Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

It’s often the case that lead users — the most sophisticated, committed, and energetic users — are an excellent source of innovation ideas. Those customers who are most engaged are thinking the most intensely and the most creatively about what they want from the usage experience. We came across a particularly instructive example: video game modders. Who are modders, what do they do, and what can we learn from them? Professor Gordon Miller has studied this important...

Nothing is certain except death and taxes, but antigunners exploiting tragedy to pass more gun control laws is close behind. On cue, the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, and Highland Park have brought demands for the typical disarmament stew of “assault weapon” and “high-capacity” magazine bans, licensing requirements, and universal background checks. Increasingly, red-flag laws or extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs) are being added to that list of...

Joseph Sobran discovered these Garet Garrett essays “one night, long ago, at the office of National Review, where I then worked.” As the flagship of modern conservatism, National Review supported the Cold War and the hot war then raging in Vietnam. “Two questions occurred to me,” Sobran writes. “One: ‘Why haven’t I heard of this man before?’ Two: ‘If he’s right, what am I doing here?” I discovered these essays at 16 in a Seattle bookstore that specialized in...

The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is an important investment model that describes how investors expect to be compensated for the time value of money and risk. The more risk you take, the more you want to be compensated. The formula is expressed as follows: (A) Re = Rf + Beta * (Rm – Rf), where Rf is risk-free return, Rm is the market return, and Beta is a risk element. A pure risk-free rate of return does not exist. Any government could print money and “safely”...

Most economists see GDP as a snapshot of the performance of the economy. However, it is better understood as a misleading statistic which fails to accurately describe what really is happening economically. Original Article: “GDP Provides a False Reading of the State of the Economy” The GDP (gross domestic product) statistic portrays a view that the key driving factor of economic growth is not the production of wealth but rather its consumption. Instead, it is a...

Libertarians have a reputation for denigrating traditional American institutions. They deride the Superbowl as “sportsball,” sneer at mass-market entertainment as “bread and circuses.” It goes deeper than that. As Mises Institute president Jeff Deist says: While libertarians enthusiastically embrace markets, they have for decades made the disastrous mistake of appearing hostile to family, to religion, to tradition, to culture, and to civic or social institutions—in...

After months of being portrayed as a villain or worse in the mainstream media, Joe Manchin suddenly has become a Democratic Party hero—all because he has declared he will support legislation that he and President Joe Biden claim will “reduce inflation” and give us better weather. Not surprisingly, the New York Times is leading the way in effusively praising the legislation, claiming the bill “would be the most ambitious action ever taken by the United States to try...

Coercive covid-19 lockdown measures, vaccine mandates, the transition to green energy, and poorly thought out Western sanctions against Russia have all played significant roles in disrupting global food markets and supply chains. In May 2022, data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization indicated that, relative to twelve months ago, “international wheat prices have increased 56 percent,” “cereal prices are up nearly 30 percent,” and “vegetable oils are 45...

The world today is in crisis. Military aggression in Ukraine has escalated into global economic war, with nations forced to choose between following the lead of an increasingly illiberal West and access to the vital energy and industrial markets of Russia and China. At the same time, the world continues to suffer the devastating consequences of “public health” experts who exploited the coronavirus crisis to pursue their underlying authoritarian impulses. Meanwhile,...

From the Equal Pay Act 1970 to the Equality Act 2010, there has been a wave of legalization in Britain to turn the state into some omniscient being that can determine the intentions of an employer. While these pieces of legislation did not enforce direct quotas onto businesses, they have increased inefficiencies through the increase in human resources roles for companies and organizations to cover their own backs. These pieces of anti-discrimination legislation...