Bin Laden’s objective,” I speculated to Hernando de Soto, Peru’s great author of The Other Path and now The Mystery of Capital , “is the expulsion of American interests from the Muslim world.” “No, no,” he replied, “it’s more than that. He wants American interests out of the whole Third World.” In this scenario, the pessimistic concern is not only
In this paper I will attempt to analyze laws limiting emigration, migration, and immigration from the libertarian perspective. I will defend the view that the totally free movement of goods, factors of production, money, and, most important of all, people, is part and parcel of this traditional libertarian philosophy. Like tariffs and exchange
The growth of US military power has rarely, if ever, been the result of legitimate concerns about defensive strategy, let alone about the national welfare. Instead, it’s more often a consequence of a waste, corruption, and imperial ambition that together have produced the modern military-industrial complex. This history receives some well-deserved
The Daily Mail reports that an 18-month publicity campaign to encourage women to join the Royal Marines has ended after managing to recruit just one candidate to its elite training program. The campaign was a follow-up to David Cameron’s decision a year ago to lift the ban on women serving in close-combat roles. It’s unclear how much the campaign
The present paper is the continuation of an intra-libertarian debate over immigration. Previous contributions to this dialogue on the open borders side include Block, 1998, 2004A, 2011; Block and Callahan, 2003; Gregory and Block, 2007. The restricted borders argument includes Hoppe 1995, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002. Volume 22, Number 1 (2011) Block,
Any insurance involves the pooling of individual risks. Under this arrangement, there are winners and losers. Some of the insured will receive more than they paid in premiums and some will pay more into the system than they ever get back. This is a form of income redistribution from the healthy to the sick, but the characteristic mark of insurance
I. Introduction: Why Praise Unfamous Men? My title raises the question of why we take an interest in individuals of whom few have ever heard. One reason is that the victors write the history--both of domestic politics and foreign policy. Their Court historians seldom dwell on those who opposed intervention and war, if only because such
One of my research interests is the economics of war and war making, and especially what economics can teach us about military organizations, how they’re structured, and how they operate. As part of this larger interest, I’ve recently been looking at military thought in history, and how economic ideas (or the lack thereof) have shaped strategic
Being a government means never having to say you’re sorry. And it also means you get to blame everyone else for all the problems you’ve caused. This week at mises.org, we explored how deeply indebted governments blame the ones who lend them money , while government prosecutors blame entrepreneurs, businesses, and “white collar crime” for other
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.