Investors Business Daily March 1, 1999 America’s Masochistic Business Class by William H. Peterson The aim of politics, H.L. Mencken observed, “is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” One popular hobgoblin is the businessman. Item:
[Investor’s Business Daily, August 2, 1999] Vice President--then senator--Al Gore criticized a Monsanto bovine hormone development (Posilac) to boost milk production as “a kind of thinking aimed at profits, not progress.” Not progress? The Gore remark reflects a long history of anti-profit literature. Look. Everybody knows that profits are rip-
The word democracy is conspicuously absent in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. The framers feared it, and so limited federal power with checks and balances. Yet in a real sense the Founding Fathers did provide democracy, a lot of it, but in the voluntary private sector. They left the vast bulk of the people’s
“ Capitalism: America’s Greatest Charity “ was the title of my article here last year Today I extend that idea to “Capitalism: America’s Greatest Charity and Democracy,” concentrating here on democracy. But this is not the democracy that Plato spoke of in his The Republic (c. 370 B.C.) as “a charming form of government, full of variety and
Character forges destiny, yes; but, if to a lesser degree, so does chance. For example, in February 1950, I looked for a course to fit into my Monday night schedule at the NYU Graduate School of Business Administration. I, a greenish assistant professor of history and economics at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn bent on getting a PhD--the
Fifty years ago, a remarkable libertarian, personal friend, witty Georgite, then editor of Human Events , came out with a landmark book, The Income Tax: Root of All Evil ( text and PDF ). Its author was Frank Chodorov who saw raging about him—what’s new?—interventionism, welfarism, political mischief and corruption galore, an ongoing mangling of
[William Peterson was the 2006 Schlarbaum laureate, and here is his acceptance speech, delivered October 8, 2005.] Gary Schlarbaum, I thank you for this award and high honor from your grand legacy in loving memory of a genius in our time, Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). But let me say up front, fellow Miseseans, meet me, Mr. Serendipity, Bill
So Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., founder, CEO, thinker, of the Ludwig von Mises Institute opens his highly succcessful daily email newsletter on literally the largest nonprofit website in the world. This opening also sets the theme for his own selected articles and speeches reprinted here, displaying a leading liberatarian taking on critics of
[ On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (1956)] Economists, like women, are not immune to the dictates of fashion. One such dictate in vogue among post-Keynesians is the accelerator, which enjoyed similar popularity in the early 1920s. At least a partial reason for the renewed popularity of the accelerator is that
Hace cincuenta años, un notable libertario, amigo personal, ingenioso georgista, entonces editor de Human Events , publicó un libro histórico, The Income Tax: Root of All Evil ( texto y PDF ). Su autor era Frank Chodorov, que veía a su alrededor —¿qué hay de nuevo?— intervencionismo, asistencialismo, malicia política y corrupción a raudales, una
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.