Julian Assange’s heroic but tragic life has taken an unexpected turn for the better with his recent liberation through a plea deal with the US government. It must never be forgotten that the Wikileaks founder was a successful publisher and a prized journalist, and yet was at risk of being extradited to the United States to be charged with espionage and imprisoned for life. Though many people around the world have followed Assange’s hardships on and off for more than...
Read More »Playing with Fire: Official Trailer
Ludwig von Mises’s life was dedicated to intellectually combating the evils of socialism, interventionism, inflationism, and tyranny. He recognized that it would always be an uphill battle. Easy money creates artificial good times that empower and enrich the political class; cleaning up the mess after that is difficult.The only solution is for the public to understand the game, to be empowered to see past the cheap political rhetoric, and to identify...
Read More »Human Ignorance Is an Unstable Basis for Liberty and Praxeology
In his review of F.A. Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, Murray Rothbard takes issue with the Hayekian case for freedom, which rests solely on human ignorance. On this view, reason is dogmatic and tends to lead to totalitarianism, with arrogant despots claiming they have the knowledge to rationally and efficiently plan the social order. As Joe Salerno has shown, Ludwig von Mises took a different approach.In contrast to the Hayekian stress on “spontaneous...
Read More »The Coming US Budget Disaster Will Impoverish Americans
Deficit spending is not a growth tool. It is the recipe for stagnation.The latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) budget and economic outlook estimates show the extent of the challenges of the United States fiscal nightmare.The CBO expects a budget deficit of $1.9 trillion in 2024, a year of alleged robust economic growth and record tax receipts. They expect revenues to reach $4.9 trillion, or 17.2 percent of GDP, in 2024, which will rise to 18.0 percent by 2027...
Read More »Rushing for the Financial Exits
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....
Read More »The Impact of Interest Rates on Economic Growth: An Austrian Perspective
For many years, the relationship between interest rates and economic growth has been a major focus of economic theory and policy discussions. According to Austrian theory, interest rates are an important signal in a market economy that balances the time preferences of borrowers and savers, not only a tool that central banks can manage in an effort to maintain economic stability. Severe economic distortions and malinvestments may result from misinterpreting or...
Read More »Reality Is NOT a Social Construct
Human behavior is, to a large extent, socially constructed. People often act based on social norms, expectations, or habits rather than by attempting to ascertain the nature of reality itself. In that context, it is true to say that people’s perceptions of reality are socially constructed, as explained by the Thomas theorem:Another way of looking at this concept is through W.I. Thomas’s notable Thomas theorem which states, “If men define situations as real, they are...
Read More »Debate Recap: The Funeral of Joe Biden
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....
Read More »Why Assange Was Released
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....
Read More »How a Limited State Becomes an Unlimited, Administrative State
[Editor’s Note: This week, a new ruling from the US Supreme court chipped away at the administrative powers of the federal bureaucracy. The case, Loper Bright Ent. vs. Raimondo, largely overturned the 1984 Chevron ruling which had solidified the bureaucracy’s power to interpret laws for itself. That is, rather than require the bureaucracy to seek rulings from federal judges on the interpretation of laws, the US Supreme court in Chevron ruled that federal bureaucrats...
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