Hostage Extraction Needs to be Privatized

Tags: War and Foreign Policy, World History

11/22/2023 Benjamin Seevers

In the aftermath of Hamas’s taking hostages in its conflict with Israel, the question arises: Who pays the ransom? State-financed payments lead to the worst outcomes and create moral hazards.

Original Article: Hostage Extraction Needs to be Privatized

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 order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.