People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent Joseph E. Stiglitz New York: W.W. Norton, 2019 xxvii + 371 pp. Abstract: Joseph Stiglitz is an eminent economist, but it is evident from People, Power, and Profits that he is a moralist as well. Stiglitz argues that the very well off have written the rules in their
Reflections on Ethics, Freedom, Welfare Economics, Policy, and the Legacy of Austrian Economics Israel M. Kirzner. Eds. Peter J. Boettke and Frédéric Sautet Carmel, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 2018 xiv + 782 pp. Abstract: Everyone interested in Austrian economics owes a great debt to the editors of this vast collection of articles by Israel Kirzner. Two
[ The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties . By Christopher Caldwell. Simon & Schuster, 2020. 342 pages.] Christopher Caldwell has written an outstanding book, although it will win him few friends in the elite journals such as the New York Times for which he often writes. He addresses a question that many have asked: why did Donald Trump,
Last week, I talked about Hegel’s odd view that freedom consists of service to the state, and an earlier column discussed a problem with the use of behavioral economics to support “libertarian paternalism.” Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, the main libertarian paternalists, get into difficulties that Hegel would enable them to avoid. As we’ll
Murray Rothbard stated the nonaggression principle (NAP) in this way: No one may threaten or commit violence (“aggress”) against another man’s person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed
Today would have been the ninety-first birthday of Burt Blumert, one of the greatest personalities of the modern libertarian movement. Burt was the indispensable man behind the scenes and was a key figure in the Mises Institute, the Center for Libertarian Studies, and LewRockwell.com. He was one of Murray Rothbard’s closest friends, and when you
Eugen von Bőhm-Bawerk wrote the most famous criticism of Karl Marx’s economic theory, and all students of Austrian economics know his Karl Marx and the Close of His System and his discussion of Marx in the first volume of Capital and Interest . Marx’s labor theory of value could not withstand the criticisms that Bőhm-Bawerk, writing from the
As every reader of Murray Rothbard knows, the principle of self-ownership stands at the basis of libertarian thought. Each person is the owner of his or her own body. If we add a principle for homesteading land and natural resources, we can without much trouble get to an anarcho-capitalist society. But even on its own, the self-ownership principle
The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economics Fought the War of Ideas by Janek Wasserman Yale University Press, 2019 xiii+ 354 pages Janek Wasserman, who teaches history at the University of Alabama, has written a useful but deeply flawed book. Useful, because Wasserman has brought to light substantial archival material on the
Last week in my article The Power of Self-Ownership , I discussed how uncomfortable self-ownership made the great Marxist political philosopher G.A. Cohen. Cohen saw that self-ownership leads to libertarianism, but he rejected libertarianism while he found self-ownership plausible. To save his socialism, he gave up self-ownership, but his reasons
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.