since it is breaking apart (it is unfortunately adorned with my underlining and' [...]
The Mises Institute has launched a new Mises Book Club in the Community section. This club is a great place for readers to discuss what they are reading and learn about new books. It is mostly user generated, meaning that anyone is free to add a [...]
Since we are living through one of the most historic increases in the interventionist-welfare state in the last hundred years, we need to remind ourselves of the dangers from this massive expansion in the political plunder machine.
The modern state may use the illusionary rhetoric of "social" [...]
When Albert Jay Nock wrote Our Enemy, the State in 1935, he was bucking the tide and he entertained no false hope that his words would have any immediate effect on the course of human events. FULL ARTICLE by Edmund A. Opitz
[...]
Nothing can enter into the function of a medium of exchange which was not already previously an economic good to which people assigned exchange value already before it was demanded as such a medium. FULL ARTICLE by Ludwig von Mises
[...]
The MIT model is the model of the ancient world and every university environment ever since, and it is the only way to deal with a digital society in which every thought becomes globalized upon utterance. FULL ARTICLE by Jeffrey Tucker
After a century of being told that education is a public good that can't be efficiently provided by private means, and that really the state must obtain and retain the monopoly to the service, some people are now scandalized to find that there is indeed a thriving marketplace and' [...]
A highly informative piece by Alf Field, a must read really:
In February 2009 Zimbabwe was the only country in the world without debt. Nobody owed anyone anything. Following the abandonment of the Zimbabwe Dollar as the local currency all local debt was wiped out and the country started [...]
We loved the upgrade on the Mises Classroom. It is beautiful and fast. The platform is IPBoard by Invision Power. The potential here for people to enjoy full forum access to faculty, as a tutorial for Austrian economics, is very high. Everyone is ready to move forward on [...]
While the nation fell into a long and severe depression after the Panic of 1837, conditions in Mississippi were among the worst. With the collapse of the state's banking system, came a collapse of property values. FULL ARTICLE by Clifford F. Thies
[...]
Until now I've been in a rat race: when the family budget was tight, I thought I had to earn more or spend less money. Krugman explains the real problem: the bank decided to peg its unit of account rigidly to the dollar at 1:1. FULL ARTICLE by' [...]
The financial elites of this country were responsible for putting through the Federal Reserve System as a governmentally created and sanctioned cartel device to enable the nation's banks to inflate the money supply in a coordinated fashion. FULL ARTICLE by Murray Rothbard.
Tonight the National Football League will telecast the first Thursday night game of the season on the league-owned NFL Network. Football fans might wonder why the NFL, which generally plays on Sundays and Monday nights, would force teams to radically alter their weekly routines to play on Thursdays. While the [...]
We've just replaced the static "Outside Links" list on the blog sidebar with a JavaScript-enabled dynamic blogroll, which provides previews of the latest posts from the top blogs dedicated to economics and liberty.
Yet another reason to make the homepage of the Mises Economics Blog a daily destination frequently' [...]
A windfall for lovers of online classics
The Principles of Ethics, by Herbert Spencer, volume I and volume II
Money and the Mechanism and Exchange, by W. Stanley Jevons
International Trade and National Income Multiplier, by Fritz Machlup
The final issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies is online, the last issue under the editorship of Prof. Roderick Long. It has some remarkable material in it. I was particularly impressed by Barbara Branden's reflection on how the negative reception of Atlas Shrugged affected Rand's outlook on [...]
Securitization has provided banks with an alternative source of liquidity, different from central banks open-market operations. It has become a tool for spreading the illusion of savings-driven economic growth and for creating the FULL ARTICLE by Niikolay Gertchev
[...] 
Just as kings debased coins to help pay for their wars, the Fed used inflation to help pay for US participation in World War I. It did so by creating and issuing dollars in return for government debt. FULL ARTICLE by John Paul Koning
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Depending on the specific plan and other variables such as location, the healthcare plan amounts to a direct labor tax of approximately $300 per month for an individual, or nearly $700 for family coverage.FULL ARTICLE by Eric M. Staib
[...] My article Intellectual Property and Libertarianism was published last month in Liberty magazine (December 2009 issue). This article is based in part on a speech at Mises University 2009 (July 30, 2009; audio; video) and also on my What Libertarianism Is, which contains [...]
Investors Business Daily features an article about Böhm-Bawerk's famous student.
[...]
Do you think ideas don't matter, that what people believe about themselves and their world has no real consequence? If so, the following will not bug you in the slightest.
FULL ARTICLE by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
[...] 
This play was written in the early 1960s. A special performance was given at the 60th birthday celebration for Murray Rothbard held March 3, 1986, in New York City. See the fully text by Murray Rothbard
[...]
Even the most conscientious bureaucrat, and there are many, cannot achieve efficient results. How does he know what is best for individual members of society? FULL ARTICLE by Fred Buzzeo
[...]A lot of blogposts have been flying around the libertarian blogosphere about the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago. Those looking for truly thoughtful commentary should read the article by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "De-Socialization in a United Germany" Review of Austrian Economics, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1991). Hoppe [...]
Foreign policy isn't just for the president and Congress. The four unelected lawyers appointed by George W. Bush who constitute the Federal Trade Commission have signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with their unelected Russian counterparts:
The U.S. antitrust agencies and FAS Russia recognize that it is in their' [...]
Around the beginning of the 20th century British economist, Alfred Marshall," warned,
Students of social science must fear popular approval; evil is with them when all men speak well of them. If there is any set of opinions by the advocacy of which a newspaper can increase its sales, then the" [...]
To comprehend Menger's achievement, one must understand the context into which it fits. It was Menger who elaborated the logical foundations of marginal-utility theory and it was his Principles specifically that served as the basic text. FULL ARTICLE by Roger Ream
If one looks at the catastrophic consequences of the great paper-money inflations, one must admit that the expensiveness of gold production is the minor evil. FULL ARTICLE by Ludwig von Mises
[...]
Just because the government crunched numbers and the result came out positive means we are all better off? None of the 15.7 million unemployed Americans is thinking the recession (Great or otherwise) is over. FULL ARTICLE by Doug French
[...]
A bow to Chodorov, and then a hasty exit from the ring
I think I knew from the very beginning he would have the best of me. Not that I wouldn't venture into the ring and stand my ground, full of pride in my own possibilities. But it' [...]
For some reason, Sports Illustrated writer Peter King put this item in his Monday NFL roundup column:
My heart goes out to the victims of the Fort Hood and Orlando shootings and their loved ones. Senseless, senseless incidents. I will not go quietly into the night on this one. [...]
The donate page now includes a Volunteer option: contribute code and contribute document editing and preparation. I must say that I've been thrilled and inspired by the work that people are doing in the spare time, organized in an extremely helpful way by the group functionality of Google. Anyone' [...]
