Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

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Review: The Classical Liberal Case For Israel

2024-02-05

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2024-02-05

In War Guilt in the Middle East (1967) Murray Rothbard observes that libertarians are very clear on the principles of liberty, but less so on the details of specific events: Now this kind of insight into the root cause of war and aggression, and into the nature of the State itself, is all well and good … But the trouble is that the libertarian tends to stop there, and evading the responsibility of knowing what is going on in any specific war or...

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Studying Economic Data and Processing It Is Not “Doing Economics”

2024-02-05

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2024-02-05

Most mainstream economists believe the application of quantitative methods on historical data can explain the state of the economy. Others such as Ludwig von Mises held that the data utilized by economists is a historical display, which by itself cannot provide the facts of economics. Ludwig von Mises wrote, “Experience of economic history is always the experience of complex phenomena. It can never convey knowledge of the kind the experimenter...

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One of these Things Is Not Like the Others

2024-02-05

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2024-02-05

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...

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Fiscal Rules Do Not Undermine Investment, But Government Profligacy Does

2024-02-03

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2024-02-03

To prevent public debt from soaring in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2009, Germany has enshrined a “debt brake” in its constitution. The debt brake sets strict limits on federal public debt levels and restrains government borrowing. This fiscal rule has served its purpose, and public debt has been on a downward path, dropping by about 15 percentage points of gross domestic product (GDP) since its introduction. Yet the government...

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Tightwads at the Fed

2024-02-03

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2024-02-03

Mark talks about the Fed's Reverse Repo Operations, which explain the conundrum of the Fed's "tight" monetary policy and new record highs in the stock market. It turns out that the Fed is not a bunch of "tightwads" after all, but has served up a nearly $2 trillion monetary injection since the bond market cratered last year. Be sure to follow Minor Issues at Mises.org/MinorIssues. Get your free copy of Dr. Guido...

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A Short History of the Right to Self-Determination

2024-02-03

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2024-02-03

In his 1927 book Liberalism, the radical classical liberal and economist Ludwig von Mises took a strict and expansive view in favor of secession. Specifically, he noted that respect for the right of self-determination required extant states to allow the separation of new polities seeking secession. He writes: The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular...

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How Carl Menger and the Austrians Helped to Steer Economic Theory in the Right Direction

2024-02-03

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2024-02-03

Adam Smith, in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, stipulates the guiding principles of classical economic orthodoxy, establishing guiding principles that will guide the English economic paradigm. Despite a tradition more focused on Colbertism (between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) and physiocracy (from the eighteenth century onwards), classical economics managed to penetrate this French academic environment due to names such as...

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We Like Ike! Joe Salerno on Rolling Back the Ideology of Inflation

2024-02-02

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2024-02-02

Academic VP of the Mises Institute, Joe Salerno, joins Bob to discuss his talk at the Supporters Summit, centering on the mainstream's focus on "rules vs. discretion" in monetary policy. Salerno explains how President Eisenhower's administration marked a pivot away from the ideology of inflation. Dr. Salerno's Talk at the 2023 Supporters Summit: Mises.org/HAP433a   Join Tom DiLorenzo, Joe Salerno, and Patrick Newman in Tampa on February...

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Serbia’s Two Traditions of Freedom

2024-02-02

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2024-02-02

Today, Serbia does not enjoy a reputation as a free country. The philosophy of strong hand, top-down organization of society, a socialist understanding of economy, and fierce nationalism are its trademarks. The legacy of socialism with a human face, of which I have written elsewhere, has entrenched a statist mentality among the population and has shaped the understanding of economics among the political and intellectual elite. But it is little...

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Does Socialism Protect Rights or Violate Them?

2024-02-02

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2024-02-02

In last week’s column, I discussed Scott Sehon’s new book, Socialism: A Logical Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2024), and this week, I’d like to continue the analysis of the book, focusing on Sehon’s discussion of rights under socialism. The main topic we need to look at is whether socialism violates important rights that people ought to be accorded in a just political and social system. Before addressing this topic, though, we need to look...

