Changes often induce fear--including the fear that some aspect of our current well-being will be eroded due to changes that could take place in markets. For instance, the invention of a lower cost way of providing a service I now offer could lower what I now earn. The potential that we might be harmed by such changes can make us very risk averse.
2021 may have seen the greatest proliferation in American government command and control, with its corresponding constriction in liberty, in my lifetime. Power has become dramatically more centralized in the federal government--at the expense of individuals and their voluntary arrangements--with trillions of dollars of new programs and proposals
In 2016, I published a book titled Lines of Liberty , which featured great quotations about liberty from those who had been active and important in promoting it. To this day, one of my favorite quotes in that book is from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty : “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so
In my day-to-day interactions with others, I generally find myself, as a libertarian, far closer to those who would call themselves conservatives than those on the left. It is probably because those I know are far less likely to openly and baldly advocate for invading others’ “life, liberty and estates,” as John Locke phrased it, than the left.
François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), who took on the name Voltaire after one of his imprisonments for running afoul of French authorities, was a poet, writer, philosopher and historian of the French enlightenment. In fact, libertarianism.org called him “almost certainly the most important figure of the French Enlightenment,” to the extent that “The
Voltaire once famously urged people to “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” Someone’s questions tell us what they already presume to be true and whether they are seeking wisdom or something very different. For example, a politician asking “who should I blame for something I am actually at fault for?” or “how can I best make a
After narrowly failing to make it through the California Assembly last year, AB 257 has been put back on the Sacramento agenda this year. Backers—unions and their Democrat operatives—think they can succeed this time. Now crunch time for that hypothesis is approaching, as the bill passed the state senate’s Labor, Public Employment and Retirement
Leonard Read, founder and longtime guiding force of the Foundation for Economic Education, was completely committed to the belief that liberty and the private property that enabled it were both more moral and more productive than any alternative. He thought that if people could just “see” what he saw, liberty’s cause would be advanced. That is why
More than forty years ago, California voters enthusiastically passed Proposition 13, which limited property tax hikes. Politicians have been lying about it ever since. Original Article: “ Why Proposition 13 and Attacking It Are Both Popular” This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.
As inflation advances and the economy slowly implodes, we also learn valuable lessons. Original Article: “ The Economy Is a Mess: What Lessons Will We Learn?” This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.
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.