According to the Fashion & Style section of yesterday’s New York Times , “In Brooklyn, Hipsters Sip ‘Fair Trade’ Brews.” Time to revisit this classic daily article: Fairness with Your Coffee? By N. Joseph Potts [...] Before going further, I’d like to make it perfectly clear that it is entirely within coffee-bean buyers’ rights to pay any price,
I’m trying to find out if there are any recent estimates as to the cost of the patent system--e.g., what the annual dollar cost is in the US that would not be borne if not for the patent system. As I’ve noted before (see There’s No Such Thing As A Free Patent ), the standard utilitarian rationale for the patent system is that patent law encourages
This is a fascinating review of Rothbard’s economic treatise , by Henry Hazlitt, published in National Review, September 25, 1962. He loves the book, of course, but introduces criticisms toward the end, particularly pertaining to the Rothbardian perspective on repudiating government debt, the legalization of blackmail, and the strict distinction
Web junkies have become accustom to the idea that anything Google does is glorious, so it has come as something of a shock to realize that the its takeover of Blogger has been, well, not going well. In fact, for many people, the conversion has been a calamity. Among those blogs that have converted, hundreds, perhaps thousands, perhaps hundreds of
The founders of social movements and schools of thought often try to distance themselves from their followers. (Or their later interpreters do this for them). Thus one can ask if Freud was a Freudian, Ricardo a Ricardian, Walras a Walrasian , Keynes a Keynesian (chapter 5 Keynesian? chapter 12 Keynesian?), and so on. What about Marx? Murray
Daniel Kahneman (the psychologist who won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2002) and Jonathan Renshon try to explain why those who are more willing to favor military action and coercive force succeed in tipping the scales in international affairs: As the hawks and doves thrust and parry, one hopes that
I thought bashing great chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders went out of style about ten years ago, yet here is the New York Times today with a piece lamenting the not-very-newsworthy death of a 26-year-old independent bookstore, Micawber Books in Princeton, New Jersey. The piece struck me with the amount of space it devotes to the
Kodak and Sony End Patent Fight . NEW YORK - Eastman Kodak Co. on Wednesday said it signed a licensing pact with Sony Corp. that settles a dispute over digital camera and imaging technology patents, and grants each company access to the other’s patents. Wow—they cross-licensed each others’ patents to each others, after millions spent acquiring the
Coming across a mention of 3D printers in the latest Charles Stross novel , the following way of framing some of the controversy surrounding intellectual property occurred to me. Let us imagine a society in which 3D copiers and printers—fabrication machines that can copy or make objects and devices, much like a photocopier makes a copy of a
Jeff Bezos, founder of amazon.com, is releasing images and videos of his new private spacecraft . His “Goddard” vehicle recently made a short test flight and is the first step towards achieving commercial exploration of space. Says Bezos: “We’re working, patiently and step-by-step, to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to
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.