In reviewing the contributions of Adam Smith to the growth of economics Hans Brems writes that “[m]uch of what Smith had to say had been said before—but in French. Academic etiquette of his day demanded no acknowledgements, and he offered none.” This is an unusually clear statement of a point of view that appears to circulate through much of the
It is the task of this paper to describe what can happen to “a good cause” when it is “ineptly defended,” and to address the problem of the relationship between a verbal free-market support and advocacy in general on one hand, and practical political statements and policy measures adopted by these rhetorically free market politicians on the other.
[Journal of Libertarian Studies 15, Number 1 (2000)] Modern history is nothing but an inventory of bankruptcy declarations . —Nicolas Gomez Davila I Monarchy is a form of government not well understood in North America. To many people in that part of the world, monarchy seems to be a totally obsolete, even childish, institution. The surviving
In the 1640s, an unknown English printer by the name of Richard Overton suddenly surfaced, seemingly out of nowhere, and catapulted himself into national attention and controversy, only to disappear almost as suddenly into an equally obscure nowhere. Volume 15, Number 1 (2000) Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter. “Self-Ownership and Consent: The
The European Union is a continental movement with an American pedigree. The phenomena of European “integration” and “harmonization” (innocuous terms for a pernicious enterprise) re-enact the evolution of the American Union: the judicial conversion of sovereign states into municipalities and, concomitantly, the homogenization-centralization of
During the sectional crisis, the overwhelming practical and theoretical inheritance that nourished the Southern worldview was built upon an appreciation of the necessary limitations of social and political life. Primary among the means of limitation was the need for societal and personal restraint when faced with the possibility of radical
Following the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, smaller, independent, ethnically-based political entities emerged. In the years since, academics from various disciplines have renewed their interest in the topic of secession. A lively discussion in the academic mainstream on the morality and legality of secession has occurred
The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which closed out the era of wars “of”—or allegedly “about”—religion, established what might be called a rule-bound cartel of sovereign, territorial states, conceived as externally equal to one another and internally hierarchical. At that moment, we see an end to any effective claim by the Papacy and the Holy Roman
In the present article, it is my goal to critically comment on Caplan’s most recent argument. The next section is devoted to Probability and Science, followed by a section on Synthetic a priori and Common Sense, and then a section on Caplan’s Bayesian Cure. Volume 19, Number 1 (2005) Block, Walter. “Rejoinder to Caplan on Bayesian Economics.”
Among spokemen for the Post-Marxist Left, Jürgen Habermas (1923–) may be the most prominent and, in his own country, the most honored. An advocate of “militant” democracy since the 1950s, he has defended his persuasion in the international press, in multiple books and articles, and as an academic lecturer. Volume 19, Number 2 (2005) Gottfried,
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.