Those who disparage the ideas of deregulation and limited government claim that we need a large activist government to reign in the excesses of capitalism. Such persons trust government bureaucrats to enforce regulations in a responsible manner. The actual record of big government indicates that such trust in government is unfounded. One of the
Proponents of the modern welfare/regulatory state often claim that state intervention promotes the common good and benefits ordinary people. Markets allegedly fail to deliver maximum prosperity, so governments must intervene to promote the common good. Advocates of free markets have always had evidence to counter the arguments for government
On the rare occasions when governments consider curbing their expenditure on some service — or, more likely, consider curbing the rate of increase in spending — they are invariably called upon to undertake discussions with relevant “stakeholders” and members of the community. This process is ostensibly undertaken to determine the views of those
“There is, in fact, only one solution: the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education. Public funds must not be used for such purposes. The rearing and instruction of youth must be left entirely to parents and to private associations and institutions.” – Ludwig von Mises I met William Graham
Literature can exert a powerful influence on our ideological views. [1] Ayn Rand, after all, was primarily a novelist. Many people were converted to liberalism (or at least some variety of it) after experiencing in person her unquestionable charisma and magnetism, but the significance of her novels, most notably Atlas Shrugged , [2] can hardly be
A couple of weeks before Katrina, I had purchased a selection of several dozen bromeliads from the estate of the recently deceased past president of the American Bromeliad Association and moved them from the back yard of her house on Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans to Auburn, Alabama. At the time my biggest fear was that the
The upshot was that it was a bat, which, despite the prevalence of bat revisionism, is a spooky, nasty, disease-carrying, malicious threat to peace and contentment, made all the worse by its elusive, nocturnal habits. But this wasn’t at all obvious at first. It began as little more than a peculiar sound, noted by a visitor to our home. It sounded
I’m reading about the remarkable push by IBM’s Stuart S.P. Parkin to shrink the physical size of data memory to 100 th of its present bulk. It’s an amazing prospect, and we aren’t talking about technological advance for its own sake. “That means,” says the New York Times writer who knows how to interest readers in what would otherwise be arcane,
Why does it always have to be California? New York? Massachusetts? Why not New Hampshire ? New Hampshire: The Land of “Live Free or Die: Death is not the worst of evils.” The home of Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, Mary Baker Eddy, Franklin Pierce, Robert Frost, Maxfield Parrish, Alan B. Shepard Jr, J.D. Salinger, Ken Burns, and Dean Kamen. Home
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.