Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

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...

While the standard secular narrative is that Christianity held back science and human development, history tells a different story, one of literacy and the development of human capital. Original Article: “Christianity and the Development of Human Capital: Challenging the Narratives” Undeniably, the advent of Christianity has fundamentally transformed the world. But this startling fact has been obscured by thinkers eager to depict Christianity as a backward religion...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought America’s foreign policy interventions under the limelight once again. Ryan McMaken argues that the US administration’s claim that countries should not have the right to a sphere of influence, implicitly addressing Russia, is hypocritical. The US opposes a sphere of influence for Russia and other regional powers, while at the same time has steadily expanded its own global outreach. Among other, one can judge how true this...

First it was Columbine. Then it was Parkland. Now, we learn that at Robb Elementary School, police officers again stood around outside a school while the killer was inside with children. NPR reports today: Frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the Texas elementary school where a gunman’s rampage killed 19 children and two teachers, witnesses said Wednesday, as investigators worked to track the massacre that lasted upwards of 40 minutes and ended...

Proponents of arming Ukraine against Russia call critics “isolationists” as a pejorative term. But these “entangling alliances” have a history of sad endings with tragic results. Original Article: “Noninterventionism Is Not Isolationism: The US Government Should Stop Arming Ukraine” Libertarians, liberty-wing Republicans, and other opponents of nondefensive wars are popularly misconceived as having an “every man for himself” approach to both economics and...

Politicians thoroughly enjoy times of war. Periods of bellicosity are when the most power-hungry members of the political class indulge in their most depraved political fantasies. The Russo-Ukrainian War has been no exception to this trend. Western politicians have been taking advantage of the largest conventional military conflict on European soil since World War II to crack down on civil liberties at home and drag their countries closer to an open conflict with a...

For most economists and politicians, the role of central bank authorities is to make the economy as stable as possible. What do they mean by economic stability? Economic stability refers to an absence of excessive fluctuation, so an economy with constant output growth and low and stable price inflation is likely to be regarded as stable. An economy with frequent boom-bust cycles and variable price inflation would be considered unstable. According to popular thinking,...

It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of right. So wrote Ludwig von Mises in The Theory of Money and Credit in 1912. And further: The sound-money principle has two aspects. It is affirmative in approving the...

Money velocity’s role in forcing up prices is misunderstood because today’s monetary “authorities” fail to consider how new money is injected into the economy. Original Article: “The Fed Gets It Wrong on Money Velocity, Too” “Inflation” is on everyone’s lips. Commentators and politicians are quick to point out the perpetrators. It is said that climate change is the cause of rising prices or that a specific war maker is to blame. A popular opinion holds that...

Dealing with specific geopolitical circumstances can be messy. We may disagree on the facts and on which sources are reliable, making it hard to make any headway in a discussion. This may be further compounded by extreme emotions we may have about that situation. The advantage of purely theoretical inquiry is that we can stipulate the facts so as to make the analysis as simple as possible, and avoid much of the emotional baggage that stymies understanding. Once we...