The media’s favorite phony solution to the economic downturn is for the Fed to drop interest rates lower and lower until the economy registers an upturn. What is wrong with this approach? Printing money—which is what reducing interest rates below the market rate amounts to—is an artificial means of recovering from the very real effects of an
Socialism, a socioeconomic system in which the means of production are publicly rather than privately owned, is a very old idea that has occurred in many guises throughout history. There correspondingly have been many objections to it. Most of these, it is probably safe to say, have focused on issues such as justice for property owners, or on the
[ Originally published in Volume 5, No. 1 (Spring 2002) of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics .] A central theme of all schools of economics is the notion that goods are scarce. The extent of human wants and needs is sufficiently great that the means man would apply to those ends are limited, requiring that he choose among alternative
Regarding Paul Craig Roberts on Ricardian association and free trade: While I would not phrase the problem in quite the same way, Mr. Roberts has identified a legitimate issue that Misesians should take seriously and not dismiss as mere Buchananism. In fact, he is considering a specific instance of a more general problem: to what extent do the
In this paper the author claims to point out an inconsistency between Mises’ conception of value as an ordinal relation, and Mises’s elucidation of the central role entrepreneurial action plays in the market process. Given the close connection between entrepreneurship and economic calculation in Mises’ thought, and given that the impossibility of
Volume 5, No. 1 (Spring 2002) The existence of and need for property is a consequence of scarcity, which is further affected by the very institution to which it gives rise. H owever, this “problem” in a sense sup plies its own solution, as ownership implies the ability to exchange, and con sequently , the emergence of exchange ratios in a
Volume 6, No. 3 (Fall 2003) Governments always attempt to exploit a crisis, and disasters provide a natural (no pun intended) excuse for them to do so. Their proffered “solutions” to problems(which they often create) invariably worsen those problems. As is the case with general standards of living, economic growth and development—in short,
Volume 3, Article 14 (2011) Introduction The purpose of this note is to apply an argument developed in Hülsmann (2009) to a claim used in advocacy of fractional reserve banking (FRB) under a system of free banking (that is, a system of banks lacking any formal, central control [as characterizes the state-monopolized central banking systems of the
What is the Mises Institute?
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.
