[Chapter 10 of Libertarianism Today by Jacob Huebert (Praeger, 2010). Reproduced with permission of ABC-CLIO, LLC, Santa Barbara, CA.] When the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wins a $1.92 million verdict against a 32-year-old Minnesota woman for sharing 24 songs online, is that good for liberty? When Disney and other big media
[ Who Owns the Sky? The Struggle to Control Airspace from the Wright Brothers On • By Stuart Banner • Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008 • 192 pages] Who owns the sky? For most of history, people never actually visited the sky, but the common law nonetheless had an answer: cujus est solum ejus est usque ad coelum — he who
[Speech given at the Mises Circle in Chicago on April 9, 2011. The video and audio recordings are available through Mises.tv .] Is there hope for liberty in our lifetime? It’s tempting to think so. As I discuss in the first part of my book, Libertarianism Today , libertarianism used to be of interest only to a tiny handful of people scattered
I listened to this “Freakonomics” podcast on fire safety , and not only does it have nothing to do with economics, it would seem that the people behind it are entirely unfamiliar with the economic way of thinking. The podcast starts by telling us that fire deaths decreased by about 90% over the course of the twentieth century. These days, there
Today the New York Times has a debate among legal scholars considering whether three years of law school, followed by the bar exam, should be required to enter the legal profession. The best contribution is from libertarian George Leef, who argues that we should allow anyone to take the bar exam . As he points out, in the nineteenth and early
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.