Hope is in short supply these days, while despair and hate are enjoying an enormous surplus. To give an example, there are currently two types of stories that fill my news feed. The first are about politics and the perpetual horrors it unleashes on the world: there’s a new scandal every day, and war, protectionism, and nationalism are on the rise,
“Uneducated” is the favorite insult and excuse of the political left. In the past year alone, for example, a lack of education among voters has been used to explain each of the left’s electoral failures, as well as to dismiss criticisms of its people, policies, and institutions. These defenses are dubious to say the least. Yet setting aside the
For a group of people who reject political power and even the state itself, libertarians sure seem to care a lot about the election. In the past few months, there’s even been a kind of desperation in libertarian circles to find something, anything that could vaguely connect one of the candidates to a philosophy of liberty or economic sanity. The
It’s not clear how Mises would feel about every individual facet of the current election, but we can say without hesitation that he would not support either major candidate. It should be obvious that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump oppose virtually every tenet of classical liberalism and sound economics. Unfortunately, justified opposition to
Libertarians enjoy accusing each other of blind devotion to their favorite ideas and thinkers. In fact, it almost seems like a major pastime in the liberty movement to make this charge, and to revel with others in self-congratulatory “gotcha!” moments directed toward members of the outgroup. I find this state of affairs frustrating, all the more
Not every criticism of markets or property rights is socialist. This point might seem obvious, but it often gets lost in the incessant social media shouting matches that surround economic policy. In free-market circles, just about every government intervention these days is dismissed as “socialist,” with the predictable result that the term has
Hay escasez de esperanza hoy en día, mientras que tenemos un enorme exceso de desesperación y odio. Por dar un ejemplo, hay actualmente dos tipos de historias que llenan mi news feed . El primero se refiere a la política y los horrores perpetuos que desencadena sobre el mundo: hay un nuevo escándalo cada día y la guerra, el proteccionismo y el
No está claro qué pensaría Mises de cada una de las facetas de las actuales elecciones, pero podemos afirmar sin dudarlo que no apoyaría a ninguno de los dos candidatos principales. Debería ser obvio que Hillary Clinton y Donald Trump se oponen a prácticamente todos los principios del liberalismo clásico y la economía sólida. Por desgracia, la
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.