Mises Search

Steve Horwitz links to this list of “ 60 Things NOT To Do if You Hate the Free Market ,” assembled by libertarian students at St. Lawrence University. I think it is a nice response to inane and condescending “look at all these idiots using government roads to get to their anti-tax, anti-government protests” pictures and comments. I agree that the

With every passing day I believe more and more that status-seeking drives a lot of human action. Contrary to popular wisdom, I think this is weighs in favor of free markets rather than against them. A complete discussion requires a lot more space than I have here, but I don’t think status-seeking based arguments against free markets stand up to to

This year, I tried (and failed) to give up on spectator sports. The opportunity cost of watching baseball and football is just too high, I thought. It worked until about September or October. Over the summer, I checked occasionally to see how the St. Louis Cardinals were doing–I grew up rooting for them, and I went to grad school in St. Louis from

As the discussion of the UC-Davis Pepper Spraying incident has proceeded, one of the best things I’ve seen circulating is this quote from the first few lines of Frederic Bastiat’s classic “ The Law :” The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to

I’ve seen a couple of exhortations to boycott Black Friday. I completely agree with critics of the consumer economy that consumption does not create economic growth , there is far more to life than material consumption, holiday spending has gotten excessive, etc., etc. Still, some are calling for boycotts of major retailers because they “ruin

I spent part of this afternoon at my neighborhood Starbucks, where I was working on a project. As I finished up, I saw that I had a message from my wife asking me to swing by the store to pick up half a gallon of skim milk. No problem. I generally use self-checkout, but sometimes it’s a roll of the dice. This evening, I rolled the dice and lost:

Anyone who has spent much time around small children probably recognizes that they are fundamentally Keynesians at heart–or if they aren’t full-on Keynesians, it’s pretty clear that they reject Bastiat, or haven’t yet read him. I’ve noticed that my kids do all they can to encourage full employment within the household: every day brings new

This is inspired by examples I’ve seen in Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok’s principles book and the supplementary blog . Over the weekend, I flew US Airways from Memphis to DC and back. On Friday, I took a plane that stopped in Charlotte and continued on to DC. I didn’t even get off the plane in Charlotte before proceeding to DC. For fun, I decided

Studying economics usually makes one enthusiastic about business and skeptical of politics. Cooperation under commercial institutions is voluntary and wealth creating, while cooperation under political institutions is coercive and wealth reducing. Historically, however, the business firm and the state have been closely linked. Businesses, large

The new issue of Studies in Emergent Orde r is a special issue on Emily Chamlee-Wright’s excellent book The Cultural and Political Economy of Recovery . I reviewed Professor Chamlee-Wright’s book for Public Choice here . My contribution to the symposium began as a student’s paper for my Economic History course at Rhodes. If you’re a student, the