Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of the Trump administration has been the way that the CIA and the American intelligence establishment has come under public scrutiny in a way not seen for decades. Due to Wikileaks and other whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden, the activities of these intelligence agencies have increasingly come to
Last week, founder and CEO of Amazon.com Jeff Bezos surpassed Warren Buffet to become the second richest man in the world. His net worth is now estimated to be $75.6 billion dollars. If Amazon continues its upward trend, it won’t be long before Bezos surpasses the software giant as the wealthiest man on the planet. Any time a person makes
By now, most of us have finished our binge-watch of Netflix’s latest Marvel series Iron First. Billionaire Danny Rand gets stranded in the Himalayas at the age of ten after a plane crash and is raised by warrior monks who turn him into a superhero sworn to fight against the evil Hand organization. I am a mega-geek when it comes to anything Marvel,
In 1966, Milton Friedman wrote an op-ed for Newsweek entitled “ Minimum Wage Rates .” In it, he argued “that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books.” He was, of course, referring to the then-present era, after the far more explicitly racist laws from the slavery and segregation eras of United States history had
In the 1950s, Corsican gangsters such as Lucky Luciano created a mafia empire by smuggling morphine base from Turkey to Sicily, where it was refined into heroin, then shipped to France and finally to the United States. This was the infamous “French Connection” that supplied the bulk of the heroin supply that the United States received through the
For listeners of Historical Controversies , it might be of some profit to discuss the Misesian approach to history. To the best of my (admittedly imperfect) ability, I try to employ Mises’s historical method — dubbed “thymology” — to the historical analysis I offer. But what is thymology, and how does it relate to praxeology? Mises contended that
In the first episode of the new season of Historical Controversies , which will focus on the sectional crises that led to the Civil War, I gave a brief explanation of my problem with the “Tariff Thesis” for the cause of southern secession. My arguments on the subject were the primary subject of criticism for the episode, and I feel it may be worth
In a 1991 interview with Randy Paige about why drugs should be legalized, Milton Friedman said that the “main thing that bothers me about crack is not [that it’s addictive], it’s the crack babies, because that’s the real tragedy.” Paige responded by saying, “as you know, we are already experiencing epidemic proportions of that. One out of every
In the modern legal system, the victim of the crime gets punished twice. In the case of a robbery, for example, the victim gets robbed by the thief and then, if the criminal is actually arrested and imprisoned, the victim gets robbed again by the government to fund the incarceration. This makes the case for a prison industry suspect in a free
I could see no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my toil into the purse of my master. When I carried to him my weekly wages, he would, after counting the money, look me in the face with a robber-like fierceness, and ask, “Is this all?” He was satisfied with nothing less than the last cent. He would, however, when I
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.