The Free Market 24, no. ( 2004) Critics accuse libertarians of reveling in government failures. Yes and No. No one is pleased to see the destruction caused by government policies, whether small scale, as when a tighter regulation causes business failures, or large scale, as when wars destroy life for millions. The kernel of truth to the claim is
The Free Market 24, no. 3 (March 2004) A common accusation against the Mises Institute is that it is obsessed with tracing social and economic problems to the state, and, in doing so, it oversimplifies the world. The state is not all bad, people say, and some of its actions yield positive results. It is not inconceivable, they say, that the
The Bush administration credits its tax bill for spurring economic recovery, though if you include the debt these big spenders have racked up, the net cost of government to the American taxpayer has vastly increased during the Bush presidency. And like all previous cases of GOP tax reductions, the same administration is sneakily doing what it
At last the topic of 9-11 has shifted onto productive ground. Thanks to the efforts of former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, some thought is being put into the government failures behind the attacks. “Your government failed you,” he says. Precisely, and in many more ways than he or anyone else at these hearings is willing to say. Here
Let’s think about the word security, which has been in the news lately because the Bush administration seeks a major shift in the way funds are spent in Iraq . It wants $3 billion moved from spending on reconstruction to spending on “security.” There’s a political science lesson in that usage. The reason for the shift, of course, is the obvious
This talk was delivered at the Mises Institute’s Supporters Summit on Radical Scholarship : the Guerrilla Movement for Liberty, on October 15, 2004, in San Mateo, California. You can learn so much about human nature, the workings of society, and the functioning of markets by looking at the aftermath of a natural disaster. It is a fascinating
The movement to privatize Social Security (fully or partially) may be the most ideologically duplicitous and fiscally irresponsible I’ve seen in my lifetime. It was proposed by Clinton and now by Bush. Whether it dies in the next few months or generates some monstrosity of a bill to be voted on, don’t believe that there is anything in the works
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.