Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

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The Abortion Lobby Wants Taxpayer-Funded Abortions

2024-10-28

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2024-10-28

There’s a new ballot initiative in Colorado that shows what the “progressive” Left wants as the next step in abortion policy. Coloradans are now in the process of voting on Amendment 79 which paves the way for taxpayer-funded abortions and for protecting pro-abortion mandates on private insurance. The amendment would also create a legal right to an abortion in the state constitution. For many years—especially during the 1980s and 1990s— the...

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Boom Versus Growth: Why the ABCT Is Superior to Keynesianism

2024-10-28

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2024-10-28

“…boom and bust cycles are caused—not by the mysterious workings of the capitalist system—but by governmental interventions in that system.” — Murray RothbardAnother way to put it is that the primary cause of what you call a recession is central banking, specifically due to their inflationism and underwriting of fractional reserve banking. If you think that inflation is the product of greedy merchants or the animal spirits, or an economy that is...

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Why Austrian Business Cycle Theory Is Better than Keynesianism

2024-10-28

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2024-10-28

“…boom and bust cycles are caused—not by the mysterious workings of the capitalist system—but by governmental interventions in that system.” — Murray RothbardAnother way to put it is that the primary cause of what you call a recession is central banking, specifically due to their inflationism and underwriting of fractional reserve banking. If you think that inflation is the product of greedy merchants or the animal spirits, or an economy that is...

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Who Sets the Prices for Goods?

2024-10-27

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2024-10-27

Individuals are often presented as if a value scale is hard-wired in their heads. Allegedly, this value scale remains the same all the time. As a result, this value scale supposedly instructs individuals in the selection of goods. Were that the case, then it makes sense to attempt to extract this value scale either by means of questionnaires or various psychological tests. Once the value scale is extracted, social scientists could establish how to...

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Rothbard and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

2024-10-26

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2024-10-26

In Murray Rothbard’s thinking, the state is a criminal organization of aggression and depredation against the just rights of private property of its subjects. The state acquires its revenue by physical coercion (taxation) and achieves a compulsory monopoly of force and ultimate decision-making power over a given territory. Hence, there is no just state in Rothbard’s libertarianism.The State of IsraelIn 1948, within the boundaries of what was then...

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Prohibition: The Sword of the State

2024-10-26

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2024-10-26

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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Does Mass Immigration Adversely Impact the Natural Environment?

2024-10-26

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2024-10-26

Immigration, particularly by illegal aliens at the southern US border, is a contentious issue in 21st century America. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has expressed concern about immigration’s probable impact on the unemployment rate. Homebuyers and renters are concerned about its impact on house prices and rents. Law enforcement questions its impact on crime rates. School districts are concerned about increased immigrant student enrollment...

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Blinken’s Blinkers—Four Years of Biden Foreign Policy Failure

2024-10-26

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2024-10-26

In around three months’ time, the Biden administration will be out of office. Exits typically prompt reflection. For an outgoing administration, the chief task is to shape the narrative. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent legacy-molding foray grounds the Biden administration’s legacy in the “fierce competition” with the “revisionist powers”—Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China—who want to bring down America and dominate the international...

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Four Years of Biden’s Foreign Policy Failures

2024-10-26

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2024-10-26

In around three months’ time, the Biden administration will be out of office. Exits typically prompt reflection. For an outgoing administration, the chief task is to shape the narrative. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent legacy-molding foray grounds the Biden administration’s legacy in the “fierce competition” with the “revisionist powers”—Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China—who want to bring down America and dominate the international...

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More Federal Environmental Regs Won’t Fix the Immigration Problem

2024-10-26

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2024-10-26

Immigration, particularly by illegal aliens at the southern US border, is a contentious issue in 21st century America. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has expressed concern about immigration’s probable impact on the unemployment rate. Homebuyers and renters are concerned about its impact on house prices and rents. Law enforcement questions its impact on crime rates. School districts are concerned about increased immigrant student enrollment...

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Was Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage Really Different From What Adam Smith Said About Foreign Trade?

2024-10-26

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2024-10-26

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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The American Economy Is in Trouble

2024-10-25

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2024-10-25

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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It’s Good to Be Skeptical of Elections

2024-10-25

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2024-10-25

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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The Political Theology That Maintains State Power

2024-10-25

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2024-10-25

For religions throughout the world, established rules, studies, and practices are instrumental for their legitimacy. Established religious institutions throughout the world train theologians to study the nature of God and their belief system. For the Sunni Muslims, theologians in the Hanafi school consist of legal studies in line with Islam, while others like the Murji’ah sect focus on moral teachings of work and faith. Catholics too prescribe...

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Don’t Knock Nock

2024-10-25

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2024-10-25

Albert Jay Nock’s Our Enemy the State, which was published nearly ninety years ago in 1935, had a great influence on Murray Rothbard, transmitted though his friend and mentor Frank Chodorov, who was Nock’s main follower. The book is rich in insights, some of which I have discussed in a forthcoming review for The Misesian, but there are many more. In what follows, I’ll comment on some of these.Nock distinguishes two ways in which people in a...

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Venezuelan Gangs, Affordable Housing, and Bad Policy

2024-10-25

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2024-10-25

For years I have held up Venezuela in my economics classes as an example of bad government policy. Now it appears that the fallout from those policies has led to more crime being exported to cities across the US. Perhaps unsurprisingly, due to our proximity to the border, San Antonio is one of those cities.SAPD, along with “multiple state and federal agencies,” arrested several people in a northside apartment complex last weekend on suspicions of...

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Minsky Meltdowns and Modern Monetary Theory

2024-10-25

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2024-10-25

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) posits that booms and busts can be explained by private versus public sectoral balances and the inherent instability of private financial markets. Stephanie Kelton frequently points to this graph of public and private surpluses and deficits:The red bars show the government’s budget as a percent of GDP. When the government spends more than it collects in taxes, it runs a deficit and sells debt. The government’s debt is...

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Exchange is Not a Zero-Sum Game

2024-10-25

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2024-10-25

Voluntary exchange is the core of all market economies. It is the lifeblood that propels innovation, societal welfare, and progress, creating intricate webs of interconnected transactions that heighten productivity. In pursuit of profits, businesses sell and improve their products to outperform competitors and increasingly capture market shares, spurring the development of novel ideas and solutions. As Michael Matulef puts it, “The constant push...

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Dreading Republican Rule

2024-10-24

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2024-10-24

[Editor’s note: This article originally ran on LewRockwell.com on July 28, 2000. Even before the Bush-Gore election wrapped up, Rockwell put his finger on what the Republicans had in store for America. For those who paid attention to Rockwell in this period, they were not shocked when the Bush administration came out in favor of the TSA, the Patriot Act, the NSA, the destruction of the Fourth Amendment, and more. 9/11 was an excuse to impose a...

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Gold’s Future Depends Crucially on China

2024-10-24

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2024-10-24

It is hard to exaggerate the importance of China in the future of gold even if the relationship falls short of monocausal. Beijing’s actual course both in economic policy and geopolitics since its giant bubble economy turned to bust — starting circa 2020 — has had a huge bearing on gold’s super-strong performance. By contrast if the bust were to spark somehow a triumph of economic and political freedom in China, a continuing stellar rise for gold...

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