Preface by David Gordon When Murray Rothbard wrote “Science, Technology, and Government” in 1959, supporters of the free market needed to confront a challenge that remains relevant today. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched its “Sputnik” satellite, thereby defeating the United States in the race between the two countries to be first into space. Did
Cuando Murray Rothbard escribió Ciencia, tecnología y gobierno en 1959, los partidarios del mercado libre tenían que hacer frente a un desafío que aún hoy sigue siendo relevante. En 1957, la Unión Soviética lanzó su satélite Sputnik , derrotando así a los Estados Unidos en la carrera entre los dos países para ser los primeros en el espacio.
Rothbard shows precisely how banks create money out of thin air and how the central bank, backed by government power, allows them to get away with it. He shows how exchange rates and interest rates would work in a true free market. When it comes to describing the end of the gold standard, he is not content to describe the big trends. He names
We live in a world of euphemism. Undertakers have become “morticians,” press agents are now “public relations counselors” and janitors have all been transformed into “superintendents.” In every walk of life, plain facts have been wrapped in cloudy camouflage. No less has this been true of economics. In the old days, we used to suffer nearly
[ Libertarian Forum (March 1983)] Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek, To take one blow, and turn the other cheek; It is not written what a man shall do, If the rude caitiff smite the other too! —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Somewhere in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead there is a striking passage where one of the Bad Guys (and Rand’s Bad Guys are
As you spend the day with family and friends, we thought you might take some time away from bowl games to enjoy a vintage Rothbard speech that touches on twin themes appropriate to January 1st: reflecting on the past while looking to the future. Filmed on the Stanford University campus at the second Mises University in 1988, he contemplates the
Originally published in Inquiry , July 1982. With every passing year, as memories of the Vietnam War fade from our nation’s historical consciousness, the calls for America to reassert itself in the world arena grow more insistent. A proliferation of national-security think tanks and conservative publicists issue daily proclamations that all the
November 11 (Veteran’s Day) in the US was once known as Armistice Day, the day set aside to celebrate the end of the modern era’s bloodiest war (up to that time). In his essay “ World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals,” Murray Rothbard discusses the war as the triumph of several Progressive intellectual strains from the late 19th
[First published in Inquiry , November 12, 1979.] A half-century ago, America — and then the world — was rocked by a mighty stock-market crash that soon turned into the steepest and longest-lasting depression of all time. It was not only the sharpness and depth of the depression that stunned the world and changed the face of modern history: it was
Following the Crash in 1987, many myths circulated about the nature, causes, and remedies for the crash at the time. Rothbard’s debunking of many of these myths is still informative today. Originally published in the January 1988 issue of The Free Market : Ever since Black, or Meltdown, Monday October 19th, the public has been deluged with
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.