The Free Market 17, no. 1 (January 1999) The logic of the market is predicated on the pervasive and glorious inequality of man. No two people have the same scales of values, talents, or ambitions. It is this radical inequality, and the freedom to choose our own lot in life, that makes possible the division of labor and exchange. Through money
The Free Market 17, no. 1 (January 1999) In what can only be termed as truly bizarre, an Alabama local of the steelworkers union demanded that Alabama Governor Fob James close the international port at Mobile to all steel imports. Besides the fact that it would be clearly a violation of the U.S. Constitution for the governor to grant the union’s
The Free Market 17, no. 2 (February 1999) The policy agenda of the Clinton administration is usually described as halting, pragmatic, and poll driven. But in its approach to the issue of medical insurance and the drive to socialize medical care, it has been systematic, principled, and highly strategic. The Clinton government is using the
The Free Market 17, no. 2 (February 1999) To hear educators and activists talk, one might actually believe that apathy threatens to become the defining existential feature of American youth. One hardly need recite the litany of the numerous civic shortcomings regularly imputed by youth organizers eager to demonstrate the self-absorption of
The Free Market 17, no. 4 (April 1999) Former National Football League star Walter Payton has been stricken by a rare liver disease and needs a transplant in order to live. Unfortunately, the demand for available organs far outstrips the supply, and several thousand Americans this year will die waiting for those life-saving organs. When
The Free Market 17, no. 7 (July 1999) The internet provides a remarkable test case of the free market. What have we learned? Business doesn’t need government to succeed. Independence is the trait that sums up the attitude of all successful web entrepreneurs. But this model of market success is not to be found in most textbooks of American
The Free Market 17, no. 9 (August 1999) No New York City public institution better illustrates the rise and decline of the city than the subways. The subways were primarily built by private-sector entrepreneurs at the turn of the century. On Oct. 27, 1904, the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT), the first subway line in the city, began operating
The Free Market 17, no. 11 (November 1999) Even when the market produces amazing new technology, it can become a basis for criticism. There are two main excuses used today to justify intervention in the technology market. The first argues that manufacturers build a planned obsolescence into their designs. The second argues that a path dependency
The Free Market 17, no. 12 (December 1999) The workaholic, or more precisely worry about him, is back. During the 1980s, just as the free market’s reputation was beginning to rebound, the guardians of the national psyche discovered “workaholism.” The victim of this disorder was defined as working compulsively, spending far too much time at his
The Free Market 17, no. 12 (December 1999) Austrian economists should revel in the story of Ukara, a small, Tanzanian island in Lake Victoria. John Reader, in his astoundingly detailed and fascinating work, Africa: A Biography of the Continent (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), presents among a wealth of other information that should be of genuine
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.