“Economics, in its most elegant form, is the study of cause and effect.”—John Rogers, Voting in Context: A Brief Economic History of American PoliticsIn 1933, people thought the world was ending and urged government to do whatever it could to relieve the pain of the Depression. In compliance thereof, FDR issued Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933 “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.”Note the word, “hoarding”—a word with a negative tinge, suggesting the person hoarding is deliberately restricting supply for personal advantage. (See “The Virtue of Hoarding”). For many it summons the image of an anti-social miser. No one wanted to be branded a miser, especially by a president as beloved as FDR. Hoarders of gold,

The Trump-Musk assassination troops going through the federal bureaucracy will eventually arrive at an oddball entity called the Federal Reserve. It is and isn’t many things, which if confusion is your sport, is part of its charm.It is an “inflation fighter” whose main purpose is creating inflation. On rare occasions a Fed member or even the Chairman will state in plain language what the Federal Reserve does—“print money”—but most people seem to forget it as soon as the words leave his mouth.Certain others, who don’t forget it, profit from the scam and trust in the public’s indifference to protect them. So far their trust has been well-placed. With few exceptions, people don’t connect printing money with counterfeiting.It is a central bank with the appearance of decentralization to suggest

Today, I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense. It’s all about common sense. — President Donald Trump’s inaugural address, January 20, 2025 (emphasis added)Presidents other than Trump have invoked the appeal of “common sense” in their inaugural address, though, in the case of George W. Bush, it carried the message of perpetual war:We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.That Bush had anything to do with establishing “peace in our world” would be a difficult statement to validate,

Henry Hazlitt said that to cure inflation, stop inflating, but surprisingly, most economists and politicians don’t want a cure. They believe a little inflation is not only good, but necessary.

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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values . . .? — Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, “The Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society,” December 5, 1996John Law, the early eighteenth-century Scottish gambler and financier, thought the best way to revive an ailing economy was to remove the “great scarcity of money,” as he wrote in a 1705 monetary tract. A decade after its publication, he took his ideas to the Continent and sold them to Philippe d’Orleans, the regent in charge of France’s finances, who needed a scheme more sophisticated than his failed program of coin clipping and confiscation to save the nation from bankruptcy.In 1716, Philippe set Law up as head of the Banque Générale, the country’s central bank, giving it and him monopoly control

Since the job that was actually assigned to [the Fed] by Congressman Carter Glass back in 1913 is now vestigial and long gone, and the financial system has been flooded with massive liquidity for decades on end, it might well be time to declare victory and let the free market take care of jobs, growth, inflation and prosperity. — David StockmanLet’s take a closer look at the job Congressman Carter Glass assigned to the government’s new central bank, the Federal Reserve System, created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The first thing to notice about the Fed is that it’s a creature of government, not the market, otherwise there would be no need to support the Fed with a legislative act, which gave it the status of a state-backed cartel.It’s crucial to understand that the push for central

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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Given the contentious topic of money and its influence on the world, I decided to see what ChatGPT “knows” about it. I was surprised by the breadth of its responses, as well as its information on free market positions, especially those of the Austrian school.Though my prompts (queries) were exactly as I present them here, ChatGPT was so expansive I had to edit its results due to article length restrictions. For emphasis and to mark subject headings ChatGPT frequently used bold-face text. I italicized portions of its replies, which are indented, to stress points I thought were especially important, and I added links in a few cases to augment ChatGPT’s response.Let’s begin.Smith: Is it true that money arose from barter as a response to the problem of a double-coincidence of wants? And is it

[The following is derived from a speech in my novel, The Flight of the Barbarous Relic.]Wars must be funded, and for this, governments functioning as states call upon the banking system for assistance.Central Bank counterfeiting, which is another name for inflation, is the fuel that energizes the forces of war. Inflation, or counterfeiting, amounts to issuing receipts for something that doesn’t exist, which legally is the prerogative of the central bank. Calling such receipts money allows them to be created in massive amounts quickly. When the U.S. Congress votes to send billions of fiat money to Ukraine, Israel or anywhere else, no one questions the nature of what is being sent because legal tender laws make it all copasetic.Yet, we should know better:“As to the assumed authority of any

“Realism requires we recognize that the ruling classes and the US government have no durable community and no internal integrity. The state is a pirate gang writ large. It is unified by criminal circumstance, functions by fear and tribute, and is surrounded by enemies who would see it stripped, drawn and quartered at first opportunity. It’s almost enough to make one pity the state and mourn the ruling classes!” — Karen KwiatkowskiWriters who heap abuse on the government need to take a hint from Kwiatkowski’s remarks and cast a humanitarian glance at this governing body that nobody living asked for. Being one of those writers I’ve decided to look for praiseworthy qualities in the state rather than savage it as the devil incarnate.This is one of those exercises I did in college. First, your

