As many of our readers will know, anarchism comes in both free-market and socialist varieties. Free-market anarchists (or “anarcho-capitalists”) like Gustave de Molinari and Murray Rothbard favour replacing the monopolistic state with competing private services in a fully capitalistic social order based on private property and free exchange. By
Protectionists rejoiced in rejecting a foreign investment by a Dubai company. Now the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar are giving the protectionists what they wanted. The central banks of these countries are starting to diversify their reserves out of US dollars and into euros. With foreign investors owning 50% of all US Treasuries, I wonder
Having just read today’s New York Times’ lead page-one article titled “Massachusetts Sets Health Plan for Nearly All,” I think I know what it must be like to live in some place like Caracas and participate in a popular celebration of the joyous wonders wrought by La Revolución. That’s certainly the spirit of the article. It claims in essence to
This piece by Charles Wheelan, by the economics editor of Yahoo Finance, is provocatively titled “ Taxes Can Be Good for You .” So we read and read to find out precisely how it is the case that having some of our earnings and property taken from us by force can actually be good for us as individuals. In the course of his argument he makes silly
Good News Is Bad News. “Those who would understand the mysteries of the marketplace must drink deeply of the well of Wisdom.” That’s Socrates, 122BC. Now Socrates, may or may not have said that. But if he didn’t, he should have. Take Friday, the 8th: the financial news was intoxicating. The jobless rate fell to 4.7 from 4.8. virtually no
I saw this article by Albert Esplugas some time ago and decided it should be translated to English, so here it is. Gradualism or abolitionism? Do we dismantle the interventionist State step by step or at once? How quickly shall the path to liberty be traveled? It is obvious that a libertarian answer cannot be in contradiction with its own
What drives domestic politics today is government income redistribution. It forms the core of virtually every fiscal battle, since every policy that gives some what they don’t pay for must be funded from others’ pockets. That gets highlighted during income tax season. The lowest 40% of earners now pay negative income taxes as a group (largely due
Illegal immigrants are overwhelming the resources of the Welfare State: government–funded hospital emergency rooms are filled with them; public schools are filled with their children. On the basis of such complaints, many people are angry and want to close the border to new illegal immigrants and deport those who are already here. They want to
“They know this company doesn’t care anything about them,” so says a UAW official, local Huntsville president, Terry Scruggs. And he’s talking about Delphi Corp, the employer of those neglected orphans that nobody cares about. Delphi, as the financially informed world knows, has crippling problems. Amazing statement by Mr Scruggs. He expects
In a region in Florida where a newspaper for which I write columns is published we can witness a rather direct confrontation between some citizens and the nanny state. The case reportedly involves the “owners of two local escort services — Destin’s Angels and Florida Dream Girls — [who] are facing possible prison time on charges they used
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.