Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

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Is There Inflation in Government-Financed Goods and Services?

2023-10-24

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2023-10-24

Governments are fond of accusing private firms of “greed” when prices increase during periods of inflation. However, they fail to tell the public that government services also face price increases. Original Article: Is There Inflation in Government-Financed Goods and Services?

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The Dangers of a “Cashless” Economy

2023-10-24

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2023-10-24

Before delving into the dangers of eliminating cash and mandating that all transactions be conducted by digital means, let us briefly discuss the legal aspects of money. In the United States, as in all economies that have legal tender laws, only cash is recognized as money. Some may think that the balance of their bank accounts is money too, but that is not quite the case. Your bank balance is one step removed from legal money. All banks must...

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Countering the Woke Offensive

2023-10-24

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2023-10-24

Did someone recently flip a switch? It seems as though Wokeism, the Great Reset, ESG, DEI, and an assortment of other radical left-wing positions, have just taken over. It is in the movies, media, sports, finance, retail businesses, and even in the beer industry. Yet, it is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Wokeism is a part of the international Zeitgeist. For example, this past June, I inadvertently experienced a huge “Pride” parade (reported as...

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Rothbard on a Priori History

2023-10-24

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2023-10-24

Rothbard warned against the assumption that because democracies are “better” than dictatorships, they are necessarily more peace loving. Original Article: Rothbard on a Priori History

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The Fate or Wealth of Nations: AI, Robotics and Automation

2023-10-24

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2023-10-24

What contributes to the wealth of a nation? Gross national income (GNI) and gross domestic product (GDP) are two well-known measures of a country’s economic growth. One measures the earnings of a country, and the other measures the value of the final goods produced by the country. What drives these measures in the twenty-first century? We are now witnessing a pivotal technological divide among countries in their ability to invest in and deploy...

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Foreword: Legal Foundations of a Free Society

2023-10-24

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2023-10-24

[This article is the foreword to Stephan Kinsella's, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023)] The question as to what is justice and what constitutes a just society is as old as philosophy itself. Indeed, it arises in everyday life even long before any systematic philosophizing is to begin. All throughout intellectual history, one prominent answer to this question has been to say that it is “might” that makes...

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Can the American Government Wage a Just War?

2023-10-23

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2023-10-23

In a recent Mises Wire article, Connor O’Keeffe posed the question: “Is It Just War or Unjustified Slaughter of Innocents?” O’Keeffe points to Murray Rothbard’s claim that the difference between war and other manners of crime is merely a matter of scale, concluding that what we currently see occurring in the Middle East—as well as in any number of previous conflicts around the world—is not justified. However, it can be further shown that...

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Taking a Closer Look at the Vaunted Scandinavian Welfare States

2023-10-23

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2023-10-23

While politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC tout the Scandinavian welfare model for the USA, there are a few things to understand about these countries and the economies that support their welfare programs. Original Article: Taking a Closer Look at the Vaunted Scandinavian Welfare States

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Was the French Revolution Good or Bad?

2023-10-23

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2023-10-23

For a number of reasons, the French Revolution is a kind of Rorschach Test for educated people. One cause of this phenomenon, if I may pile on metaphors, is clearly the blind man/elephant problem. There are so many parts of the Revolution, so many stages, so many protagonists, so many ideas, so many policies—often quite contradictory—that we are sometimes confused not only as to how to interpret it, but as to what part to interpret as well....

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What is Software Quality? An Austrian Approach

2023-10-23

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2023-10-23

The International Software Testing Qualifications Board provides an excellent preliminary definition of quality: “The degree to which a work product satisfies stated and implied needs of its stakeholders.” However, despite all its virtues, this definition still requires further clarification to fully grasp all of its business ramifications. Here is when the notion of value comes in handy. Value Is Subjective We learn from praxeology that...

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The Cultural Impact of the Dollar

2023-10-23

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2023-10-23

Recorded at the Mises Institute Supporters Summit in Auburn, Alabama, 14 October 2023. Includes an introduction by Dr. Sandra Klein and audience question and answer period. Sponsored by Gregory and Joy Morin. The Cultural Impact of the Dollar | Guido Hülsmann Video of The Cultural Impact of the Dollar | Guido Hülsmann

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How a Trickle Can Turn into a Flood

2023-10-23

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2023-10-23

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

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Fighting the Surveillance State Begins with the Individual

2023-10-23

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2023-10-23

It’s a well-known fact at this point that in the United States and most of the so-called free countries that there is a robust surveillance state in place, collecting data on the entire populace. This has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by people like Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower who exposed that the NSA was conducting mass surveillance on US citizens and the world as a whole. The NSA used applications like...

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Fed Forecasts: Financial Sport or Costly Distraction?

2023-10-22

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2023-10-22

Forget Vegas sports betting for reckless speculation. When the Fed officials make projections, the markets assume they are accurate. However, as Jerome Powell himself admits, forecasts are speculative at best. Original Article: Fed Forecasts: Financial Sport or Costly Distraction?

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What Is Seen—And What is NOT Seen: Bastiat’s Often-Ignored Wisdom

2023-10-21

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2023-10-21

Bastiat reminded his readers that economic analysis involves not just what we see on the surface, but also the costs that are hidden from view. Original Article: What Is Seen—And What is NOT Seen: Bastiat's Often-Ignored Wisdom

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Economics and the Real World

2023-10-21

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2023-10-21

Much of modern neoclassical economic theory depends upon assumptions that do not reflect real world conditions. Austrian economists, however, know that realistic assumptions matter. Original Article: Economics and the Real World

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Where Did the Dollar Come From?

2023-10-21

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2023-10-21

On this week's episode, Mark takes a look back to where our dollar came from. Our nation started with silver as money: the Silver Dollar, and before that the Spanish Peso in colonial times. That type of large silver coin goes back to the early 1500s and the Early Modern Era when such coins expanded trade, improved the food supply, led to commercially produced clothing, and gradually changed housing from mud-and-grass construction to...

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Rothbard, Milei and the New Right in Argentina

2023-10-21

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2023-10-21

Since I recognized almost twenty years ago that no person or institution has the right to initiate aggression, now is the first time I can tell a normie what my political stance is without them having no clue what I am talking about. Now I can say that I am an anarchocapitalist without causing much surprise, as a large part of the public now has some idea of what this term means. This is thanks to the fascinating electoral success of Javier Milei,...

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Destroying Liberty Through State Protection: The First Amendment

2023-10-21

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2023-10-21

For a state to continue existing in any meaningful way, it must constantly seek to centralize power. Regardless of the original intentions of a state’s founders or the heritage that a state claims, if those running the state simply maintain their existing powers rather than growing them, they will find themselves circumvented. Subdivisions and organic local communities nominally under the state will develop independently from the state’s center of...

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Tyranny, Inc.: How “Beltway Libertarians” Failed to Convince Conservatives

2023-10-20

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2023-10-20

From the various compromises pushed by "Beltway Libertarians" to the anti-free market rhetoric of conservative Sohrab Ahmari, government intervention has a lot of new friends. This will not end well. Original Article: Tyranny, Inc.: How “Beltway Libertarians” Failed to Convince Conservatives

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