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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Why I’m here instead of some superstar is one of those anomalies that defies explanation. But allow me to congratulate you on earning your degrees.Almost without exception, a college commencement speaker is a high achiever whose mere presence will tell graduates making it big is possible. The message they deliver varies widely in details and tone, but there are some common lines of thought among the most popular. Let’s look at a few of them:Steve Jobs, Stanford University, 2005: “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”Ellen DeGeneres, Tulane University, 2009: “It was so important for me to lose everything because I found out what the most important thing is, is to be true to

There are no secrets about the world of nature. There are secrets about the thoughts and intentions of men.—J. Robert OppenheimerNo big deal, it was just “a milk run.”So remarked Paul Tibbets Jr., pilot of the Enola Gay, a United States B-29 Superfortress, describing his trip to Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. His cargo that early morning was an atomic bomb called “Little Boy,” which bombardier Major Thomas Ferebee released when the plane was directly over the city. Forty-three seconds later and with pilot and crew watching, “Little Boy” exploded above ground. Their job finished, the Enola Gay returned to base on Tinian Island.Yes, just a milk run. Others saw it differently. War correspondent John Hersey published a long article in the New Yorker on August 23, 1946, detailing the

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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Money is never an object when you have a legal counterfeiting racket at the center of the economy; yet counterfeiting, provided it has monopoly power and is conducted by the “best and the brightest,” is virtually unchallenged as necessary for economic growth.How did this fraud come about? First, some basics:We are all under state rule, meaning under the rule of a monopoly of force that most people cherish in principle as a necessary precondition for civilization, however that might be defined. Monopoly, meaning “single seller” and no competition allowed, is regarded as wrong by most people. Yet it is saluted worldwide when it arrives in the form of a state.What is it that the state alleges to sell? Protection. As the story goes, the Constitution protects us from our protector:States

Money is never an object when you have a legal counterfeiting racket at the center of the economy; yet counterfeiting, provided it has monopoly power and is conducted by the “best and the brightest,” is virtually unchallenged as necessary for economic growth.How did this fraud come about? First, some basics:We are all under state rule, meaning under the rule of a monopoly of force that most people cherish in principle as a necessary precondition for civilization, however that might be defined. Monopoly, meaning “single seller” and no competition allowed, is regarded as wrong by most people. Yet it is saluted worldwide when it arrives in the form of a state.What is it that the state alleges to sell? Protection. As the story goes, the Constitution protects us from our protector:States

Which of the following statements is politically correct?None of them, of course. Each is linked to an article written by Future of Freedom Foundation founder Jacob Hornberger over the past few years. Hornberger, refreshingly, has never been delicate in his treatment of political issues. He fires his thoughts straight at us, without detour or apology. Normally.For example, we’re encouraged to thank the troops for their service. But what does that mean, exactly? What are we thanking them for? Hornberger writes, “Killing people. That’s what U.S. soldiers have been doing in Iraq since 1990 and in Afghanistan since 2001. They have been killing people. Lots of people. Hundreds of thousands of people. And they continue to do so on a regular basis.”Among historians, Woodrow Wilson is considered

Late in his presidency Donald Trump renominated Dr. Judy Shelton to serve a fourteen-year term on the Fed’s seven-member Board of Governors, but given her written advocacy of the gold standard and her flip-flop during confirmation hearings, she failed to win the post.Had she been elected, she would be sitting among members whose job is to keep the public confused and looking the other way while counterfeiting the monopolistic monetary unit known as the Federal Reserve note, a process that, for starters, inaugurates the Cantillon effect and exacerbates the ever-widening divide between the haves and have-nots.And make no mistake, she fully understands this. She also understands why “more than 100 economists, including at least seven Nobel winners,” signed an open letter urging the Senate to

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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

You think you’re the legitimate owner of your residence until you come back from vacation and find squatters have taken over. Call the police and have them removed? You might have to call a private service like Squatterhunters.com instead. Americans long ago lost property rights to their income, the purchasing power of their money, their savings, and their lives. Is there no way for people to protect what is legitimately theirs?Fortunately, both experience and theory says there is: The classic study by Terry L. Anderson and P. J. Hill, An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West and Robert P. Murphy’s Chaos Theory.Thanks to Hollywood and popular literature, the American West [1830-1900] is often portrayed as violent and lawless. As long as you had a fast gun

