The Free Market 5, no. 2 (February 1987) Winter is here, and for the last few years this seasonal event has meant the sudden discovery of a brand-new category of the pitiable: the “homeless.” A vast propaganda effort has discovered the homeless and abjured us to do something about it—inevitably to pour millions of tax-dollars onto the problem.
The Free Market 5, no. 3 (March 1987) I’ve lectured about “The Origin, Nature, and History of Money from an Austrian Perspective” in the United States a couple dozen times. But until it actually happened last November, I never expected to do it in socialist Poland. I spent a week there, living with and interviewing activists in the Polish
The Free Market 5, no. 4 (April 1987) Not all hard-money supporters favor the gold-coin standard or any Treasury minting of gold coins. A few “purists” charge those of us who advocate a gold standard with being “gold socialists” because the Treasury would, at least initially, be minting the gold coins. Why not, they say, simply start minting
The Free Market 5, no. 5 (May 1987) I look back with special pleasure and deep respect on that giant of our age, Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). How he shone in his students’ lives and minds, gently schooling us in the meaning of human action and the free market. Today we glory in the truth of Misesian economics, and marvel at his lonely and
The Free Market 5, no. 6 (June 1987) A truism among free-marketeers is that collectivism is flawed because it flies in the face of human nature. But many writers on our side also ignore a key aspect of human nature. They write about politics and economics as if they were logic or mechanics. Pull lever X for output Y. Disseminate the evidence of
The Free Market 5, no. 6 (June 1987) A truism among free-marketeers is that collectivism is flawed because it flies in the face of human nature. But many writers on our side also ignore a key aspect of human nature. They write about politics and economics as if they were logic or mechanics. Pull lever X for output Y. Disseminate the evidence of
The Free Market 5, no. 8 (August 1987) The press is resounding with acclaim for the accession to Power of Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Fed; economists from right, left, and center weigh in with hosannas for Alan’s greatness, acumen, and unparalleled insights into the “numbers.” The only reservation seems to be that Alan might not enjoy the
The Free Market 5, no. 8 (August 1987) To most Americans, economists don’t leap instantly to mind as treasures, let alone national treasures. Whether making arrogant and fallacious mathematical predictions; filling the minds of college students with Keynesian and socialist buncombe; or giving a theoretical cover to State inflation, taxation,
The Free Market 5, no. 9 (September 1987) As long as bureaucrat-bashing remains sport royal, there is hope. But how much? Even now, confronting bureaucracy’s relentless encroachments and entanglements, whoya gonna call? The Reagan administration phoned Ollie North, a “man of action,” a “take-charge guy” who can “cut through red tape” and “get
The Free Market 5, no. 10 (October 1987) The Institute thanks Margit von Mises for her gracious permission to print excerpts from this un-published talk. ed. The pre-capitalistic system of production was [based on] military conquest. The victorious kings had given the land to their paladins. These aristocrats were lords in the literal sense of
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.