Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

Though popular, nationalizations ruin economies

In a world full of hatred for the free market, the people calling for the nationalization of industry aren’t scarce. Despite their political popularity, nationalizations are terrible for economies and represent a stepping stone on the path to destitution and collapse.

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Choose one: Law enforcement at Trump shooting was either incompetent or complicit

Within minutes of the July 13 attempted assassination of Donald Trump, observers were asking how the assassin managed to gain a clear shot of Donald Trump at the Butler Farm Show Grounds near Butler, Pennsylvania. Since then, the question remains unanswered, but many allegations about the shooting have emerged. For example, multiple sources plausibly contend that both local police and the Secret Service had spotted the armed shooter—on a nearby...

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The Trump assassination attempt exposes the establishment’s deceitfulness

On Saturday evening, former president and 2024 frontrunner Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The attack was utterly shocking, not only because a would-be assassin was able to get so close to Trump with a rifle but because of how close he was to success.The rally started off like any other. After his long walkout to the song “Proud to Be an American,” the former president began speaking...

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The Hope for National Unity in the Shadow of a Failing State

For the second time in three weeks, a political event actually mattered. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, evaded only by a short turn of the head, has created a rare moment of national reflection about the current state of American politics. Whether or not it is a moment that has true historical relevance beyond simply influencing a single election or canonizing a new iconic photo in future school textbooks will be decided by how...

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Why We’ll Never Know What Really Happened in Butler, PA

Just days after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, theories are flying from all directions. Many who ridiculed the “conspiracy theories” of conservatives are now suggesting the whole event was a set-up to boost Trump in the polls ahead of the election. Others suggest it was the “deep state” or even foreign actors who organized it.Former US Navy Seal and founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, claims that “The fact that [the...

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Fear Is the Mind Killer: America’s Dangerous Obsession with ‘Safety’

In modern America, an obsessive fixation on “safety” has given rise to a culture of fear, paralyzing action and warping decision-making across all levels of society. The conditioning begins early, with children trained to be fearful rather than competent in facing challenges or unfamiliar situations. In their formative years, children are inundated with rules and guidelines, ostensibly designed to maintain safety. But this only stunts their...

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Argentina must repudiate its debt

Inflation from the government and the banking system is usually aided unconsciously by the people, who generally believe that some moderate periodic rise in prices is normal. If prices could decrease due to economic growth (price deflation as an outcome of increased productivity), people would be able to keep more of their income to plan further ahead and save more without having to worry about decreases in its value. And if the social demand for...

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Group interests and the ‘good of the whole’

The libertarian argument against civil rights laws strikes many progressives as fundamentally wrong because they view civil rights as the best way to promote liberal values including individual liberty. But any so-called values that lead inexorably to the destruction of society are not “liberal” in the true sense. In “Liberalism,” Ludwig von Mises explains the importance of pursuing what is good for society as a whole, rather than what seems good...

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Propaganda: How the Media Handles Biden’s Rapid Decline and the Trump Shooting

In a much younger life, I was a newspaper reporter. A journalism-school graduate, I was going to help change the world, proclaiming truth and justice under my byline. The job didn’t pay much, but with overtime we got by, and it was a heady experience for this young general assignment reporter to rub shoulders with politicians and celebrities and even have some of them return his phone calls.Later in life, I had a long academic career in economics....

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The Commencement Speech Someone Needs to Give

Why I’m here instead of some superstar is one of those anomalies that defies explanation. But allow me to congratulate you on earning your degrees.Almost without exception, a college commencement speaker is a high achiever whose mere presence will tell graduates making it big is possible. The message they deliver varies widely in details and tone, but there are some common lines of thought among the most popular. Let’s look at a few of them:Steve...

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The Trump Assassination Attempt and Opposition Rhetoric Encouraging Political Violence

This weekend a wannabe-assassin tried to kill former President Donald Trump, injuring him and two others and killing another man: Core Comperatore, who shielded his wife and daughter from gun fire. The man responsible is reported to be Thomas Matthew Crooks, who missed Trump’s head by mere inches. Crooks shot from atop a building to Trump’s right, somehow not being halted by the Secret Service. Tensions have been high since seeing it as a gross act...

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The Regime No Longer Wants Biden

After the first presidential debate on June 27, 2024, the media did something no one suspected: they began running headlines questioning President Biden’s mental capacity. CNN named its first analysis, titled “Biden’s disastrous debate pitches his reelection bid into crisis.” The author claimed that “objectively, Biden produced the weakest performance since John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon started the tradition of televised debates in 1960.”In the...

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How Corporate Bailouts Inflate the Money Supply

Many claim the problem with fractional reserve banking is that it loans money into existence. It does, but under normal circumstances the money created by commercial banks disappears when loans are repaid or defaulted on, which therefore doesn’t create a permanent inflation of the money supply. Government intervention, however, converts temporary money into permanent money through bailouts like TARP. They purchase loans that would have been...

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Warmongers Win in The French Legislative Election while Everyone Else Loses

After the recent election in France, the mainstream media is jubilant at the defeat of the far-right coalition. Polls up until election day predicted a likely win for the right-wing National Rally and its allies. This was not the case. While the National Rally won the most vote share, due to strategic voting and election runoffs, the right-wing coalition won third place in the National Assembly. Macron’s centrist coalition, Ensemble, won second...

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Joe Biden’s Meltdown and Its Implications

My wife and I comprised an “Oreo family” at one time. We were the filling between raising children and helping parents age. The Kids are good, they are happy, and have satisfying careers that fit their talents. All our parents have passed.As our parents aged, one with Alzheimer’s and another with Lewie Body Syndrome, we shared parents on the dementia spectrum. We shared the collective grief and dismay of watching our parents pass with...

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The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs

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 Limitations of Economic Laws

A quotation from Die Transvaler in 1958, cited by Walter E. Williams in his book “South Africa’s War Against Capitalism,” illustrates a widespread misunderstanding about the nature and purpose of the laws of economics. The political choice to be made by Afrikaner nationalists during the apartheid years was whether to pay a price in terms of economic progress by rejecting free markets, freedom of association and contractual freedom as a trade-off...

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The Absurdity of Intellectual Property Laws

In a previous article, I explored the absurdity of intellectual property, the unfair and inefficient monopoly privilege it confers on those savvy enough to play the legal system well. By being nonscarce, nonrivalrous objects like ideas or sound waves strung together in a specific order, they can’t be property economically speaking. Nobody can “own” vibrations or reasonably punish me for using your grandmother’s recipe for meat stew. (This is also...

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The “Equality of Opportunity” Fallacy

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 Collapse of Real Savings Caused the Great Depression

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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