Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

We are stuck in the middle of the road, far away from full socialism or the unhampered market.On Friday August 2, due to a disappointing jobs report, there was a large sell off on the stock market. After understanding Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) and the structural fragility the Federal Reserve creates in the production structure, my temptation upon seeing such a large swing in the market is to say, “Finally, I am vindicated! The boom-bust cycle has shown...

The war in Ukraine rages. Underwritten by US dollars, arms, intelligence, and provocation, US leaders have prolonged the war. And, in funding and arming Ukraine to the teeth, they have escalated tensions with Russia, a nation with thousands of nuclear weapons. Just this week, for the third straight month, the Russian military conducted drills to prepare for using short-range, “tactical” nuclear weapons. The risks could not be graver. Yet, as the threats of nuclear...

The renaissance of industrial policy has been promoted by a breed of public intellectuals with considerable financial interests as they are well paid consultants for governments.Our new book, Moonshots and the New Industrial Policy: Questioning the Mission Economy, takes a critical look at the renaissance of state capitalism and interventionist industrial policies. The book features contributions from 23 different scholars, it is published by Springer and available...

[Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory, by Brent M. Rogers, Nebraska University Press, 2017, xiv + 383 pp.] Behind its clinical-sounding subtitle about “federal management,” Brent Rogers’s Unpopular Sovereignty contains essential history for understanding how American westward expansion paved the way for the growth of federal power during and after the American Civil War.Contrary to the popular myth that the settlement of...

According to some commentators, to counter inflation interest rates in the US must increase to a level that effectively restrains the economy. It is held that this increase in interest rates does not have to cause a recession if Fed’s policy makers could orchestrate a “soft landing.” The economy is portrayed as a spaceship that occasionally deviates from a path of “stable” economic growth and “stable” prices. All that is required to fix the problem is for the central...

Price controls, higher taxes, government intervention, and subsidies paid for by printing a constantly devalued currency.These are the essential pillars of “21st century socialism” and the radical left Peronism that obliterated Argentina. These are also the main elements of the economic plan presented by Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Undoubtedly, this is the most radical socialist economic plan ever announced by the Democrats.According to the Committee for...

The 2024 Presidential election appears to be a showdown between two major party candidates vying to display the most evident lack of understanding of economics. On one hand, Donald Trump advocates for hyper-protectionism and even entertains the idea of reverting to mercantilism, in addition to proposing that the President should have influence over setting interest rates at the Federal Reserve. Despite the glaring absurdity of the latter proposal, it does carry...

From 1949 to 1962, two libertarian giants exchanged several letters until a sharp conflict caused the correspondence to cease abruptly. An American entrepreneur and a staunch libertarian-anarchist, Raymond Cyrus (R.C.) Hoiles (1878–1970) established an impressive newspaper syndicate that would eventually become known as Freedom Newspapers, Inc.—the largest libertarian communications network to date. The other, iconic Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises is so...

There is a popular perception that the role of the state is to uphold and enforce “fairness” much like a playground monitor ensures that children are not bullying each other, and that everyone is getting a fair chance to be included in the game. The fear is that if teachers do not monitor the schoolyard it might descend into the Lord of the Flies. Likewise, the state is said to have a moral duty to ensure fairness and goodwill among all citizens in their interactions...

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....