*Presentation prepared for the Mises Institute’s conference, “Austrian Economics and the Financial Markets,” Toronto, Canada, September 16-17, 1999. In 1978 Michael Jensen and William Meckling, writing in the Financial Analysts Journal , offered an extraordinarily gloomy prediction for the future of capitalism: “The most spectacular period of
True Patriotism (A speech delivered at the Men’s Club of the Prospect Street Congregational Church in Cambridge, Mass., June 7, 1898) There are moments in every man’s life, in the life of every nation, when, under the excitement of passion, the simple truths which in common times are the foundation upon which the right order and conduct of life
London Times March 24, 1999 The real catastrophe Why Kosovo? Why, of all the current civil wars and humanitarian horrors, is it Kosovo that now summons British troops to the colours? Or put it another way, why does a bloodstained shroud only have to wave over a Balkan village for otherwise intelligent people to take leave of their senses?
There was a time when the public wrongly trusted in the government. The glory of the present political moment is that this is no longer true. It’s all to the good that this lack of trust has hamstrung the advocates of statism, but it has also upset some whose livelihoods hinge on an ever-growing Leviathan. In the column below, Meg Greenfield
Investors Business Daily February 19, 1999 It goes by many names: national service, selective service, conscription, the draft. All four have been heard in recent discussions in Washington about the military’s staffing problems. The All Volunteer Force is facing its toughest trial in its 26-year history. The Navy is 22,000 sailors short of its
Clinton gave three reasons for his military intervention in the heart of Europe. A quick look shows them to be models of the state disinformation we’ve come to expect in wartime. First, he says he is dropping bombs to prevent the spread of war. But this is straight out of Orwell. Escalating war does not prevent its spread. It encourages it. It
The government of Indonesia must stop the slaughter in East Timor, says National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, or else. Or else what? Or else, there will be “implications for the capacity of the international community to support Indonesia’s economic program.” Whoa, that’s some pretty big talk there, Mr. Berger. Imagine: the Clinton
Ah, the Cold War, that heroic exercise in U.S. global philanthropy and unrelieved humanitarianism! In the end, however, we may find that it brings to mind Ozymandias, Pyrrhus, and other associations inconsistent with the prevailing mood of triumph. We may find that the Cold War perfected the witch’s brew of retail Puritanism, centralism,
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.