Elizabeth Warren has decided that bitcoin mining uses "too much" electricity. This raises an important question: Is Senator Warren qualified to decide on the "correct" amount of electricity usage?
Audio Mises Wire
Audio recordings of Mises Wire articles, offering contemporary news and opinion through the lens of Austrian economics and libertarian political economy.
Thanks to so many government restrictions on the use of potential monies that aren’t the dollar, we can only guess as to what the relationship between dollars and bitcoin would be in a functioning marketplace. But it doesn't have to be that way.
The covid panic brought an end to due process in many ways. Among these are the end of speedy trials and the end of a timely hearing for landlords to obtain evictions. Meanwhile, governments have seized private businesses with no due process at all.
It is no surprise that the corporate media tends to showcase and honor experts whose views tend to reflect the views of media pundits and editors themselves. The idea that the public might prefer other experts leaves these pundits in dismay.
Governments always justify printing more money with the excuse that there is no inflation. When inflation rises, they say it is transitory. And when inflation soars, governments blame businesses and shop owners, presenting themselves as the solution with “price controls.”
In Las Vegas, asset price inflation is combining with rising prices on building materials to create a real estate bubble of remarkable proportions.
Social democrats love to denounce low-tax, probusiness regimes as "neoliberal" and as places with more poverty. But the reality is that parts of Europe that embraced markets most reduced poverty while making their citizens richer.
Some advocates of self-driving cars argue that their adoption would mean that very few people would actually own a vehicle anymore. We'd all just rent rides on self-driving Uber cars. This would be a dream come true for advocates of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders.
Perhaps reporter Michelle Kosinski is unaware that the Trump-era secrecy she denounced flourished mightily thanks to the beloved Obama administration. Kosinski’s mindset also helps explain why Americans' trust in the media has collapsed.
One of the most in-demand aspects of physical cash is that it is totally fungible. Every dollar is the same as every dollar. But cryptocurrencies can leave a digital trail which may lead to later problems in fungibility.
Only a bureaucrat would assume that putting a small child in public school is just as effective as keeping the child at home with a parent. Unfortunately for Biden, the research isn’t on his side.
Seemingly endless amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus will keep prices rising in the near term. But if the banking sector and other bubble industries weaken, we will eventually see deflation as new loan activity lessens.
American journalists and academics have invented a fairy tale in which "free market orthodoxy" has dominated political thinking in America for the past forty years. This is not even slightly true, but pundits repeat the lie again and again.
Democracy is only acceptable when the outcome is what the ruling class wants. Fortunately, the federal courts are always handy to overturn the results of free elections.
Key methodological differences between Austrians were highlighted in Milton Friedman's "The Methodology of Positive Economics." A key piece of conflict: Friedman's focus on prediction rather than explanation.
Senator Hawley wants government regulation of social media, and he insists that social media companies are somehow controlling and manipulating people. But Hawley is mistaken. You have free will even when using Facebook.
Advocates for vaccine passports are a bit like abusive husbands. They say they want to be nice to you. But you keep screwing up and refusing to take your vaccines. So now you're forcing them to keep you locked down forever.
Biden’s tax increase plan does not make sense from a growth, revenue, or deficit perspective, and it does virtually nothing to address the real problem: ballooning spending on programs like Social Security.
With Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen focusing on using monetary policy to manage climate change, the M1 money supply has gone parabolic, from just over $4 trillion in February to $18.6 trillion in March. This is right out of Zimbabwe's playbook.
Local nullification offers a practical guide to resisting tyranny in a way that reflects the real wishes of local community members against the ivory-tower mentality of their government “representatives.”