Bad ideas are sometimes the hardest to dethrone. It’s probably accurate to say most people think of money as the paper currency printed by governments. And it is money in the sense that it functions as a medium of exchange, but is it sound? Is it vulnerable to inflation? Its very existence is evidence that it is, so why are so many people reluctant to switch to a money that isn’t?There any many myths surrounding hard money currencies, and one of them is that money, both its nature and supply, is best left to the alleged guardian of our rights, the state. The fact that money came into existence on the market, and that its ultimate form and supply were determined by economic law, is disregarded. Money matters belong to the state because the state, unlike the rest of us, is in a position to

From everything I read you would think we were incapable of solving social problems.In truth, we find matters only getting worse because the proposed solutions almost always involve the culprit—the state—taking more control over our lives.The state is a box we desperately need to think outside of if we’re ever going to establish civil relations among people. We would do well to remember that the state is absolutely not in the business of making our lives better. It is an institution appended to the rest of society through force for the purpose of enriching the lives of its members.Modern welfare states might make this difficult to understand, but it’s no less true. The state is not in the business of producing wealth and then distributing it to the neediest or deserving. It is not the

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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

The first thing to know about Dr. Thomas E. Woods, Jr.’s’ book Our Enemy, the Fed is he’s giving it away. Click the link, get your copy and read the whole book. Clearly, such intellectual charity is not only rare but in the educational spirit of Mises.org.

This article is based on chapter 8 of my 2020 book, Do Not Consent: Think OUTSIDE the Voting Booth.If someone asked you to define “free market,” could you? Could you do it on the spot without recourse to dictionaries or other crutches?The term “laissez-faire economy” might do as a first response. But what does it mean? In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand explains,Based on a column in the Los Angeles Times, August 1962.Colbert, chief adviser of Louis XIV, was one of the early modern statists. He believed that government regulations can create national prosperity and that higher tax revenues can be obtained only from the country’s “economic growth”; so he devoted himself to seeking “a general increase in wealth by the encouragement of industry.” The encouragement consisted of imposing

The consequences of this short-lived paradise [inflation] are malinvestment, waste, a wanton redistribution of wealth and income, the growth of speculation and gambling, immorality and corruption, disillusionment, social resentment, discontent, upheaval and riots, bankruptcy, increased governmental controls, and eventual collapse. — Hazlitt, Henry. Man vs. The Welfare State (LvMI) (p. 136). Ludwig von Mises Institute. Kindle Edition.“A few months, at most.” This was the prevailing view of how long the fighting would last when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. As Dr. Robert P. Murphy tells us in his incisive Understanding Money Mechanics, quoting Melchior Palyi:All involved would go “bankrupt” shortly and be forced to come to terms, perhaps without a decision on the

Growing your own tomatoes can be rewarding far beyond the sweet taste of your crop.The traditional extra benefits keep bringing many of us back season after season. If you’re a gardener, you know the great feeling of acting directly on nature to produce the food you eat. Raising tomatoes gets you outside and sweating, and usually provides a sense of accomplishment. It encourages discipline and planning and demands a bit of knowledge and a ton of patience.And when you finally harvest those juicy edibles and carry them into your home—without once leaving your property—you can almost hear the fife and drums. You’re gripped by a feeling virtually unknown in today’s world: independence. This is what our ancestors fought for!Any extras you have you can give away with pride. If the haul is

“The public be damned” is a statement by railroad magnate William Henry Vanderbilt that has been twisted out of context. While the American ruling classes insist that private enterprise is the enemy of the people, it really is our government that bears that distinction.

In the early evening of October 8, 1882, one of the richest men in the world was about to eat his supper in his private dining car. The train to which he was attached had just arrived in Chicago from Michigan City, Indiana, but before he could pick up his fork, a brash young reporter, freelancer Clarence Dresser, burst into his car asking for an interview. He wanted to know the railroad’s guidelines for establishing freight rates.“I’ll talk to you after supper,” William Henry Vanderbilt told him.“But I have a deadline to meet,” Dresser persisted, “and the public has a right to know.”“The public be damned! Get out!”In this one unfortunate outburst Dresser already had more than he could ever have dreamed of getting.Dresser tried to sell the encounter to the Chicago Daily News, but the night

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

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Imagine someone giving a State of the World address that begins with a reminder that people possess free will and ought to be doing a better job of exercising it. This could possibly raise doubts about the speaker’s mental stability—at least until the talk went into the dark details of civilization’s condition.If the state of the world reflects the choices people make, and if those choices are autonomous, originating from within the minds of individuals, then the speaker is making a solid point. But if we’re at the mercy of forces we regard as beyond our control, then the world couldn’t be other than it is.So, which is it?If we consult the philosophers who have discussed free will we will get a wide range of views, including the denial that it exists (as one example see the book Free Will,

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

Website powered by Mises Institute donors

Mises Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent the law allows. Tax ID# 52-1263436

Imagine someone giving a State of the World address that begins with a reminder that people possess free will and ought to be doing a better job of exercising it. This could possibly raise doubts about the speaker’s mental stability—at least until the talk went into the dark details of civilization’s condition.

