While contemporary mythology has it otherwise, the market is not a distinct phenomenon: it is what exists when people interact and otherwise voluntarily transact with each other. The broad definition of the market is simply what people (choose to) do when they are not forced to do otherwise. So it is not surprising that even the Soviet Union,
A recently published article at The Week, titled “ How can we unleash positive animal spirits into the economy? Change the narrative ,” provides a clear example of what’s wrong with the perception of economics and why modern economic approaches, possibly aiming to amend the shortcomings “identified” by this perception, is at a loss of explaining
As noted by e.g. Reason.com , Yahoo! News recently reported that Swedes are increasingly turning their backs on their globally lauded utopian welfare state. While very little known, Sweden’s welfare state “worked” through the early 1970s thanks to deliberately preserving capitalist institutions and expanding its scope at a slower rate than the
People have a strange habit of ridiculing economics for its assumptions and [benchmark] models of optimality. While modern mathematical economics (i.e., professional mathturbation) admittedly rely on sometimes outrageous assumptions that make most of the resulting predictions irrelevant, there is nothing ridiculous or unscientific about economic
A recently published article at The Week, with the title “ How can we unleash positive animal spirits into the economy? Change the narrative ,” provides a clear example of what’s wrong with the perception of economics and why modern economic approaches, possibly aiming to amend the shortcomings “identified” by this perception, is at a loss of
by Ron Paul It was almost ten years ago when, before the House International Relations Committee, I objected to the US Government funding NGOs to meddle in the internal affairs of Ukraine. At the time the “Orange Revolution” had forced a regime change in Ukraine with the help of millions of dollars from Washington. At that time I told the
In a long and seemingly technical blog post on the Washington Post “wonkblog,” Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konczal suggests that raising the minimum wage will reduce poverty. He primarily relies on one meta study (Dube 2013, unpublished) to show that economists “do agree” “that raising the minimum wage would reduce poverty.” Quickly reading
In a new German-language interview, Hans-Hermann Hoppe “argues for a state-free society. The government has, for example, no right to compel the citizens by taxes to finance an armed force.” WirtschaftsWoche: Herr Professor Hoppe, derzeit haben staatliche Eingriffe in die Wirtschaft und in die Gesellschaft wieder Hochkonjunktur. Viele Bürger
Tatsuya Iwakura strikes again. This time, he’s translated ‘What Must Be Done’ by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Here is the English version , and here is the Japanese version at Amazon. This is a monograph. Summary: How should anarcho-capitalists engage the modern state? Hans-Hermann Hoppe dissects the nature of the modern democratic state and suggests
If President Obama has a legacy in the history books of the future, it will likely be the utter ignorance of and contempt for economics expressed in his policies. Assuming, of course, that the next president is not even worse (which is not unlikely). The debate following the proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 is just the most recent
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.