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 practice of law enforcement agencies in the United States seizing private property is one of the clearest examples of how much power the government has been permitted to gain. Although the idea of forcibly appropriating the assets of citizens as punishment for violation of the law has been practiced on the North American continent for hundreds of years, for a long time it was only used infrequently and was generally ignored by law enforcement.There were only a handful of timeframes and circumstances when civil asset forfeiture was used with any regularity, such as in enforcement of the British Navigation Acts of the 1600s or of Prohibition laws in the 1920s and early 1930s. The excessive outgrowth of the predatory practice of asset forfeiture as we know it today has been a relatively

On some level, all of us realize that traffic tickets are seen by local governments as a form of revenue. Supposedly, the intent behind issuance of fines for traffic offenses is to disincentivize behaviors which are deemed to be unsafe, such as driving over the speed limit or not wearing a seatbelt (despite the fact that the latter poses no risk to anyone but the driver). The punishment for this type of offense being almost always a fine, as opposed to any type of nonmonetary punishment, is suspect in itself. But even if the monetary cost of speeding tickets really is better at preventing speeding than some other punishment, the fact remains that local governments do lay claim to the money forfeited and for that reason have another incentive besides community safety to issue those

On some level, all of us realize that traffic tickets are seen by local governments as a form of revenue. Supposedly, the intent behind issuance of fines for traffic offenses is to disincentivize behaviors which are deemed to be unsafe, such as driving over the speed limit or not wearing a seatbelt (despite the fact that the latter poses no risk to anyone but the driver). The punishment for this type of offense being almost always a fine, as opposed to any type of nonmonetary punishment, is suspect in itself. But even if the monetary cost of speeding tickets really is better at preventing speeding than some other punishment, the fact remains that local governments do lay claim to the money forfeited and for that reason have another incentive besides community safety to issue those