As layoffs continue to mount during this economic downturn, let us reflect on the purpose of the labor market, with a special focus on the market I know best: academic music. A classmate once told me he would become a university faculty member or an overeducated, “bitter, underemployed vagabond.” He got his PhD in social psychology; I got my MS in
The Microsoft trials remind us that the fear of industrial concentration is the last refuge of socialist theory. The claim is that capitalism ultimately fails because all (or most, or at least some) industries naturally congeal into monopolies in a free market. It follows that government must regulate industries to bring about “competition.” It
The lessons to be learned from food are limitless. Almost any food you can name--if you study its history--has something to say about economics, politics, history, or culture. For whatever reason, tea, particularly the plain old regular types we all know (such as the “black” tea found in cheap boxes of 1,000 teabags at the local grocery gigamart),
Steve Forbes, the wealthy publisher-presidential hopeful, can be an eloquent defender of free enterprise. But there’s another side, too, which was revealed in a recent group discussion on economics that took place on Fox News Channel. Forbes’s comments showed a complete lack of understanding of the basics of a free economy. Against proposals that
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.