Libertarian Law by Democratic Means: Utilitarianism and the Demythologization of Authority

2023-02-23

In a past Mises Wire article, I’ve written about how Saint Thomas Aquinas’s definition of hope correlates incredibly well with what Carl Menger would describe in his definition a good six centuries later. This trend of religious figures like Aquinas and his later followers, the late Spanish scholastics, discovering economic truths despite studying theology, not economics, can be found often throughout the course of history. Tom Woods has explained this by stating:
One of the characteristic features of Catholic thought over the centuries has been its emphasis on reason. Man’s mind, according to this tradition, is capable of apprehending a world of order that exists outside itself. Man is able to abstract “universals” from the myriad objects and sense data that appear to him and thus bring

2023-02-12

Until the publication in 1920 of Ludwig von Mises’s work on the problem of economic calculation in socialism, there was no scientifically useful analysis of the economics of the socialist economy. With that work , and its development in the comprehensive treatise Die Gemeinwirtschaft (1922 and 1932, published in English in 1951 as Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis), Mises demonstrated that because of the absence of private ownership of the means of production, rational economic accounting is not possible under socialism.

2023-02-06

President Biden’s student debt relief proposal created a storm of controversy. That is not surprising, since it was a transparent (and apparently successful) attempt to buy the votes of an important Democratic constituency, even though it created a target-rich environment for critics.

2023-01-27

2022-12-02

Most people are familiar with the Panama Canal, but they probably don’t know the first effort to build the Panama Canal, spanning almost a decade, was by France. Facing considerable initial naysaying and ridicule, Ferdinand de Lesseps had the acumen and drive to construct the Suez Canal. Success was realized after overcoming many obstacles and difficulties. Naturally enough, France turned to him to build a sea-level canal in Panama.

2022-12-01

By now it should be perfectly clear that the most prominent Big Digital companies are not strictly private, for-profit companies. As I argued in Google Archipelago, they are also state apparatuses, or governmentalities, undertaking state functions, including censorship, propaganda, and surveillance.