Wherever two boys swap tops for marbles, that is the marketplace. The simple barter, in terms of human happiness, is no different from a trade transaction involving banking operations, insurance, ships, railroads, wholesale and retail establishments; for in any case the effect and purpose of trade is to make up a lack of satisfactions. The boy
“I have led a singularly uneventful life, largely solitary, have had little to do with the great and no part whatever in their affairs, or for that matter, in any other affairs.” So wrote Albert Jay Nock in the preface to his last book, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man . He wasn’t being modest; he meant it. And he did not believe anybody would
“The Judgment of Solomon” Gustave Doré (1832–1883) “In those days,” we are told in Judges 17:6, “there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” To be able to do that which is right in one’s own eyes is to be free, and freedom was the way of life among the Israelites before the coming of the kings. Yet,
The search for a formula for the “good society” has never been abandoned, hope being what it is, and out of the laboratory of the human mind has come a congeries of utopias. The connotation of unreality that the word has acquired follows from the fact that every utopia ignores the central operating lever of man: he seeks to satisfy his desires
“Isolationism does not mean that they will not voluntarily borrow from other cultures nor that they will surround themselves with parochial walls.” [This article is excerpted from chapter 11 of Out of Step (1962). An MP3 audio file of this article, narrated by Brad O’Connell, is available for download .] When World War I broke out in 1914, the
[ The Rise and Fall of Society (1959; 2007)] Beginning with the obvious — there must be men before there is a Society, and there must be a Society before there is a Government. Social institutions must seminate in the soil of which the individual is made. Therefore, we are compelled to ask the individual, the unit of social life, to tell us
[This essay originally appeared in July 1945 in a monthly newsletter Chodorov established called analysis . It later appeared as a chapter in his book Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962) .] New York in midsummer is measurably more miserable than any other place in this world — and should be comparable to the world for which
Dondequiera que dos niños cambien tapas por canicas, eso es el mercado. El simple trueque, en términos de felicidad humana, no difiere de una transacción comercial que implique operaciones bancarias, seguros, barcos, ferrocarriles, establecimientos de venta al por mayor y al por menor; pues en cualquier caso el efecto y el propósito del comercio
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.