There will be life after Trump one way or another, but in the long run, it seems as though the ruling party always wins.
Original Article: After Trump, Then What?

Most public-school graduates have heard that Thomas Paine wrote something that convinced the colonies to declare their independence—though if they’re older than twenty-one their memory probably needs jogging. A few can even name what he wrote: Common Sense. And some can even incorrectly attribute a famous line to that pamphlet: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
With rare exceptions, most people don’t give a whit about Paine or what he wrote. But then, most people don’t care much for American history. What they don’t care about they don’t know about, as Mark Dice has ably demonstrated. Only if something is posted on social media does it count, and probably not for long. Whatever causal effects the days of 1776 might have had, they’re long buried in the great turmoil of events that

So-called climate change is really an excuse for government to do what it does worst: intervene in our economic affairs. While government efforts will not cool the planet, they will make life more difficult for the planet’s inhabitants.
Original Article: Climate Deniers Deny Socialism. That’s Why the Regime Hates Them.

The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.
—Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Austrians call it high time preference. In psychology it’s an area of research called future orientation. Hall of Fame football coach George Allen expressed it as “The future is now.” Almost everyone seems born with it, and a growing number don’t outgrow it.
Today in American politics, it is strongest among one faction in particular: Donald Trump supporters. They want him now. Any delay assures the country’s destruction. Trump and only Trump will clean house, and the house to be cleaned is barely standing. Following government protocol means it will be a full year before Trump can begin to save us—if he’s elected. That’s unacceptable. Our house will be a

The government, federal or otherwise, has no business model because it is not a business. We know this at the outset because government does not compete in the market for people’s money, as every other business must do. With a monopoly of violence, it seizes the money it wants through taxes and monetary inflation. As long as the government doesn’t get carried away by taxing and inflating too much, most people—many of whom call themselves libertarians—regard this setup as necessary.
In “America Loves Paying Taxes,” Vanessa Williamson writes for The Atlantic:
In national surveys, over 95 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “It is every Americans’ civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes,” and more than half see taxpaying as “very patriotic.” One man from Ohio called it a

Free markets is an unambiguous term, which implies a lack of inappropriate government intervention as consumers and firms pursue their own interest in a competitive environment. (my emphasis)
—Clifford Winston, “This Economist Really Loves Free Markets”
 
Inappropriate government intervention is a line government finds easy to cross, much like the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause. The latter was never intended to be a provision of infinite latitude, as James Madison argued during a debate on the cod fishery bill of 1792: “If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare” . . . then pretty much anything goes. But Constitution-massager Alexander Hamilton said that’s right and that’s the way it should be, and

Donald Trump, Julian Assange, Alex Jones, and Rudy Giuliani are in deep trouble with the US state. How about you?
Most likely you feel safe because your voice hasn’t attracted a large following. What would the state’s enforcers gain by attacking a little guy? They’re big-game hunters. Pull the plug on the big guys and their everyday followers float away like bathtub water down a drain.
Possibly you believe you aren’t really attacking the state with your social media posts, just the corrupt regime currently in power. As long as your words don’t go too far off the rails you think trouble will leave you alone.
That’s the theory, at least.
Most libertarians are not Rothbardians. They think the state is necessary but needs to be slashed, not done away with—much like what the heroic Javier Milei

The Biden administration claims it wants to get out in front of the development of artificial intelligence. However, the likely scenario is that AI will leave government regulators in its wake.
Original Article: Can Government Regulate Artificial Super Intelligence?

