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The Spring 2024 issue of the Independent Reviewfeatures a symposium on Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, which was published some fifty years ago. One of the contributions, by the philosopher Matt Zwolinski, stands out from the others in that it is not favorable to Rothbard. To the contrary, Zwolinski argues that Rothbard’s case for liberty is unsound. In my view, he has failed to show this, but a number of his arguments are interesting, and in what follows, I’ll...

Created in 1960, the United Nations–recognized state of Somalia is by almost all accounts a failed state. Yet it continues to assert dominance over regions that are seeking further autonomy or independence. The UN has listed self-determination as a human right, but the global neighborhood rarely sees this human right respected or enforced by the UN. This is likely because of how slow-moving the UN can be and because the nations that make up the UN have conflicting...

The Misesian (TM): The economics behind gift giving and charity have long been a neglected topic among researchers and economists. What prompted you to launch your own investigation into the topic?Jörg Guido Hülsmann (JGH): The economic literature on gifts is actually quite massive, but it’s true that these writings don’t make it into standard micro- and macroeconomics. My initial interest was sparked by Benedict XVI’s 2009 encyclical letter Caritas in veritate. The...

Anti-war students have been staging protests and demonstrations on a great many university campuses throughout America. A number of so-called “conservatives” have called for the police to arrest the students. Zionists groups accuse the students of “anti-Semitism” and demand that they be expelled from school. In fact, libertarians should welcome these protests. They bring back memories of the Vietnam War student protests that participated in, brought down the...

Economics trumps sentimentality, and gold’s elevated price has some people raiding the family jewelry box to pay bills. “Young people are not wearing grandma’s jewels. Most of the young people, they want an Apple watch. They don’t want a pocket watch,” Tobina Kahn, president of House of Kahn Estate Jewelers told Bloomberg. “Sentimental is now out the door.”When times are tough, treasures change hands, the late Burt Blumert, once a gold dealer and Mises Institute...

In mundane speech and in perhaps any dictionary, anarchy is synonymous with chaos and disorder. This may not come as a surprise since left-wing anarchists have worked hard on destroying anarchy’s reputation.As a former statist, I used to share this view of anarchy—a chaotic dystopia. But, as I’ve learned over the years, anarchy is the opposite of that. However, this can only be realized by looking at it logically.Defining AnarchyThe word anarchy stems from ancient...

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....

On April 24, two lead developers of Samourai Wallet (SW), the most-advanced privacy-centric wallet in the bitcoin ecosystem, were arrested and charged with money laundering and money transmitters offenses by order of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). This is just the latest assault of an escalating war waged by US regulators on financial privacy and freedom.Other examples are the arrest of Tornado Cash developers—a privacy protocol developed for Ethereum...

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....

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....