Google’s new tool makes inroads into areas that belong to others for now, and raises the question: how long before Google supplants Windows? And the inevitable next question: how long before the Justice Department goes after Google for violation of anti-trust? Will Microsoft claim to be Google’s victim? Will Bill Gates have completed his
I had had a discussion with my daughter about what constitutes trade , but then a friend pointed out that the English word “trade” derives from a word meaning “habit”. Etymonline.com comes to the rescue , showing me that lingusitic concepts of trade in the English language most likely emerged from Roman or Etruscan roots. The link above shows that
The following question was posted to the Hernando de Soto thread. I’m moving it here to keep the discussions separate. I have a question and wanted to post it on the main venue but I don’t know how or if I can so I’ll try here. At the site http://www.infoshop.org/faq/index.html there is a long Anarchist Individualist FAQ, Under section ; G.2.1
What do Charles Tomlinson’s article, ‘The Myth of the Tree Shortage’ and Christopher Westley’s blog thread, ‘Digital TV is a Civil Right ‘ have in common? Both timber and radio spectrum are scarce resources that have been managed by government ownership and ‘private’ licensing. In both cases, government management has led to misallocation, poor
Wally Conger posted this to his blog today: Until Ralph Raico completes his definitive book on classical liberalism, his ten-lecture Mises Institute course from Summer 2003, History: The Struggle for Liberty , will stand as his greatest tribute to freedom. He traces the roots of liberalism and its first volleys against the State to the “Dark Ages”
Murray Rothbard gave a lecture at Polytechnic University in the 1970s on the economics of labor and labor regulation. I assume it was part of his regular teaching duties for basic economics. You can download the audio file here. Two of my favorite-ever Rothbard quotes are in that one lecture, and I can’t find them written out anywhere, so I’ve
Ivan Eland, Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute, writes in a recent article : [I]s the conventional wisdom correct that the United States needs to exchange blood for oil? Many economists don’t think so. Before the first Gulf War, two Nobel laureates in economics — Milton Friedman on the right and James Tobin on
Thanks to the Rational Review News Digest : Germans may need licence to watch TV on computers Computer owners in Germany will need a TV licence in future after German TV and Radio Licensing Authorities proved PCs could be used to watch the telly. The fee will be collected whether the computer has been equipped to receive radio and television with
Can markets predict the next presidential election? On one sports gambling website people are literally betting they can. Other websites are running virtual “prediction markets” in an attempt to harness the information that eludes pollsters. They solicit participation from the general public in much the same way real markets do in the real world.
Gilligan’s Island is now out on DVD , reawakening the unanswered questions of childhood: Why does the Skipper let Gilligan help with anything when he knows he’ll just screw it up? Why did the movie star take a day cruise in an evening gown? Why did two of the richest people in the world board a dinky boat with the hoi polloi instead of leasing a
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.