The Free Market 24, no. 11 (November 2004) The newest political cliché offered up by the Republicans speaks of the need for an “Ownership Society.” To those of us who support private property, it might sound good at first. But let us think about this before embracing it. If you see what the pundits are saying, you find that, like the term
The Free Market 24, no. 12 (December 2004) H ans F. Sennholz, winner of the 2004 Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Liberty, is one of the handful of economists who dared defend free markets and sound money during the dark years before the Misesian revival. He did so with eloquence, precision, and brilliance. He has never tired
There are different forms of tyranny. There is tyrannus in regimine , a home-grown despot who comes to power through (more or less) legitimate means and then begins to abuse that power and oppress people. If the tyrannus in regimine plays his cards right, he can pay off enough and protect enough interest groups to stabilize his rule. In terms of
Year’s end is the time for big thoughts, so here are mine. The most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist
Perhaps the most ghastly aspect of wartime is how, in the name of fighting tyranny abroad, the US takes such strides in imposing it at home, thereby absorbing into our own political system the very thing we are supposedly combating. This happened in the Cold War. And today, one wonders what institutions from radical Islam the US will absorb in the
Among those that accuse libertarians of being wrong on some aspect of politics or history, the same themes come up again. I won’t list the really stupid ones, such as those accusing me of being anti-American, unpatriotic, a traitorous left-liberal Democrat, a capitalist pig, an apologist for the corporatist hegemon, an uncritical defender of the
Hardly anyone noticed when President Bush signed a proclamation giving Iraqis the right to export thousands of products to the US without paying any duties. After imposing years of duties and tariffs on many dozens of goods from timber to textiles to shrimp during his term, this might be his first action fully consistent with free trade. How about
In the weeks before the election, with the usual partisan hysteria becoming ever more intense, public intellectuals are ripping off the mask of principle to come out in favor of one or the other candidate. Typically, many libertarians are throwing their support behind Bush, and on the usual grounds that he is better than a hypothetical
Not for the first time in world history, US voters on November 2 faced a choice between two varieties of statism, two forms of central planning, two types of duplicity, two approaches to rule by government. One won, one lost, and liberty awaits another day for victory. In this, our times are not unlike the 1930s, when during a crisis just about
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.