Mises Search

Earlier this year, the distinguished Harvard biologist, E.O. Wilson wrote of the limitations of mathematics in the sciences in the Wall Street Journal . This native son of Mobile, Alabama—better known elsewhere as the Father of Sociobiology—argued that the ability to formulate conceptual contributions to science does not stipulate mathematical

When I began my new job, I was told that Netscape Navigator was being added to my computer. I immediately asked if Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was available. Why, the systems administrator asked. The two programs are identical. I clued him in then on the reasons why many economists dislike Netscape. Netscape dominated—some would even say,

A staple of any Principles of Macroeconomics class is a review of the economic situation of the 1970s. That decade, from my perspective, began when President Nixon closed the gold window to remove the last constraint to the political class’ desire to fund the Great Society and the Vietnam War. From that event, the decade digressed through

I realize that the framers of the Constitution required a census be taken every ten years. It was a mistake. It gave too much power to the federal government, power that was certain to be abused. And yet not even the most thorough search of the writings of the framers indicates that their objective was to help the welfare state do its thing. Its

In the May 1 edition of the Wall Street Journal , Robert Bork tries to rally support for the proposed breakup of Microsoft, an effort to which he has invested much political capital. Those of us who oppose the breakup are told to “pause for thought, [and] learn the economics of antitrust.” “A breakup is what the Justice Department called for on

The “I Love You” bug occasioned another outburst of attacks on technology. We were warned that email is not safe and can even be treacherous. There are potential dangers hidden in every message, even national security risks (says Sen. Fred Thompson). It is said that we had better get government involved to impose penalties and regulate the medium

Much has been written recently about the Central Park wilding incident at the Puerto Rican Day parade in New York, as well as the accusations of police misconduct in Philadelphia, but, as far as I can tell, no one has discussed the economic dimensions. Yes, economics. There is a fairly well-established subclass in neoclassical economics called the

In my part of the country, an emotional and as-of-yet unresolved debate has been taking place about how to best dispose of sarin nerve gas that has been stored at a local Army base. It seems that the only solution to ridding the area of this deadly substance is to custom-build an incinerator to burn it at a cost of millions of dollars. Needless to

The National Labor Relations Board is the Supreme Soviet of organized labor. Created by FDR to impose unions on the American workforce, its abolishment is long overdue. Instead, it is currently attempting to impose union membership on the very sector of the labor force that has appeal primarily because of its freedom from union influence. This

When I was in graduate school, my fellow graduate students and I liked to blow off steam during study breaks by dissecting the political columns of the columnist Molly Ivins. Sitting around a table, eating our peanut butter and banana sandwiches, we would occasionally parse through a 750-word Ivans column, paragraph-by-paragraph, looking for