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.

A sizable advantage Murray Rothbard’s approach to libertarianism – that is, one based in private property – has over other approaches, such as those based in vague notions of “freedom,” is its pursuit of non-contradiction. A frequent problem in modern liberal democracy is the desire to declare a number of things to be “rights,” that end up contradicting previously pronounced “rights.” One can readily see the problems in the American jurisprudence surrounding the “right to privacy” and what that supposedly entails.The emphasis on property rights provides great clarity when it comes to diagnosing the problems we see in the state’s governance of the so-called “public domain,” referring to those areas such as sidewalks, streets, parks, and other areas that are not privately owned and governed.