Advocates of unbacked paper money claim that theirs is the “civilized” choice, as opposed to gold, or what Keynes called “that barbarous relic.” These inflationists, however, are the ones wrecking civilization as we have known it.
Original Article: From the Invisible Hand to the Invisible Sleight-of-Hand

The role of the infinitely small is infinitely large.”
― Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, “MAXIMS FOR REVOLUTIONISTS”
― Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
Government as we know it likely won’t be around when artificial super intelligence (ASI) arrives. As I’ve argued elsewhere, states are fading fast from war, fiat money and debt, and I believe people will develop non-coercive solutions to social life when states finally collapse. Our “government” of the future will of necessity be a laissez-faire social order.
Meanwhile, AI

Governments regularly suppress freedom—yet few complain. One wonders if Stockholm syndrome is at work.
Original Article: Liberty: Stifled by the Stockholm Syndrome

​Why are we using state money instead of market money? Put another way, why can’t we select the money we want to use? Cryptocurrencies are a market alternative, but they haven’t put state money out of business yet. If they ever threaten to do so, the state can prohibit them.
Market money is sound because of two essential features. First, it represents the market’s choice of a universally accepted medium of exchange, and second, it shackles government to a great extent, liberating the people. A state that prowls foreign lands in the name of freedom and democracy and keeps its domestic population in line with free stuff and threats has no interest in a currency it can’t will into existence. For this reason, governments hate sound money.
Even worse, people hate sound money. Sound money means

The leviathan US state would not be possible without the Fed underwriting its growth. But the Fed is not all-powerful, nor can it continue to exist by only creating chaos.
Original Article: If the Fed Goes, The State Will Soon Follow

“Whenever and however [government] is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers.” (emphasis added)
—John Jay, “Federalist No. 2”
“Like breathing, [government] is not permitted to depend on our volition. Necessity will force it on all communities in some one form or another.”
—John C. Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”
—Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority
Across the globe governments without exception are territorial rulers holding a supremacy of physical force over the

The boom-and-bust cycles are not natural to a market economy, contra Keynes. Instead, government through monetary manipulation creates them—and then politicians blame markets themselves.
Original Article: How the Fed Undermines Prosperity

A central bank is not a natural product of banking development. It is imposed from the outside or comes into being as a result of government favors.
—Vera Smith, The Rationale of Central Banking and the Free Banking Alternative
Anarchy, the absence of coercive government, must not be confused with chaos.
—Robert P. Murphy, Chaos Theory
The Federal Reserve is dying from monetary mischief. The Fed recently made a woke mandate that will only accelerate its own demise. The Fed never should have existed. As a central bank, the Fed is a rogue institution that functions as a giant counterfeiter for hegemonic government and special interests.
Government signed off on the Fed long ago and soon found it indispensable for funding whatever politicians could dream up. Together they have destroyed the

Infamous hyperinflations like what hit Germany in 1923 did not begin as a flood. Instead, they started as smaller bouts of inflation initiated by governments that printed money to pay for deficit spending.
Original Article: How a Trickle Can Turn into a Flood

The term “roundabout” is not normally associated with efficiency, unless you’re an economist. Yet roundabout methods—when applied to production—are the key to prosperity.
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, the great Austrian economist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, provided examples illustrating how this idea works. Consider a farmer whose source of drinking water is some distance from his house. Whenever he gets thirsty, he can go to the spring and drink from his cupped hands—a nice, direct satisfaction of his needs. If “efficient” means to act directly to produce an effect, then it might appear the farmer has behaved most efficiently. However, he’ll need to slake his thirst several times a day, plus he has other uses for the water.
How efficient is his direct means now?
So,

While court economists such as Paul Krugman insist that inflation is government’s way of ensuring full employment, in reality, inflation is one of the many ways governments steal from productive people.

Original Article: Inflation: Government’s Insidious Form of Theft

In 1903, a lawyer in Germany took out an insurance policy and made payments on it faithfully. When the policy came due in twenty years, he cashed it in and bought a single loaf of bread with the proceeds. He was fortunate. If he had waited a few days longer, the money he received would have bought no more than a few crumbs.
Germany had been on the usual fractional reserve gold standard prior to World War I, with the Reichsbank—its central bank—expanding the money supply at a “mild” 1–2 percent inflation rate. When war broke out in 1914, the government followed the standard policy of deficit spending rather than attempting to raise taxes. The Reichsbank’s role was to monetize the government debt—that is, pay for new treasury obligations by printing more money.
At the war’s end, the number

The state is held together by violence and nothing else. There is no such thing as "the social contract." But even violence cannot make a state last past its time, as we saw with the USSR.

Original Article: States Are Dying from Corruption and the Exponential

But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed.
—Murray Rothbard, Taking Money Back
The Fed’s distinguishing characteristic is its grant of privilege to buy assets with money it doesn’t have. No other person or institution can legally do this; those that tried would be indicted for counterfeiting.
At the very least you might think this would raise eyebrows, but it doesn’t except in fringe quarters. It is simply part of modern monetary gospel, never to be examined too closely.
Another part of the gospel is fractional reserve banking, wherein commercial banks create multiple claims to the same dollar through their lending activities. (See Alan Greenspan’s implicit endorsement of fractional reserve banking in his famous defense of gold.)

