In following the daily news events both in the United States and around the rest of the world, it is easy to get lost in the detail and not step back once and awhile and remind ourselves what the really important issues are. Under the anxiety of a possible nuclear war in Korea, actual terrorist attacks in the Middle East and by seemingly “lone
In the Bible it says, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone . . .” It also has been said that the one who strikes the second blow starts any fight. If the world is to avoid trade wars due to tariffs being imposed by the Trump Administration, both the United States and its trading partners in Europe and North America should
A specter continues to haunt the world, the specter of Karl Marx. Two hundred years ago, on May 5, 1818, the father of twentieth century totalitarian communism, the guidebook writer of revolutionary mass-murdering dictatorship, and the inspirer of disastrous socialist central planning was born in Trier, Germany. Looking over the political and
Looking to the next few years ahead, is America and the world going to continue riding a wave of economic growth, improving standards of living, falling and lower unemployment, and technological changes that will continue to raise the quality and variety of life? Or will this turn out to be, at least partly, an artificial economic boom that will
For more than a century the world has been caught in the grip of social engineers and political paternalists determined to either radically remake society from top to bottom in collectivist directions, or to use various government regulatory and redistributive policies to try to modify existing society into desired “social justice” forms and
One of the great political mysteries has been the success of governments in ruling over societies with little opposition and resistance from the vast majority of the population, even when those governments have been brutal tyrannies and openly dictatorial in their control. This has been true, no less, under democratic regimes, as well, under which
Numerous misunderstanding and mythologies surround the meaning of capitalism and competition, but few match the confusions over the meaning and relevance of “monopoly” in the workings of the market economy. When looked at dispassionately, factually, and historically, monopoly has almost always represented a problem in society only when created,
Capitalism is a wondrous human institution for the mutual betterment for all in society. Yet, critics often insist that market systems enable sellers to take advantage of buyers, because those on the demand-side often lack the specialized knowledge that suppliers possess, thus, enabling a possible exaggerated misrepresentation of what is being
Fifty years separate us, now, from 1968 and the two momentous legacies of the then soon to ending failed presidency of Lyndon Johnson: The declaring of war on America’s supposed domestic ills in the form of the “Great Society” programs, and the aggressive military intervention in a real war in Vietnam. Both of these “wars” reflected the arrogance
Most of us both value and take for granted the ability to make decisions about our own lives. When busybodies put their noses and their mouths into our personal affairs, we often say or at least think, “Mind your own business.” Unfortunately, we live in a world in which too frequently government won’t leave us alone, and instead, very actively
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.