Often when we ask how to deal with an economic or political problem, some libertarians suggest that we answer in this way. First, we should ask, how would this problem be handled in a fully libertarian world, in which states do not exist? Once we have the answer to that question, we should try to come as close as possible to the fully libertarian
Robert Nozick’s derivation of a minimal state in the first part of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) has generated a lot of criticism, and you might think there is nothing new to be said about it. I have a new point, though—at any rate, I haven’t seen it discussed—and this is what I’m going to talk about. Nozick’s starting point resembles Murray
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Freedom: An Unruly History by Annelien de Dijn Harvard University Press, 2020 426 pages Those of us who follow Mises and Rothbard think that freedom means “freedom from.” In Rothbard’s view, rights are negative. People aren’t at liberty to use force or threats of force against you or your
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. The French political philosopher Pierre Manent has a view of politics that my readers are likely to reject, and rightly so. He has written a great deal about the French classical liberals, especially Tocqueville, but his heart lies more in the study of the classics. In his books, such as
One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias Portfolio Penguin, 2020 xx + 267 pages Matthew Yglesias, a cofounder of Vox and frequent writer for it, has some useful insights in this book. But he perfectly exemplifies a type of mind that is capable of doing great damage. I hesitate to say this, as he seems engaging and
Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire by Pankaj Mishra Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020 218 pages Pankaj Mishra dislikes the free market, and he blames it for the imperial conquests of the nineteenth century and after. But much of his book can be read as an extended commentary on some remarks by the great champion of the free market Ludwig
Those of us who support a noninterventionist foreign policy find in Murray Rothbard’s work an inexhaustible source of facts and arguments. Mises, by contrast, usually doesn’t comment on foreign policy issues. Sometimes he did, but you won’t find in his published writings his views on the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Arab-Israeli conflict. I’d like
Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate . Third edition. by S. Fred Singer with David R. Legates and Anthony R. Lupo Independent Institute, 2020 234 pages. During the Senate confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett last October, Kamala Harris criticized Barrett for her refusal to state her opinion about “climate change” on
Jeff Riggenbach, one of the pioneer libertarians from the 1970s, died today at the age of seventy-four. The dominant theme of his work was opposition to war, and he was a great champion of Randolph Bourne, who famously said that “war is the health of the state.” He was drawn to the Mises Institute through our opposition to war. He said about the
Sometimes people claim the free market is unfair to future generations. Mises says again and again that capitalism is a system of “mass production for the masses” directed by the “dollar-votes” of consumers, and the consumers he is talking about are people who now exist. These people will act to secure their interests, but what about those who
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.