Many naïve observers of the market economy dismiss concern with the “bottom line” as a purely arbitrary social convention. To these critics, it seems senseless that a factory producing, say, medicine or shoes for toddlers stops at the point when the owner decides that profit has been maximized. It would certainly be physically possible to produce
Ever since Rick Perry derided Social Security as a Ponzi scheme, economists and other pundits have jumped into the fray. Progressive blogger Matt Yglesias says it’s “nuts” for anyone to talk like this, because Social Security merely relies on future economic growth — just like a private pension plan. Free-market economist Alex Tabarrok responded
As most people know, economists are a strange lot. We view the world from an unusual perspective. This allows us to see things that others miss — such as the obvious fact that Superman needs an agent — but alas, it renders us oddballs. On a recent trip to the grocery store, it occurred to me that much of what I see during a typical outing differs
This year in the online Mises Academy I have been leading students through Murray Rothbard’s classic treatise, Man, Economy, and State . (For details on the current class, covering the final third of the book, see here .) In the previous class we covered Rothbard’s analysis of the pricing of land. This is an illuminating topic because it involves
This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics goes to two Americans, Thomas Sargent (NYU) and Christopher Sims (Princeton). Officially the award is for “their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.” There is no doubt that these two guys are really sharp, and free-market economists can find a lot to like in much of the work of
The Securities and Exchange Commission took the very drastic step of outlawing the essential financial practice of short selling in an attempt to galvanize financial markets. (The SEC recently extended at least some portions of its initial ban through October 17.) But short selling provides essential information to market participants and helps us
In a recent article , New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was aghast at the draft memo outlining a Trump Administration proposal to subsidize nuclear and coal-fired power plants because of their superior resilience in the face of human or natural disasters. As someone who endorses actual top-down government bans on new coal plants , Krugman
Presumably bolstered by the fiery claims of Greta Thunberg and the general theme of Climate Week, people on Twitter have been declaring that capitalism threatens humanity. This angst rekindled interest in a Guardian article that ran a few months ago, in which author George Monbiot argued that the very nature of capitalism is “incompatible with
Everyone knows that the unemployment situation is very bad, but the official figures (not surprisingly) understate the problem. In this article I’ll outline the severity of the stalled labor market, and explain some of the major causes. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the official civilian unemployment rate in February was 8.9
The Free Market 26, no. 1 (January 2005) On October 4, 2004, the privately funded SpaceShip-One climbed to an altitude of over 70 miles, clinching the $10 million “X Prize.” Many analysts were excited by the prospects for commercial space travel, and the day when orbital or even interplanetary flights would be affordable for the average
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.