As layoffs continue to mount during this economic downturn, let us reflect on the purpose of the labor market, with a special focus on the market I know best: academic music. A classmate once told me he would become a university faculty member or an overeducated, “bitter, underemployed vagabond.” He got his PhD in social psychology; I got my MS in
The Microsoft trials remind us that the fear of industrial concentration is the last refuge of socialist theory. The claim is that capitalism ultimately fails because all (or most, or at least some) industries naturally congeal into monopolies in a free market. It follows that government must regulate industries to bring about “competition.” It
The lessons to be learned from food are limitless. Almost any food you can name--if you study its history--has something to say about economics, politics, history, or culture. For whatever reason, tea, particularly the plain old regular types we all know (such as the “black” tea found in cheap boxes of 1,000 teabags at the local grocery gigamart),
Steve Forbes, the wealthy publisher-presidential hopeful, can be an eloquent defender of free enterprise. But there’s another side, too, which was revealed in a recent group discussion on economics that took place on Fox News Channel. Forbes’s comments showed a complete lack of understanding of the basics of a free economy. Against proposals that
That title is from a Car and Driver article of the mid-1980s, about the results of the editors’ putting two engines into a little Honda CRX. The Hubbas are even more fitting today, as Honda keeps building the best cars in the world, forcing other automakers to work hard to keep up. Some are having more success than others. How does Honda do it?
The prospect of “Corporate greed” terrifies everyone in government, everyone in leftist mass media, and most men on the street. Unethical corporate behavior is blamed for water pollution, air pollution, major bankruptcies, low wages, global warming, product safety problems, skin cancer, and cultural ennui. What free-marketeers don’t always make
Medical studies that contradict conventional wisdom in a number of socially and politically charged areas have been making recent headlines. The messages conveyed by these studies, however, have significance beyond face value: They remind us that medical research, technology in general, indeed any human endeavor, can be a wonderful avenue for
A common complaint of anticorporate libertarians and self-described anarchists is that corporations are creatures of the state. The limited-liability feature of the corporate form, they claim, and the ability of corporations to raise large amounts of capital are state-granted privileges. Two important replies to such claims must make their way
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.