The Free Market 26, no. 1 (January 2005) On October 4, 2004, the privately funded SpaceShip-One climbed to an altitude of over 70 miles, clinching the $10 million “X Prize.” Many analysts were excited by the prospects for commercial space travel, and the day when orbital or even interplanetary flights would be affordable for the average
On two separate occasions in the last couple of weeks, people have asked me a familiar question: “In a system of ‘anarcho-capitalism’ or the free-market order, wouldn’t society degenerate into constant battles between private warlords?” Unfortunately I didn’t give adequate answers at the times, but I hope in this article to prove the adage that
In a recent article , I discussed the possibility of private, competing security agencies. I took for granted the background rule of law (or lack thereof), and merely made the relative argument that a monopoly institution of violence (i.e. the State) would not aid the achievement of a working consensus on legal norms, and that in fact (as history
Now that the furor over the botched response to Hurricane Katrina has largely subsided, we can calmly examine an aspect of the episode that most commentators have neglected. Let me motivate the examination by first making the (perhaps surprising) claim that I don’t think the FEMA bureaucrats did anything particularly outrageous. Yes, it is true
En un artículo reciente , consideraba la posibilidad de la existencia de agencias privadas de seguridad en competencia. Daba por sentado el subyacente estado de derecho (o su falta) y solo presentaba el argumento relativo de que una institución monopolística de la violencia (es decir, el Estado) no ayudaría a lograr un consenso que funcione sobre
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.