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G.K. Chesterton is a somewhat controversial author in most libertarian circles. As an intelligent man who wisely predicted a century out so many of the problems we face today, he has garnered great respect among many who have read him. However, as a proponent of distributism, advocating ideas such as “the taxation of contracts so as to discourage the sale of small property to big proprietors and encourage the break-up of big property among small proprietors,” he has turned away many libertarians who would otherwise appreciate his writing.My argument here is not to say Chesterton was right about everything but rather to say that no matter how much one feels certain his proposals are incorrect, do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I seek to defend one

Murray Rothbard asked this question and concluded that the current American regime, if the wisdom of Aquinas’ words is taken seriously, cannot wage a just war.
Original Article: Can the American Government Wage a Just War?

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President Biden makes the false claim that wind- and solar-generated electricity are cheaper than power generated from coal and oil.

Original Article: "Wind and Solar Are NOT Cheaper than Coal and Oil"

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In 1964, Leonard Read wrote a genealogy from the perspective of a pencil, demonstrating the vast, complicated web of the structure of production that is handled by the division of labor on free markets. The pencil explained that no one knows how to make a pencil because of the myriad production processes involved:
My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp

In his recent address, President Joe Biden claimed that “wind and solar are already significantly cheaper than coal and oil.” This is flat-out wrong. There are many arguments that can be made for Biden’s claim. However, not only can they all be refuted, but they have all already been refuted.
Alex Epstein, in his book Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less, explains that two facts are ignored when pretending that wind and solar are cheaper. The first is that
solar and wind exist in large quantities exclusively in places where they are given massive government preferences. When you look at where solar and wind are used, you will invariably find subsidies—that is, the government forcing taxpayers to give money

Do we have a right to sunlight? How do we assert those rights? Murray Rothbard provides some answers.

Original Article: "How Should We Regulate the Sun (Since Our Government Regulates Nearly Everything Else)?"

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This week we’ve seen a relatively unprecedented environmental phenomenon in New York City. Canadian wildfires have led to the worst air quality New York has ever had—and the worst air quality anywhere in the world right now. The air has taken on a sepia tint, and the city looks like the setting of a postapocalyptic movie.
Many individuals are blaming the situation on climate change and calling for mass government intervention. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, has used it to renew her call for a Green New Deal. This is an example of what Mises Institute fellow Joshua Mawhorter has referred to as the statist non sequitur: “The statist non sequitur involves the existence of a problem followed by the alleged solution of statism. It is typically put in the form

Those adhering to Austrian Economic thinking see the beauty in concepts coming together and providing a way to truthfully assess human action.

Original Article: "Yearning for Beauty in the Truth of Economic Thinking"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. 

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One of the fundamental tenets of Austrian economics is the ordinal value scale. Augustine articulated the idea more than a thousand years before Carl Menger wrote his pathbreaking Principles of Economics.

Original Article: "Saint Augustine, Proto-Austrian"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. 

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In a past Mises Wire article, I’ve written about how Saint Thomas Aquinas’s definition of hope correlates incredibly well with what Carl Menger would describe in his definition a good six centuries later. This trend of religious figures like Aquinas and his later followers, the late Spanish scholastics, discovering economic truths despite studying theology, not economics, can be found often throughout the course of history. Tom Woods has explained this by stating:
One of the characteristic features of Catholic thought over the centuries has been its emphasis on reason. Man’s mind, according to this tradition, is capable of apprehending a world of order that exists outside itself. Man is able to abstract “universals” from the myriad objects and sense data that

While the average person thinks economics begins with Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations, readers of the Mises Wire know that the story goes back much further than that. Members of the Austrian school commonly describe their earliest intellectual predecessors, the late Scholastics, as “proto-Austrians.” In Jesús Huerta de Soto’s chapter on Juan de Mariana in 15 Great Austrian Economists, Huerta de Soto writes of ten major contributions to what would go on to be important Austrian school concepts:
The subjective theory of value
The proper relationship between prices and costs
The dynamic nature of the market and the impossibility of the model of equilibrium
The dynamic concept of competition understood as a process of rivalry among sellers
The rediscovery of the

We must, therefore, emphasize that “we” are not the government; the government is not “us.” The government does not in any accurate sense “represent” the majority of the people.
Murray Rothbard wrote this in his popular Anatomy of the State. His point still stands to this day. The state cannot be said to represent “us” in any accurate or serious way. It may be even more true today than ever before. However, what is murkier today is who “us” even is. If “we” are not the government, then who are “we?”
“We” would logically reference what Rothbard described as separate from the state, the nation:
Everyone is necessarily born into a family, a language, and a culture. Every person into one or several overlapping communities, usually including an ethnic group, with

Readers of the Mises Wire are most likely familiar with the Volcker moment. This was when former Fed chair Paul Volcker, in the face of steep price inflation, skyrocketed rates to nearly 20 percent. While critics of the Volcker moment complain that such a move also skyrocketed unemployment to almost 11 percent, it cannot be ignored that the price inflation was finally reined in. Not only did we see the benefit in reduced inflation, but Austrians have an answer regarding the unemployment.
Austrian business cycle theory very simply explains this. While ceteris paribus, this unemployment number looks absolutely devastating, the reality is that it was inevitable. These jobs evaporate with inflation not because there is some mathematically divine connection between

When conservatives applaud unlimited war spending, they not only harm our economy and body politic, but they give the Left a powerful talking point.

Original Article: “War Spending Gives MMTers and the Left a Strong Talking Point”

Time and time again, prowar spending concedes one of the Left’s most convincing points. As Assal Rad tweeted recently, we will have sent
$54,000,000,000 to Ukraine in less than 4 months.
“How will we pay for it” never seems to apply to wars, just the basic needs of the American people.

To an outside observer, not paying close attention for any number of justifiable reasons, this strikes strongly. The Right regularly challenges that we cannot afford certain things, but if we can afford foreign aid in wars we have no business in,

While supporters of the Biden administration fault Putin for shortages, Austrian economists know the answer lies in Washington’s monetary and economic mismanagement.
Original Article: “Austrian Economists Are Not Surprised by the Shortages”

In the last few years, it seems as if there has been a hot new story about a different commodity facing some form of shortage every single day. Most recently we have seen a baby formula shortage. However, that is most certainly not the only one we have seen of late. We have seen chicken wing shortages, lumber shortages, medical product shortages—heck, even toilet paper shortages (although I’ll admit that that last one was probably nothing more than goofy panicking). I’d venture a guess that there is not a single person

The vast majority of Mises Wire readers are already familiar with the Austrian business cycle theory. For those who are not, it is an Austrian perspective on what causes the sudden general cluster of business errors that results in a boom-bust cycle, with the busts being the recessions or depressions that we as a society so dread. Murray Rothbard explains this process in his America’s Great Depression:
In sum, businessmen were misled by bank credit inflation to invest too much in higher-order capital goods, which could only be prosperously sustained through lower time preferences and greater savings and investments; as soon as the inflation permeates to the mass of the people, the old consumption-investment proportion is reestablished, and business investments in