In the global Ponzi scheme, thin air and deceit substitute for sound money. As hedge-fund manager Mitch Feierstein wrote in Planet Ponzi, “You don’t solve a Ponzi scheme; you end it.”
Original Article: "The Coming Collapse of the Global Ponzi Scheme"

No one today talks about the death penalty for debasing gold or silver coins as established by section 19 of the Coinage Act of 1792, nor do they usually bring up Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution, which authorizes only “gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” Instead, we’ve come so far as to establish a “gold standard” for the monetary policy of inflating currency at roughly two percent per annum to be carried out solely by the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve System.
When we glance between the lines, we see that the Fed holds a monopoly of money creation. And since the government no longer regards gold or silver as money but instead issues paper bills or their electronic equivalent (not as substitutes for real money but as money itself), the United

Technology is the main reason why so many of us are still alive to complain about technology.
—Garry Kasparov
If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.
—Ray Kurzweil
While world leaders try to decide whether their interests are best served by World War III or some other imposed atrocity, various forces have states targeted for extinction. Chief among these forces is the exponential nature of evolution and technology, working together to advance human life. The other threat to the state’s existence is untreated self-inflicted wounds, which I’ll discuss later.
Let’s start with evolution. Shortly after the big bang, atoms started forming, then later, atoms combined into molecules. Carbon in particular gave rise to more complicated

It won’t be long before governments around the world, including the one in Washington, self-destruct.
Strong words, but anything less would be naïve.
As economist Herbert Stein once said, “If something cannot go on forever, it has a tendency to stop.” Case in point: fiat money political regimes. Interventionist economies of the West are in a fatal downward spiral, comparable to that of the Roman Empire in the second century, burdened with unsustainable debt and the antiprosperity policies of governments, especially the Green New Deal.
In the global Ponzi scheme, thin air and deceit substitute for sound money. As hedge-fund manager Mitch Feierstein wrote in Planet Ponzi, “You don’t solve a Ponzi scheme; you end it.” Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff
made some of their investors a whole lot

Rothbard on the American Revolution: "There was no particular need for the formal trappings and permanent investing of a centralized government, even for victory in war."

Original Article: "The American Revolutionaries Didn’t Need a Central Government. Neither Do We."

You’re driving on a two-lane road and see cars headed your way. Do you drive off the road to protect yourself or your family? Probably not. You stay on your side, while they stay on theirs. In most cases you’re in a situation of mutually assured destruction if either one crosses the center line. It is not from the benevolence of the other drivers that we expect them to stay in their lane but from their regard to their own self-interest.
It’s self-interest, usually condemned as morally reprehensible but without being clearly articulated, that guides us throughout the days of our life. Self-interest, in a rational sense, is devoid of sacrifice, where “sacrifice” refers to surrendering higher values to lower ones. A value is that which one acts to acquire or defend. The mother who risks her

Einstein might have been one of history’s most brilliant men, but even his great mind could not have made socialism work. Unfortunately, he wasn’t smart enough to see that.

Original Article: "A Great Man Cannot Salvage a Bad Idea"

Everything possible is done to prevent the fraud of the monetary system from being exposed to the masses who suffer from it.
—Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), before the US House of Representatives, February 15, 2006
In the mid-sixties, having read about gold in Atlas Shrugged, I decided to find out something about inflation and wrote to the United States Treasury Department to request a brochure that purported to lay inflation out in terms anyone could understand. In reply, they sent me a Peanuts comic book.
Though I didn’t know it at the time, using cartoon stars to promote government viewpoints was nothing new. In 1942, the US Treasury had commissioned Walt Disney to produce a film called The New Spirit in which Donald Duck’s radio tells him it is “your privilege, not just your duty, but your

When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.
—1970s TV commercial
Imagine if your surname was synonymous with genius. And not just genius, but creative genius. Is there anything you could write or say that could be seriously challenged? Among your colleagues, certainly. Science is never closed, always debated, always contingent on certain postulates. But the lay public is apt to regard you as infallible.
Such has been the fate of Albert Einstein who today is best known for his theory of relativity and especially his equation E = mc2: the energy (E) of a body at rest is its mass (m) times the square of the speed of light (c). As astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explains it, “For every 1 kilogram of mass you turn into energy, you get 9 × 1016 joules of energy out, which is the equivalent of 21 megatons

In 1948, Ludwig Erhardt rescued a German economy that was in shambles simply by invoking free markets and currency reform. Our economy needs its Rothbard moment.

