It turns out the best book on Bitcoin was written by someone who thinks the cryptocurrency is not a particularly good form of payment, not particularly anonymous, and not a good investment for most people. Saifedean Ammous, professor of economics at Lebanese American University, wrote The Bitcoin Standard to cut through the hype and examine crypto
[ This speech was delivered at the Mises Institute’s conference on “The History of Liberty.” ] It is not an exaggeration to say that trade is the keystone of modern civilization. For as Murray Rothbard wrote: “The market economy is one vast latticework throughout the world, in which each individual, each region, each country, produces what he or
In Human Action Ludwig von Mises wrote that labor unions have always been the primary source of anti-capitalistic propaganda. I was reminded of this recently when I saw a bumper sticker proclaiming one of the bedrock tenets of unionism: “The Union Movement: The People Who Brought You the Weekend.” Well, not exactly. In the U.S. the average work
The intellectual odyssey that laid the foundations for Western civilization began in classical Greece. Unfortunately, Greek thinkers failed in their attempt to grasp the essential principles of the spontaneous market order and of the dynamic process of social cooperation which surrounded them. While we must acknowledge the important Greek
The changes in the data whose reiterated emergence prevents the economic system from turning into an evenly rotating economy and produces again and again entrepreneurial profit and loss are favorable to some members of society and unfavorable to others. Hence, people concluded, the gain of one man is the damage of another; no man profits but by
This article is based on a speech delivered at the European Students for Liberty Regional Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, held on September 22, 2018. That “taxation is theft” is often the default position libertarians take when it comes to tax policy. Why? Because a “tax is a coerced contribution to state and federal revenues,” and “coercion is
The G20 meeting in Buenos Aires had a primary objective. To reach an agreement between the United States and China. However, the announced agreement is more a “diplomatic truce” than a real agreement. The United States commits to delaying tariffs against China that would start on January 1st, 2019 and China commits to purchase more agricultural
International analysts are not giving us the full story on Venezuela. Political commentators have given their spin on the topic of Venezuela’s economic crisis. To their credit, some of them get the surface level details correct on the contributing factors to Venezuela’s collapse — destruction of civil liberties and property rights. However, the
If we analyze the consensus expectations of analysts and investment banks at the end of 2017, the conclusion was unanimous: Buy Europe and emerging against the United States amid weakening US dollar estimates in 2018. And it has been exactly the opposite. I’ve already warned a few times about the risk of such a biased consensus towards a weak US
We are constantly bombarded with bad news. There are disasters, dangers, challenges, and woes. On the political scene, we find perpetual discord peppered with lurid denunciations and shrill condemnations. Media reports are alternately dismaying, disappointing, distressing, disgusting, or depressing. But despair not, friends: All is not lost! Here
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.