Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

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Campus Kids Could Deliver Gaza

2024-04-29

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2024-04-29

American foreign policy is a museum of horrors in which Gaza 2023/2024 is the main exhibit.It is my conviction that Gaza is much more than just one more American foreign-policy failure, an event and topic to swill around like mouth wash, spit out and move on, once the usual “tsk, tsk” bromides have been disgorged.Uncle Sam’s usual deathly mixture of ignorance, cruelty and superiority has been exceeded with respect to Gaza. It is my belief that the...

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Mises in Argentina: Lessons of the Past for Today

2024-04-29

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2024-04-29

Ludwig von Mises visited Argentina in June 1959 by invitation of Dr. Alberto Benegas Lynch. The lectures Mises delivered at the University of Buenos Aires are reproduced in the book Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow. As the title suggests, the economic knowledge transmitted by Mises was for both those days and for the future. Argentina in 1959 was in a recession, the Frondizi administration trying to cope with the terrible situation...

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Freedom of Contract and Property Rights

2024-04-27

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2024-04-27

The classical liberal defense of contractual freedom is derived from the principle of individual autonomy. Freedom of contract entails the right to enter into or exit from contracts at will. As Richard Epstein argues in his defense of the contract at will:The first way to argue for the contract at will is to insist upon the importance of freedom of contract as an end in itself. Freedom of contract is an aspect of individual liberty, every bit as...

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Central Banks Are Wrong about Rate Cuts

2024-04-27

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2024-04-27

When we talk about monetary policy, people do not understand the importance of interest rates reflecting the reality of inflation and risk. Interest rates are the price of risk and manipulating them down leads to bubbles that end in financial crises, while imposing too high rates can penalize the economy. Ideally, interest rates would flow freely and there would be no central bank to fix them.A price signal as important as interest rates or the...

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The Great Chocolate Crisis

2024-04-27

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2024-04-27

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...

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Economic Education Has Become Economic Disinformation

2024-04-27

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2024-04-27

Modern economics is in terrible shape. But economics education appears to be worse still. This becomes clear when discussing basic economics with those who have taken courses in the field. Rather than doing away with economic misunderstandings and outright nonsense, economics education apparently provides students with a pseudoscientific rationale for their illusions.Two such ideas are annoyingly common. One is the view that markets can only work...

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What’s Wrong With Biden’s Housing Tax Credit?

2024-04-27

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2024-04-27

In his state of the union address, President Biden expressed his desire for a $400 a month tax credit over two years for first time home buyers. I have argued for years that tax credits are a good thing, and still maintain that they are a good thing. Yet, I am leery of Biden’s tax-credit proposal.Biden’s proposal was one of several relating to housing:I know the cost of housing is so important to you.If inflation keeps coming down mortgage rates...

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Did the MMT Camp Correctly Predict the Post-Covid Economy?

2024-04-26

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2024-04-26

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...

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Word of the Day: Performative

2024-04-26

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2024-04-26

The western media are, above all, phraseologists. Managing massive vertically integrated “states” requires the controlled and targeted use of repetitive government approved language, propaganda, jingoism, repeated phrases to channel thought and energy.We’ve seen a lot of “performative” progressivism in recent years – Black Lives Matter and reparations from the Civil War, incessant genderology above the fold, Trump Derangement Syndrome, tomato soup...

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Help Us Publish These Three New Books

2024-04-26

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2024-04-26

Please consider helping us publish these three new books: The World at War, Full Reserve Banking vs. Real Bills Doctrine, and Austrian Business Cycle Theory: an Introduction. The World at Warby Ralph Raicoedited by Edward FullerTo understand war, you also have to understand economics. Ralph Raico’s lecture “The World at War” is a masterpiece. Recorded in 1983, it remains perhaps the best introduction to the classical-liberal interpretation of the...

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Low Time Preference Leads to Civilization

2024-04-26

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2024-04-26

Time preference refers to the preference of satisfaction in the present as compared to a future time. A person who heavily prefers current consumption to future consumption has a high time preference as he places a heavy premium upon satisfaction as soon as possible. By contrast, a person who does not place a heavy premium upon instant satisfaction has a low time preference. People with low time preferences are more likely to save and invest their...

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Opposing Military Intervention: Loving Dictators or Hating War?

2024-04-26

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2024-04-26

America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictatorsby Jacob HeilbrunnLiveright, 2024; 249 pp.Jacob Heilbrunn, who is the editor of The National Interest, is dismayed that some leading figures on the American Right show an affinity for European dictators; he has in mind especially the “Hungarian strongman” Viktor Orbán and the Russian president Vladimir Putin. This admiration, not the foreign policy realism they claim to champion,...

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What Is the Purpose of Economic Theory?

2024-04-26

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2024-04-26

Mainstream economists believe our knowledge of the world of economics is elusive, so the criteria for choosing a theory should be its predictive power. If the theory “predicts,” it is regarded as a valid framework to assess the economy. Once a theory fails in that role, the search for a new theory begins.For instance, an economist believes that consumer outlays on goods and services are determined by disposable income. Once this view is validated...

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Kentucky Becomes 45th State to End Sales Taxes on Gold and Silver

2024-04-25

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2024-04-25

(Frankfort, Kentucky) -- In a high-stakes showdown with Gov. Andy Beshear over a gold and silver sales tax exemption, the Kentucky legislature has deemed his attempted line-item veto as an illegal act -- and directed the Secretary of State to enroll the exemption into law.

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Javier Milei vs. the Status Quo

2024-04-25

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2024-04-25

Javier Milei’s administration is generating much deserved commentary, both positive and negative. Critical discussion is vital since he is the first libertarian president, so keeping a distance between libertarianism itself and his government actions is a must if libertarians don’t want to fall with him should his government plans fail.

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The Problem with Microlibertarianism

2024-04-25

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2024-04-25

When I was still in graduate school and still in my early twenties, I was riding on the airport shuttle to an event at the Mises Institute when I encountered an interesting phenomenon. It was the phenomenon of the "libertarian" who is free-market in the small stuff, but embraces war and statism in the big things. I still remember that shuttle ride well.

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Why the West Is Giving Up on Individual Rights

2024-04-25

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2024-04-25

Though the Western political class constantly criticizes the “authoritarian” nature of certain nations, one should sweep in front of his own door first, to paraphrase Johann von Goethe. Indeed, Western nation-states and international institutions have for years been gnawing at the freedom and rights of both individuals and businesses.First, the exorbitant fiscal and inflationary pressures on Western populations should never be considered “normal”...

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The Danger of the West’s Neglect of Individual Rights

2024-04-25

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2024-04-25

Though the Western political class constantly criticizes the “authoritarian” nature of certain nations, one should sweep in front of his own door first, to paraphrase Johann von Goethe. Indeed, Western nation-states and international institutions have for years been gnawing at the freedom and rights of both individuals and businesses.

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Woods Exposes the Federal Reserve System

2024-04-25

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2024-04-25

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.

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Driver’s Licenses Waive Personal Responsibility and Contribute to Disorder on the Road

2024-04-24

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2024-04-24

Driving home one Friday afternoon, I got stuck behind an elderly woman going twenty miles per hour under the speed limit. The speed limit was forty-five. We were on a country road, so I couldn’t pass safely, and I was frustrated that this person was standing between me and the beginning of the weekend. I could see the woman’s thinly snowcapped head, and I thought to myself, I can’t believe this old bat is licensed to drive. She’s probably...

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