On February 7, 2009, and in the week that followed, bushfires ignited across Victoria, in Australia. [1] The fires raged through many towns, destroying at least 1,834 homes, [2] and killing at least 209 people, [3] more fatalities than any bushfire in Australian history. [4] Let’s compare: in the 1983 “Ash Wednesday” bushfires, seventy-five
The April 20 explosion and subsequent round-the-clock oil spill from a BP-operated deepwater drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico 40 miles off the Louisiana coast has generated justifiable anger across the nation. It’s also generated calls for strict sanctions against BP, the most drastic of which is confiscation of all company assets. The front
There is a slogan: “Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it.” It is especially true because so much of our transportation infrastructure is publicly owned. Every winter of bad weather brings us the same scenes of bleak road and highway conditions. Spinning tires, “beached” cars the shoulder of the road, cars stuck in the
Over the past two weeks, National Public Radio (NPR) has carried stories on the plight of the bluefin tuna and on the conservation campaign designed to save the endangered fish. Restaurants and supermarket chains have pledged to boycott the delectable creature until governments lower fishing quotas. Some vocal fishermen naturally oppose reductions
If environmental stewardship obligates us to be mindful of future generations in making our day-to-day decisions, what should we do? Should we be recycling paper and preventing people from building parking lots to save trees? Or should we acknowledge that the planet will be destroyed sooner or later and try to find ways to build something like
Property is that beautiful foundation from which libertarians approach conflicts. Accepting that the rights to property come through the rights of original homesteading, appropriation, and exchange eliminates the need to question motives or intentions in action. Without defined property rights, the public is left squabbling for some other rubric
With no end in sight, the controversy surrounding the so-called ground-zero mosque continues to bring out the worst in all of us. As the controversy continues, I’m struck by a parallel between this proposed mosque and another American monument established in 1996. Background Almost 15 years ago, President Bill Clinton designated a large expanse of
The freedom of a person to act according to his will in his property implies by symmetry that aggressions against others are ethically unacceptable. An illegitimate aggression is any sufficiently intense adverse physical interference caused by a person on another’s property. A problematic and possibly important case is the alteration of
I am fortunate enough to live on a property with enough trees and garden areas, put in by previous owners, that I accumulate a pile of yard waste in my backyard. About once a year, I have to figure out what to do with it. Where I live, you can burn yard waste, and so, once a year, I do. I don’t really have any good way to haul it anywhere, and I
[An MP3 audio version of this article, read by Dr. Floy Lilley, is available as a free download .] In two of his recent op-eds ( here and here ) for the New York Times , Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has challenged critics of the government’s intentions to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, and he has even specifically endorsed the pending
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.