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Argentina and the Watching World

2024-02-02

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2024-02-02

Javier Milei has already been sworn in as the new president of Argentina and faces a Promethean challenge, having inherited a country riddled with debt and inflation. Balancing the books is going to be his priority before he can implement most of his innovative ideas, and that is going to cause temporary pain as he has clearly admitted. He does not seem keen on wasting time though, and in his first weeks we have seen a historic revocation of more...

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A Texas-American War?

2024-02-01

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2024-02-01

On this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop look at the growing tensions between the State of Texas and the Biden administration. The two evaluate the situation today, what we should expect in the near future, and what its lasting ramifications could be for the regime.  Discussed on the Show  "It's Biden vs. Texas, and Texas Is Right" by Ryan McMaken: Mises.org/RR_171_A "The Establishment Is Unmasking...

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Are Bankruptcies of Some US States in the Future?

2024-02-01

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2024-02-01

Bankruptcy is a developing twenty-first century theme in America. We see bankruptcy in federal government policy and spending, many corporate boardroom decisions, nonprofit and religious groups’ overspending and arrogance, individuals, some United States cities and counties, and the territory of Puerto Rico. The federal bankruptcy law consisting of Chapters 7, 9, 11, and 13 allow bankruptcy filings for local governments, individuals, nonprofit...

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Four Charts That Show Cantillon Effects

2024-02-01

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2024-02-01

Murray Rothbard called Richard Cantillon the “father of modern economics.” While that title is often given to Adam Smith, Rothbard suggested that all the good things in Smith were first discovered by Cantillon or other pre-Smithian economists and that virtually all of Smith’s original ideas were “a significant deterioration of economic thought.” One of Cantillon’s greatest insights involved the uneven effects of monetary expansion. New money enters...

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An Open Letter to Walter E. Block

2024-02-01

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2024-02-01

Breaking up with a person you have known for more than thirty years, with whom you have participated in countless conferences and co-authored a couple of articles, even if only in the somewhat distant past, is nothing done lightly. It is even harder, if one shares with this person a common standing as a public intellectual and both our names are mentioned frequently in one breath as prominent students of the same teacher, Murray N. Rothbard, and as...

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Navigating the Complexity of Climate Change: A Closer Look at the Scientific Method and Its Challenges

2024-01-31

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2024-01-31

The physical sciences have greatly advanced knowledge by elucidating the workings of simple phenomena. In a simple phenomenon, we have a limited number of important variables, all of which are identifiable and measurable. This allows us to run a scientific experiment. In such an experiment, we hold all other variables constant and examine the influence of one variable on the phenomenon. We can therefore measure this variable’s direction and how...

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Secession’s Opponents Embrace Colonialism and “Enlightened” Central Governments

2024-01-31

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2024-01-31

The idea of secession for some regions of the United States—sometimes simplistically called "national divorce"—has increasingly been mentioned as a way to deal with the apparent growing divide between what are crudely called "red states" and "blue states." Polls suggest that perhaps a third of the American population "indicated a 'willingness to secede'"  Vehement opposition to the idea remains plentiful,...

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Biden’s Absurd New Economic Messaging Strategy

2024-01-31

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2024-01-31

After spending months trying to sell his economic agenda under the banner of “Bidenomics,” the president’s team is frustrated. Voters aren’t believing them when they say that the economy is doing excellent and that Joe Biden deserves the credit. Rather than make a meaningful attempt to understand the American people’s economic pain and recognize why it isn’t being detected by traditional economic indicators, the president’s team has settled on a...

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Reflections on the Libertarian Role in Society

2024-01-30

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2024-01-30

As the recent election of Javier Milei in Argentina shows us, there still is a place in the political world for libertarian thinking. Liberty is a goal still worth pursuing. Original Article: Reflections on the Libertarian Role in Society

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Does Government Spending and Money Expansion Create New Wealth or Destroy It?

2024-01-30

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2024-01-30

Government efforts to expand “aggregate demand” involve new spending and money creation. In reality, these activities destroy wealth in the name of expanding it. Original Article: Does Government Spending and Money Expansion Create New Wealth or Destroy It?

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