Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

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Lending without Saving Brings Recession and Poverty

2024-05-13

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2024-05-13

Popular thinking says that lending is banking activity. Banks are believed to be responsible for the expansion of credit. However, is this the case?The Meaning of CreditFor instance, take a farmer, Joe, who produced two kilograms of potatoes. For his own consumption, he requires one kilogram, and the rest he decides to lend for one year to a farmer named Bob. The unconsumed one kilogram of potatoes that he agrees to lend is his real savings.Note...

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Real Savings and Lending: What Is the Relationship?

2024-05-13

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2024-05-13

Popular thinking says that lending is banking activity. Banks are believed to be responsible for the expansion of credit. However, is this the case?The Meaning of CreditFor instance, take a farmer, Joe, who produced two kilograms of potatoes. For his own consumption, he requires one kilogram, and the rest he decides to lend for one year to a farmer named Bob. The unconsumed one kilogram of potatoes that he agrees to lend is his real savings.Note...

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They Want to Scare You with Myths of “Unhampered Capitalism”

2024-05-13

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2024-05-13

Bad ideas are sometimes the hardest to dethrone. It’s probably accurate to say most people think of money as the paper currency printed by governments. And it is money in the sense that it functions as a medium of exchange, but is it sound? Is it vulnerable to inflation? Its very existence is evidence that it is, so why are so many people reluctant to switch to a money that isn’t?There any many myths surrounding hard money currencies, and one of...

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Profit Is Not Plunder

2024-05-13

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2024-05-13

Frédéric Bastiat in his book The Law distinguishes between profit and plunder. Profit is financial gain earned through industrious behavior. Business owners make a profit by selling products at a greater amount than what it costs to produce that product. Plunder, by contrast, is the theft of property through nonvoluntary means, such as theft, coercion, or fraud. Bastiat noted that while most plunder is illegal, there remains one major exception:...

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An Optimistic Strategy for Liberty

2024-05-12

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2024-05-12

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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Fixing FDR’s Biggest Blunder: From Gold Standard to Fiat Folly and Back

2024-05-12

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2024-05-12

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 Intellectual Humility of the Spontaneous Order

2024-05-12

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2024-05-12

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 War on Poverty Makes Poverty Worse

2024-05-12

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2024-05-12

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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Abolish all Treason and Sedition Laws

2024-05-12

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2024-05-12

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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How the “Informal” Economy Creates Free Markets in Bolivia

2024-05-12

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2024-05-12

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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Is “Havana Syndrome” Russian Aggression or Another Media Conspiracy Theory?

2024-05-12

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2024-05-12

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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Artificially Low Interest Rates Are Creating Economic Chaos

2024-05-12

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2024-05-12

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 Fed Fears a Bond Meltdown

2024-05-11

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2024-05-11

The money supply (M2) has bounced to March 2023 levels and has been rising almost every month since October last year. Furthermore, US government deficit spending has more than offset the decline in the Federal Reserve balance sheet. While the Fed’s balance sheet has shrunk by $1.5 trillion from its peak, the US government deficit remains above $1.5 trillion per year.The money supply (M2) in the United States has bounced above March 2023 levels,...

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Commercial Real Estate’s Future

2024-05-11

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2024-05-11

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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Property Rights and the Will to Own

2024-05-11

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2024-05-11

Jeremy Bentham famously regarded natural rights as “nonsense on stilts” and taught that property rights are created by law and enforced by courts. Bentham’s view was that “before the laws, there was no property: take away the laws, all property ceases.” Lawyers in the Benthamite tradition accordingly set out to define the state-created nature of property rights and the boundaries of these rights as defined by the courts.The elusive nature of...

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Blowback in the African Coup Belt

2024-05-11

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2024-05-11

Starting in 2020, things started to get strange in Africa for those who knew what to look for. Normally, coups in Africa are nothing to write about. But starting in 2020, we saw six countries flip into a pro-Russian direction in just three years. Individually, they were a curiosity. Taken together, that rate of turnover outpaced even the most optimistic neoconservative ambitions for pro–United States regime changes in the Middle East. As General...

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An Austrian Critique of the New MMT Documentary

2024-05-10

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2024-05-10

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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No, Milei Is Not a Fascist

2024-05-10

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2024-05-10

The electoral victory of Javier Milei in Argentina was a pleasant surprise to libertarians internationally. For the first time ever, an open anarchocapitalist was elected president of a sovereign nation. Milei’s fame isn’t limited to libertarian circles, though. Right-wingers all over the world have praised him for his battle against corruption and economic ruin. He was even given a spot headlining for former president Donald Trump at the...

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Zwolinski Tries to Take Rothbard to the Mat

2024-05-10

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2024-05-10

The Spring 2024 issue of the Independent Reviewfeatures a symposium on Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, which was published some fifty years ago. One of the contributions, by the philosopher Matt Zwolinski, stands out from the others in that it is not favorable to Rothbard. To the contrary, Zwolinski argues that Rothbard’s case for liberty is unsound. In my view, he has failed to show this, but a number of his arguments are interesting, and in...

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Somaliland Needs Self-Determination

2024-05-10

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2024-05-10

Created in 1960, the United Nations–recognized state of Somalia is by almost all accounts a failed state. Yet it continues to assert dominance over regions that are seeking further autonomy or independence. The UN has listed self-determination as a human right, but the global neighborhood rarely sees this human right respected or enforced by the UN. This is likely because of how slow-moving the UN can be and because the nations that make up the UN...

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