During the three years after World War II, Germans—facing a ruined economy and wildly depreciating currency—turned to cigarettes as a medium of exchange on a massive scale. Allied occupation authorities strictly forbade this black-market currency exchange, but it literally saved the lives of many German civilians—and inadvertently made many
For a number of reasons, the French Revolution is a kind of Rorschach Test for educated people. One cause of this phenomenon, if I may pile on metaphors, is clearly the blind man/elephant problem. There are so many parts of the Revolution, so many stages, so many protagonists, so many ideas, so many policies—often quite contradictory—that we are
Postwar Germany was occupied, in ruins, with an economy in chaos. Germans were reduced to using cigarettes supplied by American GIs as money. Original Article: “ To Smoke or Not to Smoke: The Cigarette Economy in Postwar Germany, 1945–48
Durante los tres años posteriores a la Segunda Guerra Mundial, los alemanes —enfrentados a una economía arruinada y a una moneda que se depreciaba salvajemente— recurrieron masivamente a los cigarrillos como medio de cambio. Las autoridades de ocupación aliadas prohibieron terminantemente este mercado negro de intercambio de divisas, pero salvó
Por varias razones, la Revolución francesa es una especie de test de Rorschach para las personas cultas. Una de las causas de este fenómeno, si se me permite amontonar metáforas, es claramente el problema del elefante y el ciego. Hay tantas partes de la Revolución, tantas etapas, tantos protagonistas, tantas ideas, tantas políticas —a menudo
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.