Original Article: "Rothbard’s Button Doesn’t Exist, but It Needs to Be Invented"

The real issue we face is not whether we should be in the red tribe or the blue tribe, but rather what will be the constituency for freedom.

Original Article: "Neither Red nor Blue, but Free"

With totalitarianism accelerating on a global scale and having kicked off in earnest with government attacks on their own populations during the still-running ruse of the covid vaccine, the state as a necessary feature of civilization stands before us shamelessly as a blood-dripping monster.
And acting as tyranny’s bulldog is the state’s handmaiden and echo chamber, the legacy media.
Are future generations destined to live in an Orwellian nightmare?
Relying on the constitution and electing “good people” into office will not remove the source of our problems, which is: the government we inherited, the only organization that claims the legal right to fund itself coercively through taxes and bank counterfeiting. We’re attempting to live by a double standard—what’s legal for the state is

The human tendency to kill what one fears asserted itself on April 4, 2023, as a Manhattan district attorney called Donald Trump into his office to issue a vague threat.
What crime Trump was being charged with is known only to Alvin Bragg, but the rest of the world is left playing a guessing game.
Trump supporters are rallying everyone with a heartbeat to support their candidate. It’s survival time. Even a few Trump haters are finding a way to support Trump. Not that they want him back in the White House, perish the thought, but the Bragg travesty is more than even they can stand.
If Trump doesn’t win in 2024, the crumbling edifice that was once this country will come to rival the sack of Rome. Policies will amount to anything and everything that will wipe out the economy. Joe Biden or

My grandson will graduate from a public school in May, and my daughter, his mom, asked me to write a senior letter for him. He’s been part of my life since he was born, and we’re all very proud of him. But what do I tell him about the world he’s about to enter?
Right off he already knows his life itself has a claim on it by the State. If he fails to register for the draft, he could be sent to prison and fined $250,000. With enlistments falling off and the regime’s insatiable appetite for war, it’s possible his future would be cut short as a conscript fighting impoverished foreigners thousands of miles away, “defending our freedom” while sustaining the revenue flow of the Congressional/Military/Industrial/God-knows-what-else racket.
My grandson is too young to remember Pat Tillman, the NFL

As long as states are around, money will never be sound. But first, some clarity.
Sound money, per Ludwig von Mises, has two aspects: It serves as a commonly accepted medium of exchange, while also making it difficult for governments to meddle with it. We can see immediately that sound money is nowhere to be found in today’s world. All the current rhetoric about banks and their systemic risks are about money that’s subject to political expediency, the kind that brings civilization to its knees.
There is at least one group, however, putting up a good fight. In the US the Sound Money Defense League is working at a state level to bring gold and silver coin back as legal tender. According to their website:
. . . sound money activists are launching exciting initiatives at the state level to

Western governments seem to relish a clash with Russia, despite the specter of nuclear war. If so, it will be a conflict built on government lies.

Original Article: "The Last Lie Government Will Ever Tell"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

The more powerful a government, the more likely it is to engage in war and conquest. Case in point: US involvement in Ukraine.
In 2014 the US led a coup that displaced a “democratically elected” president, Viktor Yanukovych.
In November 2013, . . . Yanukovych rejected a major economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to accept a $15 billion Russian counteroffer instead. That decision gave rise to antigovernment demonstrations that escalated over the following three months.
Instead of waiting around for the next election, Yanukovych fled to Russia on February 22, 2014.
The new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately be labeled neofascists. . . .
[It was] clear that Washington

If we have learned anything from hundreds of years of government oppression and atrocities, one thing is certain: government isn’t our friend.

Original Article: "Government Is as Government Does"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Get beyond the PhDs running the Federal Reserve or the way people treat the Fed with deference. In the end, it is nothing but a legal counterfeiting ring.

Original Article: "We Are All Counterfeiters Now"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

People say government is corrupt. If it were corrupt, it would be acting in ways contrary and detrimental to its purpose, and it would be possible to right the course. In truth, government acts in ways that befit its nature.
Today’s governments are states ruling by legal coercion. There is another, unacknowledged “government” that works to govern our behavior peacefully, and it’s usually called the free market. But to states, the market—whether free or otherwise—is the farm from which they extract wealth and distribute it according to their perceived needs. States are plundering gangs that wouldn’t exist without something to plunder—a market. But can markets exist without states?
We might never know. States will not step aside—the setup is far too rewarding for those in charge. So, we

Intellectuals and politicians often try to verbally summarize or justify conventional thinking in pithy ways. Milton Friedman (in 1965) and Richard Nixon (in 1971) both said different versions of the phrase “we are all Keynesians now.” . . . Friedman and Nixon were describing the thoughts behind the implementation of Great Society redistribution programs and an inflationary monetary policy designed to offset the cost of those programs.
—Brian Wesbury and Robert Stein, We Are All Keynesians Now
If there is one central myth supporting the folly that passes for monetary policy and by extension fiscal policy, it would have to be the unchallenged assumption that money should be defined and controlled by government.
Given the role of money in the economy—that it serves as a trade intermediary,

Judge Andrew Napolitano looks at the history of government and race relations in our nation’s history. It’s not a pleasant or uplifting story.

