In his column “Phony Fear Factor,” published in The New York Times on August 8, 2013, Paul Krugman mocks the view that “economic policy uncertainty” helps to explain the failure of the American economy to recover from the collapse of 2008. Unfortunately, Krugman displays little knowledge of the view he wishes to challenge. He says very little
Murray Rothbard anticipated the concept of “rent seeking,” generally associated with Gordon Tullock. In Man, Economy and State , he says: “Furthermore, the more government intervenes and subsidizes, the more caste conflict will be created in society, for individuals and groups will benefit only at one another’s expense . The more widespread the
Barbara Oakley, an engineering professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, has just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, a brilliant article on “pathological altruism.” People often act out of a desire to help others, but this by no means ensures that what they do will have good consequences, whether for
Mises University this year featured a “conference within the conference”. The distinguished jurist and television commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano offered a course of five lectures on “The Growth of the Commerce Clause as an Instrument of Federal Power.” Judge Napolitano presented a masterful survey of how the Supreme Court has interpreted
Kelefa Sanneh, a music critic and journalist who writes for The New Yorker , has a brief discussion of Murray Rothbard in his article “ Paint Bombs “ He devotes most of the piece to the anthropologist David Graeber, an anarchist but no friend of the free market, and his influence on the Occupy Wall Street movement. James C. Scott, another
Murray Rothbard was an early admirer of Ronald Coase, who died Monday at age 102. In a memo in two parts for the Volker Fund, dated July 16, 1957, Rothbard reported on two series of lectures delivered by Coase. He praised Coase’s insight that “under planning, government, if it cannot force labor directly, must. . .condemn any public criticism as
Matt Zwolinski, a libertarian political philosopher and the founder of the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, has a surprising proposal. Libertarians, he suggests, should drop the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) . The NAP holds that “aggression against the person or property of others is always wrong, where aggression is defined narrowly in terms of
Julian Sanchez has carried criticism of the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) to a new level. The principle tells us not to commit aggression; but, as Matt Zwolinski and others have pointed out, you don’t know what counts as “aggression” unless you know what rights people have. You can’t judge who the aggressor is simply by seeing who uses force
Ronald Dworkin, (1931-2013) who died yesterday, was widely regarded as America’s leading legal philosopher. He was decidedly not a libertarian, but libertarians will find much of interest and value in his work. His defense of moral objectivity in his Justice for Hedgehogs (2011) is especially impressive. He argues that views about the nature of
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.