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 17, no. 9 (September 1999) The Mississippi River Basin is the largest river basin in the world, and stretches from New York to Idaho and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In the course of American history, the river often flooded, but not until 1927 had so many people been killed and left homeless and never had such a large land
The Free Market 17, no. 11 (November 1999) Garet Garrett wrote in 1932, “Mass delusions are not rare. They salt the human story.” Indeed, mass delusions are no more apparent than in the realm of public policy and especially in the faith people have in their government to carry out functions designed to promote the public good. How else to
The Free Market 17, no. 12 (December 1999) Once again, the federal government is scrambling to make good on its own past mistakes. And private industries are facing massive costs, and potentially massive lawsuits, because of their attempt to keep up with federal regulators’ changing whims. The controversy over Methyl tert-Butyl Ether (MTBE)
The Free Market 18, no. 5 (May 2000) When one thinks of “death by government,” either those killed by armed members of the state or the millions who have perished in the vast gulags and prisons run by governmental agents usually come to mind. However, government has demonstrated far more creativity in eliminating people than just by shooting or
The Free Market 4, no. 2 (February 1986) It is a common myth that the near-disappearance of the whale and of various species of fish was caused by “capitalist greed,” which, in a short-sighted grab for profits, despoiled the natural resources—the geese that laid the golden eggs—from which those profits used to flow. Hence, the call for
The Free Market 28, no. 1 (January 2010) Climate-change policy ought to be privatized. All government policy instruments, including taxes, subsidies, regulation, and emissions trading to mitigate climate change ought to be abolished. Instead, property rights to a climate unchanged by human activity should be protected by tort litigation on the
The Free Market 30, no. 2 (February 2012) To the minds of most environmentalists, the ham-hand of the government is needed to protect wildlife. Private property be damned— the government must step in, otherwise every species on the planet will be hunted into oblivion, or human development will gobble up all remaining wildlife habitat, leading to
The Free Market 30, no. 9 (September 2012) For real life-headlines worthy of The Onion , one needs look no further than the doings of the U.S. government and its agencies. One week after Hurricane Sandy devastated the New York area, with a new storm on the way and almost 10,000 Staten Islanders still without power and scavenging for food, “FEMA
The Free Market 26, no. 10 (October 2005) K atrina gave the Gulf region of the United States a lesson in government failure, and how. In the weeks following the hurricane, it became clear that most of the destruction was not the work of Mother Nature but those who are charged with preventing precisely such disasters as this. To begin on a
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.