Original Article: "The Forgotten Lessons of Government-Enforced Race Relations"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Anticapitalist politicians claim intervention can "level the playing field," but when we look closely, we realize that government itself creates the imbalances.

Original Article: "Does Government Create a "Level Playing Field" or Does It Make the Field More Uneven?"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

On April 23, 2003, in South Side Chicago, Reverend Jeremiah Wright cursed America for treating blacks as less than human.
Such harsh rhetoric should not seem surprising given the US government’s history of involvement in race relations. Judge Andrew P. Napolitano takes us through that history in his book Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America.
Most readers have heard about black lynchings that gripped the South for generations following the War for Southern Independence. But how many know lynchings were often a major social event? “Witnesses often included the entire white community,” Napolitano tells us,
and, in many cases, the victim’s body was cut up and pieces were handed out as souvenirs. . . .
The local police, governments of each Southern state, and

These days, the Fed and Chairman Jerome Powell are claiming the title of "inflation fighters." The more appropriate moniker should be "inflationists."

Original Article: "Fighting Inflation Really Means Fighting the Federal Reserve"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Bernie Sanders and other politicians have made socialism attractive to voters, especially young ones, because it promises to eliminate the injustices of capitalism. As to what socialism and capitalism mean, no one seems to care much, other than that by socialism, they mean a kinder, caring society without income extremes, whereas capitalism is the preferred system of ruthless exploiters who amass obscene fortunes while real workers struggle to survive.

There are surely other worlds than this—other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude—other speculations than the speculations of the sophist.
—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Assignation”
Nothing brings out misleading or false narratives like the subject of money. Prices over the last twenty-five months have shot up, and this development is roundly called inflation. Why? Because prices have shot up. The criminals running the government even passed an inflationary omnibus spending bill under the pretext of fighting inflation.

The culprit responsible for the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the Great Depression can be easily identified—the government. To protect fractional reserve banking and generate a buyer for its debt, the US government created the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and put it in charge of the money supply.

We think of thieves as conducting their work when no one is looking, such as breaking into a house while the owners are away. But the most successful thieves have done their stealing in plain sight, on a grand scale, while the owners were home and often with their tacit approval, though with sleights of hand that few are able to detect. Such a theft occurred when Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law on December 23, 1913.
A central bank such as the Fed has a remarkable character. According to establishment boilerplate, its purpose is to stabilize the economy and ensure prosperity and “full employment.” The decision makers at the Fed are of necessity selected for their superhuman brilliance and neutrality of judgment, thus qualifying them to adjust the amount of money

One of history’s greatest ironies is that gold detractors refer to the metal as the barbarous relic. In fact, the abandonment of gold has put civilization as we know it at risk of extinction. The gold coin standard that had served Western economies so brilliantly throughout most of the nineteenth century hit a brick wall in 1914 and was never able to recover, or so the story goes.

There’s an idea rooted among some libertarians that the Federal Reserve was originally a sound institution but has grown corrupt. As a bankers’ bank, it was fine, they believe, but not as the monster it has grown to be. If we could only go back to the Fed’s founding charter, all would be well.

Commentaries about World War I frequently discuss causes and consequences but almost never mention the enablers. At best, they might mention them approvingly, as if we were fortunate to have had the Fed and the income tax, along with the ingenuity of the liberty bond programs, to finance our glorious role in that bloodbath.

For those who would find relief knowing the Bible sanctions a market-derived medium of exchange, Gary North’s Honest Money will come as a godsend (no pun intended). Even for those reprobates who forswear a religious worldview, his book will provide a solid grounding in monetary theory and history.

Tom Woods’ bestseller Meltdown placed the blame for the financial debacle of 2008–09 on the government’s counterfeiter, the Federal Reserve. It was the Fed’s policies that created the problems, although most economists and economic talking heads didn’t see it that way. The Fed’s loose monetary policies funded the meltdown and became the “elephant in the living room” most pundits couldn’t see.