Jeffrey Tucker interviews Kel Kelly, author of ‘The Case for Legalizing Capitalism’. Recorded at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on November 15th, 2010.
Throughout the last year, European debt problems have been cited as a threat to both the euro and to the American economy, among other entities. While many correct assertions have been made concerning the potential impact of a European debt implosion, there have also been many ill-conceived ones. It is often faulty economic theory that leads to
The AMA Monopoly While most people believe that our healthcare industry is one comprised of free markets, it is anything but. The industry is completely distorted by government manipulation. [1] To start with, the American Medical Association (AMA) has had a government-granted monopoly on the healthcare system for over 100 years. It has
The earthquake, tsunami, and lingering nuclear crisis in Japan have devastated that country’s people and their place in the global economy. Can the island nation recover? To see where Japan might go next, we have to look at one of the persistent myths about its recent past — the myth of the lost decades. It is widely thought that Japan is in the
A recent discussion regarding commodity prices on CNBC consisted virtually of sentence-by-sentence errors with respect to macroeconomic theory. Most of the misstatements involve either accidentally or intentionally — I don’t know which — attributing economic and financial market events to various incorrect or misleading cause-and-effect scenarios,
China is in the process of allowing its currency to rise. The reason for this is to address the worsening inflation rates in the country. Allowing the yuan to rise will indeed stop, or slow, inflation, but the way this fix works is not the way that is usually assumed. Neither will the effects of this policy be what most observers assume, i.e.,
“Voting wealth out of the pockets of those who have it is socialism.” [ The Case for Legalizing Capitalism ] Businesspeople, if they are successfully “greedy,” become rich by providing their fellow citizens (i.e., consumers) with things that make them better off. In other words, they have to earn it. But many who espouse that people don’t need
Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase (michael.e.feroli@jpmorgan.com), stated that Ron Paul’s idea of returning to the gold standard would result in the exact opposite of what, in reality, it would result in. He implies that under a gold standard, financial markets would be volatile and would be based on manipulation of the money
The former Tunisian police force belonging to President Zine ElAbidine Ben Ali were thugs who enforced the dictator’s rule. They engaged in bullying, intimidation, bribery, and numerous human rights abuses, including contributing to the deaths of more than 100 government protestors in the last couple of months. On Saturday, they too took place in
Freedom Swiss style: Pay a per head tax on your pet or the state will kill it. So much for private property—one’s pet—being one’s own. If pet owners don’t pay the state money, most of which goes into someone else’s pocket, it will come after them. A local Swiss politician described it for what it is: “It’s meant to put pressure on people who don’t
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.