The news of the Supreme Court decision on Walmart — declining to approve a massive lawsuit against an amazing company — was reported as if it amounted to some devastating blow to American life. Nonsense: the decision actually permits normalcy in economic development to proceed without a new round of destruction of wealth. Some lawyers might be
[ Originally published September, 2011. ] Several years ago, the police entered the office of a young professor at a reputable university and arrested him for an online crime. They took the professor away, booked him, and then offered him a deal: admit guilt and get off easy. The professor said to the few people to whom he was permitted to speak
The Free Market 18, no. 9 (September 2000) For two years, the White House has been haranguing owners of large websites, telling them not to violate their visitors’ supposed right to privacy. Now, just on the face of it, this is absurd. The proper way to think about websites is as private property. When you go to a website, you are a visitor on
The Free Market 13, no. 3 (March 1995) How can business comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act? It can’t. The ADA has created an inescapable trap for companies, a bottomless pit for liberty and property, and an unremitting excuse for harassment and control. John Casey, writing in the University of Puget Sound Law Review (Winter 1994),
The Free Market 13, no. 5 (May 1995) Steve Stockman, among the best of Washington’s freshmen Congressmen, holds a daily prayer session that staff members attend voluntarily. Last year, nobody could have stopped it. But thanks to the “Contract With America,” Congress now has to comply with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The ACLU says Stockman may be
One ironic legacy of the Clinton administration is the rearming of the American citizenry. Each time Clinton and his friends in Congress threaten another round of anti-gun regulations, the American people respond by stocking up on as many guns as possible. This is all to the good: an armed citizenry translates to less crime and more security, and
Ladies, if you wear shoes from Nine West—maker of 1 out of 5 women’s shoes sold in the US—the government is here to tell you that you have been ripped off, exploited, and victimized by a price-fixing conspiracy hatched at the highest levels of the corporate elite. To defend your rights, the government has extracted $34 million from the company’s
In economics, people often mix up cause and effect. Observe, for example, that both wages and labor market regulations have increased for most of this century. Did the laws and court decisions cause wages to rise? Or did wages rise despite the interventions; might they be even higher without regulation? Adopting the view that government can
In an awful, but not unexpected, ruling on a long-standing dispute between Europe and the US, the World Trade Organization says that the US must stop permitting US exporters to set up foreign subsidiaries that save as much as 30 percent in taxes they would otherwise pay. Now the US must either raise taxes by eliminating loopholes or face massive
Following the media campaign against Lott, many people were astonished by the Senator’s willingness to jettison all political principle for the sake of saving his status as Majority Leader. Why would a conservative Republican suddenly find himself embracing the full panoply of the left-wing racial agenda and flog himself so mercilessly? Consider
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.