Our times are much like the 1930s, when it was widely assumed that there are only two viable ideological positions: communism or fascism. Liberalism of the old school was considered to be a failure, and not even worth considering. Why does libertarianism never entirely disappear, despite every attempt to kill it? In part, because a strain of
Tim Harford offers an interesting analysis of the great XBox shortage of 2005. They are selling for $300, except that they are not selling because there is a massive shortage. He asks the question: why doesn’t Microsoft raise the price to $700 or more in order to clear the market, since that’s the price they are selling for on Ebay? This is an
I have a column on the controversy over libertarians being paid to write columns that back special interests. It ends with a long discussion by Mises on the difference between genuine liberalism and special-interest
I come to you from a state with a Republican governor, elected to cut government but who, in 2003, attempted to pass the largest tax increase in the history of the state. In the same bill, which the state constitution required be submitted to public vote, the governor sought to change the constitution to make it easier on every future governor to
If you have read the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, you know that the Devil is an expert in turning good impulses toward evil ends, and in leading people to misapply virtues in ways that serve the cause of evil. Well, so it is with the state. In every age, it takes the intellectual and political fashions alive in the culture, and turns them
The attack on Hans-Hermann Hoppe draws attention to an institution that hangs by a thread in our state-managed times: academic freedom. The attackers and the victims come from both right and left in a continuing cycle of aggression and retaliation that began with the politicization of the university environment, and will continue so long as
Consider that employment among disabled people had reached a high in 1989, after years of economic expansion, rising in compassion for the disabled, and advances in technology that permitted their more thorough integration into the workforce. Then something awful happened: the government granted the disabled special rights (the ADA) and thereby
The more time you spend with Austrian economists or libertarian intellectuals, the more you realize that Murray Rothbard’s influence has been underestimated. No, his name is not a household word (yet) but his influence is felt in another way: those who read him experience what amounts to the intellectual challenge of their lives. Whether that
[From a speech delivered on the campus of Walsh College] Like most others, I found myself very gratified by the attention given to Pope John II after his death, and not just because he wrote a very good encyclical on economics that warmly embraces free markets. Karol Wojtyla began adulthood as a simple priest who only sought to minister to others
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.