New on Films on Liberty and the State , Oliver Stone’s controversial JFK : “Kings are killed. Politics is power, nothing more!” In this film on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, director Oliver Stone delivers a scorching critique of the war-making United States government. The mysterious informant, Mr. X, explains, “No war... No
Arnold Beichman writes in honor of the 60th anniversary of Hayek’s classic in the Washington Times: The Austrian-born Hayek who died in 1992, explained what he called “the extended order of human cooperation, an order more commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, known as capitalism.” In his later book, “The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism,” he
CNET news.com, the popular ( top 100 web site ) tech news site issues a fatwa against the FCC: It’s true that imagining a telecommunications world without the FCC is not easy. But imagining a telecommunications world not dominated by Ma Bell was difficult two decades ago, and it was not easy for the Eastern European countries to imagine life
Econlib is featuring the 1936 Ph.D. dissertation of Vera C. Smith which was directed by F. A. Hayek. In The Rationale of Central Banking and the Free Banking Alternative , she discusses the rise of central banking as a thoroughly political phenomenon: Notes issued under this system [free banking] would be “promises to pay,” and such obligations
Don Boudreaux makes a theoretical observation that is all too dreadfully relevant right now: If... people who dislike U.S. government policies seek to terrorize Americans because of these policies, every American is at greater risk of being a victim of a terrorist attack – even those citizens who strongly oppose the policies. This is a negative
The Onion asks , “Last week, the U.S. dollar dipped to a record low against the euro. What are the reasons for the currency’s decline?”. Two of my favorites from their answers: Inflation inevitable after U.S. Mint began allowing people to print $20 bills on their inkjet printers Currency markets hate freedom For less funny, but more economically
An ongoing issue in the U.S. has been controversy over the traditional Christmas time display of crèches on public property, (a crèche is a representation of the birth of Jesus often using statues of Jesus, Mary and Joseph). Some find this objectionable and sue or pass laws to stop it. Others feel like these legal measures represent the thin end
The popular Slashdot site, “News for nerds, stuff that matters”, has posted a link to the Mises Daily article, The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell III . You might find the massive discussion this has sparked at Slashdot interesting, 255 comments and counting! Some of them are pretty silly, but some are honest attempts to deal with the
I’m no fan of the World Trade Organization, but I am hardly shedding tears at its ruling against the U.S. program under which the federal government imposes anti-dumping duties on foreigners and gives the money to domestic competitors. The charge of “dumping,” that is, selling below cost, is always trumped up because the notion of cost can be
In the same vein of Don Boudreaux’s recent post at Cafe Hayek , I have always enjoyed this similar bit of correct historical observation from the Communist Manifesto : “The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection
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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.