Because the law of comparative advantage holds for any trade between two individuals, wherever they may be located geographically or politically, it is ultimately based on the fact that no two individuals are exactly alike. To move the argument to the level of the firm or region or country only complicates the analysis, it doesn’t change the
It is now, as the spring semester draws to a close and final exams lie graded on my desk, that I face the fruits of my long labors in Fundamentals of Economics. Despite my extensive dwelling on the basically cooperative nature of the market and the signal characteristic of government as being the legitimated possession and use of coercive power,
An email called “ A Day in the Life of Joe Republican “ is making the rounds via a thousand blogs. It is designed to illustrate how the middle class benefits enormously from big government and is too stupid to realize it. In response, I began the following alternative “Day in the Life”: Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with bottled
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.