Some months ago, at a hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the head of the Netscape corporation asked the audience in the room how many owned a personal computer and then how many of those used Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Upon a show of hands demonstrating that almost everyone in the room who owned a computer used Windows,
For several years the stock market has made major gains, adding up to what has probably been the greatest bull market in all of history. Setbacks that appeared threatening, such as those that occurred in April of 1997 and August/September of 1998, have proved temporary and have served merely as renewed buying opportunities. With each renewal of
The meaning of the government’s proposal to break Microsoft into two separate companies, the one confined to producing Windows, the other confined to producing application software, is that one or the other of these two major branches of personal computer software is to be closed to the productive genius of America’s most successful software
The state of California is experiencing a fiasco in its electric power system. The system has repeatedly run near the overload point, necessitating brownouts and threatening rolling blackouts. Wholesale power prices in San Diego County and the southern portion of adjacent Orange County have briefly been as high as $5,000 per megawatt hour and,
I am a university professor, who earns a monthly salary, and one that is certainly not overwhelming in size. It’s very unlikely that I will ever leave an estate that is too large to qualify for the estate-tax exemption. Still less likely is it that I will ever inherit such an estate. Nevertheless, I am in favor of the repeal of the estate tax on
Environmentalism is the product of the collapse of socialism in a world that is ignorant of the contributions of Ludwig von Mises—a world that does not know what he has said that would logically explain the collapse of socialism and, even more importantly, the success of capitalism. Because of ignorance of the contributions of von Mises, the great
California reportedly is faced with the prospect of thirty days of rolling blackouts this summer, along with all of the accompanying chaotic consequences. And yet, there is a very simple, free-market way to prevent these impending blackouts: namely, raise the price of electric power . As the price of power rises, the quantity demanded falls. All
Environmentalism, and its boa constrictor-like, strangling grip on energy production, is taking an increasingly visible toll on production and the quality of life in the United States. Recurring power blackouts in California and skyrocketing oil and natural gas prices are the most obvious symptoms. Nevertheless, the environmentalists seem utterly
The following is the Closing Lecture delivered by Dr. Reisman at the Mises Summer University, Auburn, Alabama, on Saturday, August 11, 2001 I’m honored to have been asked to give this closing talk on the subject of the future of liberty, at the very end of this highly intensive week of classes you’ve just been through—classes that all relate to
Middle Eastern terrorism rests on a foundation of financial support in the form of revenues derived from the sale of oil by the members of the OPEC cartel. Sometimes, as in the case of Iraq and Libya, the connection is simple and direct—oil revenues go straight to terrorist governments, either because the terrorist governments themselves own the
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.