The great debate between Capitalism and Socialism has been settled, but we continue to experience an ever-expanding management of the U.S. economy, which itself is a form of socialism. Mises wrote in Socialism : “It is the aim of Socialism to transfer the means of production from private ownership to the ownership of the State.” Socialism, as
Bill Clinton’s unpaid legal bills now exceed his net assets by several million dollars. And now, just as the president is getting ready to pack his bags, Franette McCulloch has seen to it that he’ll have one more lawsuit to deal with, one more charge of sexual harassment, and one more demand for $1 million on his way out the door. It started in
As you read this, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is deciding whether the Internet file-sharing service Napster will continue operating or be shut down by a lower court’s injunction issued last July. The injunction was stayed by a two-judge panel of the same appeals court and allows Napster to keep
In a U.S. presidential election where about 100 million votes are likely to be cast, what is the probability that your vote will be decisive in determining the outcome? Like it or not, the probability is pretty small---zero for all practical purposes. The probability hurdle is twofold. First, the presidential vote tally in your state would have
The judge in the Microsoft antitrust trial, Thomas Penfield Jackson, recently stated that he “didn’t see a distinction” between Bill Gates’s Microsoft Corporation and John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. The judge is right, but for the wrong reasons. Like Gates, Rockefeller was the victim of a vindictive political assault on his company for
Joel Klein, the third-rate lawyer/political hack who is in charge of the government’s Microsoft persecution, recently tried to rationalize the lawsuit by saying that it was in keeping with the long history of consumer protection regulation, beginning with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. In reality, the history of antitrust has been a history of
When Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson “ordered, adjudged, and decreed” the breakup of Microsoft into two separate companies he effectively replaced Bill Gates with government lawyer Joel Klein as the chief decision maker of the Microsoft Corporation. The Judge accepted almost verbatim the Clinton administration’s breakup proposal, authored by Klein
The hordes of lawyers that Al Gore has employed to help him try to overturn the presidential election through voter fraud are the latest example of how the rule of law is being destroyed. Florida election laws are clear as a bell in disallowing hand recounts unless there is fraud or machine failure, which Gore is not claiming is the case. The
The recent “findings of fact” and ruling by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson that Microsoft violated antitrust laws is a travesty of economic reasoning and common sense justice. Jackson accepted the bulk of the government’s argument that Microsoft was a monopoly in the relevant market and that they engaged in “anti-competitive” practices to enhance
Joel Klein, Assistant Attorney General and round-one winner over Microsoft, is certainly puffed up these days and quite carried away with himself. He recently told a London gathering of the American Bar Association faithful that antitrust regulation is now, get this, the only “legitimate form of government intervention.” Oh, really? Klein also
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.