Some economists are good at political philosophy as well. Mises and Rothbard of course come to mind, but the good philosophers aren’t confined to Austrian school economists. Amartya Sen and Kenneth Arrow know what they are talking about when it comes to philosophy, agree with them or not. But some eminent economists don’t, and, judging by Nicholas
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. In previous articles, I’ve discussed the Great Reset and introduced several ways of understanding the economics of it. The Great Reset can be thought of as neofeudalism , as “ corporate socialism ,” as “ capitalism with Chinese characteristics ,” and in terms of “ stakeholder capitalism”
Leo Strauss is one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century, and like him or not, we need to understand his ideas. Murray Rothbard, by the way, had a mixed verdict on Strauss. He says, for example, [H]is work exhibits one great virtue and one great defect: the virtue is that he is in the forefront of the fight to
The historian Quinn Slobodian presents us in his article “ Perfect Capitalism, Imperfect Humans: Race, Migration, and the Limits of Ludwig von Mises’s Globalism ,” Contemporary European History (2018), with a surprising interpretation of Ludwig von Mises. According to Slobodian, Mises was a racist who favored colonial wars of subjugation to open
Raghuram Rajan has written a surprising book. Now teaching finance at the University of Chicago, he is an international bureaucrat in good standing, and not a minor one at that; he was chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. Yet far from calling for an increase in “global governance,” as one might expect from someone with his
I’d like to consider some criticisms of anarcho-capitalist theories of property acquisition raised by Jesse Spafford in his article “Social Anarchism and the Rejection of Private Property,” included in The Routledge Handbook of Anarchy and Anarchist Thought , edited by Gary Chartier and Chad Van Schoelandt (Routledge, 2021). Spafford, a research
Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was a bestseller when it was published in 1944, and it has remained ever since one of the classic works in the literature of liberty. Many people, though, find it hard to understand. After Glenn Beck featured the book on his television show in 2010, resulting in a surge in demand for it, one noted speaker at
Several months ago, I debated Thaddeus Russell on The Tom Woods Show . The proposition debated was “Postmodern philosophy is compatible with a politics of individual liberty.” Thaddeus defended the proposition and I opposed it. Here, I want to flesh out some of the points I made in the debate, adding more context than I could marshal under the
In the previous installments of this series ( part I , part II ), I have argued that government default is not only ethical, it is also beneficial to the economy and society as a whole. The one question I left open at the end of part II was the possible consequences for financial markets and the monetary system in the case of a government default.
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) embodies a political trend that cripples human rights in the guise of crusading for them. This trend is the balkanization, or fragmentation, of rights. Recently passed by the House, VAWA has moved to the Senate, where the trend it represents may well be translated into more law. Identity politics and its
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.