The Free Market 14, no. 6 (June 1996) Normal people look right past the tiny cars beloved by environmental groups, self-appointed consumer advocates, and the federal government. These are joyless machines like the three-cylinder Geo Metro XFi and Honda Civic VX, ugsome little pods designed not for comfort, utility, or performance, but rather to
The Free Market 15, no. 11 (November 1997) For ages, man’s right to exploit the living world—to use it for his purposes—went unquestioned. Trees were for lumber, crops for harvesting, animals for eating and skinning as well, of course, as for companionship. When not consumed directly, the products into which human labor transformed living things
The Free Market 15, no. 11 (November 1997) Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency presume to protect us from all sorts of supposed evils. But in doing so, no bureaucrats, save the tax collectors, are more vicious in their trampling of property rights. For example, they have made life miserable for people who own auto salvage and parts
The Free Market 16, no. 9 (September 1998) When Carol Browner, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, proposed new air quality standards last year, she claimed that thousands of Americans are being killed every year by tiny particles in the air with diameters of less than 2.5 microns. The EPA currently regulates airborne pollutants 10
The Free Market 20, no. 2 (February 2002) Consumer protection regulation is the consumer’s worst nightmare. In fact, it is not protective at all. It is merely another one of those regulatory rackets that has the appearance of providing necessary security for a collective group in an entirely positive sense while encompassing no negatives. After
The Free Market 20, no. 3 (March 2002) My first “real job,” the summer before my senior year in high school, was selling shoes in a small retail store in my hometown. The job paid only what was then the federal minimum wage, $3.35 an hour, but, then, my labor was probably barely worth that. At least the work was honest and productive. The
The Free Market 20, no. ( 2002) Proponents of socially responsible investing, or SRI, promote it as a way to invest in stocks while having “positive social impact” at the same time. Beneath the surface, everyone knows that what SRI really promotes is old-fashioned socialist ideology employed in the name of investment. The stated objectives of
The Free Market 20, no. 8 (August 2002) P.T. Bauer passed away this spring most likely never having attended a U2 concert. But the eminent English economist had known many people like the Irish superband’s lead singer, Paul Hewson , aka Bono Vox. “Many supporters of official foreign aid,” he wrote more than 20 years ago, “are genuinely and
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.