There is no epidemic of gun violence in America; quite the opposite in fact. But last week’s shooting at a high school in Florida was a grim and jarring reminder of deep cultural problems lurking just beneath the veneer of our materially comfortable society. Those problems are beyond the scope of libertarianism per se , but again we see that
The LA Times reported on December 16: Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government’s prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy. The bill’s passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant
Abolition of the public sector means, of course, that all pieces of land, all land areas, including streets and roads, would be owned privately, by individuals, corporations, cooperatives, or any other voluntary groupings of individuals and capital. The fact that all streets and land areas would be private would by itself solve many of the
Many people recoil from the idea of policing being done by private, for-profit enterprise. They imagine that such companies, in their attempt to maximize profit, would be even more abusive than government police. But what most fail to realize is that private ‘police’ already exist in America and to a large extent: there are an estimated 3 persons
[ This is Part Three of a three-part series on policing. See Part One and Part Two . ] One of the most successful ideological movements waged by government agencies in recent decades has been the so-called Broken Windows theory of policing. Popularized in the 1980s by George Kelling, the theory states that if minor violations are ignored — such as
The banking system in the United States today functions largely as a spy agency for the federal government. It is designed to assist federal agents with observing your every financial move, and it is assumed that every bank customer is a criminal. Such laws can be loosely described as falling under the “know your customer” schemes in which the
Last Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris has forced the world’s attention away from causes such as the plight of “white privilege” on college campuses and back to the consequences of blowback in the Middle East . The political response to these atrocities have been predictable — calls for nationalism , more war , fewer civil liberties, and
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Advocates of a free society so frequently field the objection “Who will build the roads?” or some variation thereof that it’s become a meme. Much effort has been put into answering this question, including books on the privatization of roads and highways . What has received relatively
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. “Your right to swing your arms ends where another person’s nose begins.” While this widely attributed quote sounds ostensibly libertarian in terms of respecting self-ownership, it’s actually quite misleading. One need not abide some lunatic swinging his arms about near one’s face, being
La abolición del sector público significa, por supuesto, que todos los terrenos, todas las zonas terrestres, incluidas las calles y carreteras, serían de propiedad privada, de individuos, corporaciones, cooperativas o cualquier otra agrupación voluntaria de individuos y capital. El hecho de que todas las calles y áreas de tierra fueran privadas
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.