Walter Block debates Rev. David Bolieau on the topics of ethics and economics. Recorded at the Loyola Economics Club, New Orleans, Louisiana, on 3 October 2006 .
It is high time to shift out of the pragmatic mind-set that has been our national characteristic. The grand alternatives for social organization must be reconsidered. The loss of faith in the socialist dream has not, and probably will not, restore faith in laissez-faire. But what are the effective alternatives? Does anarchism deserve a hearing,
[This article is excerpted from chapter one of The Economics of Prohibition .] Prohibition has an ever-increasing impact on our daily life. In the United States, prohibition against certain drugs, involving “wars” on them, has become one of our most visible and hotly debated national problems. The purpose of the following investigation is to
The inability of modern philosophers to furnish any kind of argument for the maintenance of a government is a notorious weakness. In Lysander Spooner’s writings, it becomes an odd strength. Throughout such writings as No Treason, A Letter to Thomas F. Bayard , and “Natural Law,” Spooner asks why taxation and participation in the workings of the
[This article is excerpted from Part V of The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality .] In the universe there is never and nowhere stability and immobility. Change and transformation are essential features of life. Each state of affairs is transient; each age is an age of transition. In human life there is never calm and repose. Life is a process, not a
There is this guy, Lew Rockwell, who writes regularly on these pages. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, but the man is an extremist. Yes, I repeat that: an extremist! He has no sense of proportion, nor balance. Instead, he marks out the most extreme positions on any given subject, and tries to make them sound, horrors!, reasonable. The
This is a question that no one seems to be asking. And so I’ve asked it. And here, in essence, is what I think is the answer. (The answer, of course, applies to Ford and Chrysler, as well as to General Motors. I’ve singled out General Motors because it’s still the largest of the three and its problems are the most pronounced.) First , the company
Ludwig von Mises argued that ballots are to be preferred to bullets because while they bring about similar outcomes, the former has less bloodshed than the latter. Murray Rothbard (Mises’s student) criticized this conclusion (which Mises shared, after all, with David Hume), because, he argued, democratic rule promotes political arrangements — not
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.