Category Archive: 6b) Austrian Economics

Recently, I published an article in the Mises Wire, “Woke Egalitarianism and the Elites,” in which I presented the true intentions behind woke egalitarianism. The article also described how elites attempt to rebuild society through collectivism. But more than discussing the goals of progressivism, we need to discuss the intellectual basis of these attempts. What assumptions and intellectual framework guide these actions? Progressivism is based on a...

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[Excerpted from chapter 6 "Antimarket Ethics: A Praxeological Critique" of Power and Market.] One of the most common charges levelled against the free market (even by many of its friends) is that it reflects and encourages unbridled “selfish materialism.” Even if the free market—unhampered capitalism—best furthers man's “material” ends, critics argue, it distracts man from higher ideals. It leads man away from spiritual or intellectual...

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It is a great tragedy that many modern military leaders and strategists do not understand economics. If they did, I suspect that there would be a lot less war, a lot less military spending, and a lot less wastefulness. Certainly, there would be greater awareness of the appalling human and economic costs of war in a capitalist age. Ludwig von Mises, the great Austrian economist, understood this point well. In his 1927 book Liberalism, he noted that...

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Human Rights: Fact or Fancy?by Henry B. VeatchLSU Press, 1985; xii + 258 pp. Henry Veatch was one of the foremost philosophers of the twentieth century, though sadly neglected by most contemporary analytic philosophers. He was a resolute defender of Aristotelian ethics against rival ethical systems, and in this week’s column, I’d like to look at an argument which he deploys against these rivals in his book Human Rights: Fact or Fancy? The argument...

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The largest urban mass-transit systems across the US are entering an all too familiar point in their long history: another looming financial disaster caused by financial mismanagement and the consequences of covid. No urban transit system exemplifies this problem more than the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York. Ridership in New York has not rebounded to precovid levels, and the MTA is projected to have a funding gap of $1.6...

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[Excerpt from chapter 7 of Power and Market in Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1308–12.] Probably the most common ethical criticism of the market economy is that it fails to achieve the goal of equality. Equality has been championed on various “economic” grounds, such as minimum social sacrifice or the diminishing marginal utility of money (see the chapter on taxation above). But in recent years economists have recognized that...

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Over one hundred years ago, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises discovered what causes the boom-bust business cycle. As Mises explained, the boom is caused by central and commercial banks creating money out of thin air. This lowers interest rates, which encourages businesses to borrow this newly created money to fund capital-intensive investment projects. The bust is caused when the money creation process slows. It is then that businesses discover...

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It’s been a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In spite of claims from the regime and its media allies that Russia was the next Third Reich and would soon roll through half of Europe, it turns out that was never even remotely true. In fact, things have unfolded more or less just like we predicted here at mises.org: the Russians aren’t even close to occupying any place in Europe beyond eastern Ukraine. It’s not Munich 1938. Economic...

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