In the first line of his book, Planning for Freedom , Ludwig von Mises, the famed Austrian economist, observed “Planning is socialism.” I will admit that my first acquaintance with government planners was a planning class in my Master’s program, where I was given the party line about how important it was to plan for growth. I read dozens of books,
Property rights are in trouble just about everywhere. The latest trend hits an economic right Americans have traditionally taken for granted: the right to build or buy the biggest home you can afford. The L.A. City Council recently approved, on an 11-0 vote, an “anti-mansionization” ordinance prohibiting smaller homes from being torn down and
The Free Market 26, no. 10 (October 2005) The fifteenth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, signed into law by President Bush I on July 26, 1990, has come and gone, but it has not been a success. It has cost untold billions, increased the pestilence of labor disputes, and even increased the ranks of the unemployed among the
While studying colonial period business practices and property rights issues, for a business & finance history class, I read Carl Watner’s Libertarians and Indians: Proprietary Justice & Aboriginal Land Rights , in a 1983 issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. Watner smartly refutes the thesis that states, as Roderick Long puts it , “given
The Supremes rules today ( Kelo v. New London ; related article ) “that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses against their will for private development.” As I’ve noted , the conservative Justices are generally much better than the liberals, on both Constitutional interpretation and economic and civil liberties, Justices
Modern variants of positive legal theory state that the law should be what the legislators say it is. But what principles are to guide the legislators? And if we say that the legislators should be the spokesmen for their constituents, then we simply push the problem one step back, and ask: What principles are supposed to guide the
This paper was prepared for consideration for a Ludwig von Mises prize to be awarded at the Mises Institute’s 10th anniversary conference, October 9-11,1992. The paper draws from and expands upon a manuscript entitled “The Evolution of Values and Institutions in a Free Society: The Underpinnings of a Market Economy,” prepared for the International
A disturbing trend after Katrina was summed up in George Bush’s promise to have the federal government completely rebuild the Gulf Coast better than before the storm, and do so with taxpayer money. Can we really expect government to create quality cities using redistribution, government programs, and regulations? The Bay Area Center for Voting
After the Supreme Court’s Kelo ruling, in which it refused to intervene in a local case of eminent domain, many on the plaintiff side predicted the end of the world as we know it. “It opens the possibility for blanket government evasions of the takings limits the founders established.” “The sanctity of peoples’ homes now exists solely at the whim
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.