“Fake news” emerged as a dominant theme of the 2016 US presidential election campaign and has been in the public eye ever since. To now-president Trump, the term refers to CNN, the New York Times, and other outlets that portray him unfavorably; to Democrats, it means politically incorrect websites, blogs, and social media accounts. In this context
Libertarians often cite the internet as a case in point that liberty is the mother of innovation. Opponents quickly counter that the internet was a government program, proving once again that markets must be guided by the steady hand of the state. In one sense the critics are correct, though not in ways they understand. The internet indeed began
Oliver Williamson’s Nobel Prize , shared with Elinor Ostrom, is great news for Austrians. Williamson’s pathbreaking analysis of how alternative organizational forms — markets, hierarchies, and hybrids, as he calls them — emerge, perform, and adapt has defined the modern field of organizational economics. Williamson is no Austrian, but he is
[Introduction to The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur: Essays on Organizations and Markets ] As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be an Austrian economist. Well, not quite, but I was exposed to Austrian economics early on. I grew up in a fairly normal middle-class household, with parents who were New Deal Democrats. In high school, a
“Entrepreneurship, in the Misesian sense, is the act of bearing uncertainty.” Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing fields within economics, management, finance, and even law. It’s also becoming a popular subject at colleges and universities. Entrepreneurship courses, programs, and activities are springing up not only in business
The 2016 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded today to Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström , two of the most eminent economists specializing in the analysis of contracting and organizational structure. Hart, a British economist who teaches at Harvard, and Holmström, originally from Finland and now teaching at MIT, are leading practitioners of the
Last night’s surprising result left Trump supporters elated, Clinton supporters dejected. Most libertarians have long given up hope that the electoral process can bring substantial improvements to US policies. But there is an important silver lining to this year’s election season. Public skepticism of the establishment media, think-tanks,
The populist sentiment behind the Brexit vote, the election of Donald Trump, increasing skepticism of the mainstream media, distrust of higher education institutions , and similar phenomena has given rise to a worry among experts that society no longer values expertise. Tom Nichols, author of the recent book The Death of Expertise , thinks
There are two mainstream positions on Trump’s recent Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship and section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA): 1) the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)/ Techdirt liberal/libertarian view that Twitter, Facebook, etc. are private firms and can do what they want and 2) the Trump/Hawley/social
Las “noticias falsas” [“fake news”] aparecieron como tema dominante en la campaña de las elecciones presidenciales de EEUU de 2016 y han permanecido bajo el ojo público desde entonces. Para el ahora presidente Trump, la expresión se refiere a la CCN, el New York Times y otros medios que le retratan de manera desfavorable en; en para los
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.