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[Part of an ongoing series on Austrian theory] Imagine that you are a bus driver at the edge of a desert, about to take a busload of passengers across it. You have left all gas stations behind, and are now faced with a decision. There are a number of towns on the other side of the wasteland before you, each a different distance away. The farthest

In a recent edition of his syndicated column, George Will berated Colin Powell’s GOP convention speech for comparing affirmative action to lobbying for tax loopholes and other forms of corporate welfare. Said Will: “[Powell spoke] as though there is no moral distinction between the normal, if sometimes tawdry, bartering of favors among factions

Reviewing intellectual ideas is often hard work, involving slogging through numerous references and deep contemplation of the author’s contentions. That is why it is a true joy to occasionally come across work so egregiously chowder-headed that we can gleefully have at it without too much work at all. Just such work was brought to our attention

Many economists take it for granted that the attempts of the authorities to expand credit will always bring about the same almost regular alternation between periods of booming trade and of subsequent depression. They assume that the effects of credit expansion will in the future not differ from those that have been observed since the end of the

The development and use of the price index is analogous to the development and use of the thermometer. Thermometers do not measure temperature perfectly; to some extent pressure changes and other factors bias the temperature reading. Also, thermometers only measure temperature “objectively”; they do not show how an individual reacts subjectively

The experience with which the sciences of human action have to deal is always an experience of complex phenomena. No laboratory experiments can be performed with regard to human action. We are never in a position to observe the change in one element only, all other conditions of the event remaining unchanged. Historical experience as an experience

When explaining the vision of a world without government interference with the market, a question that arises frequently is how consumers can be protected against “unsafe products” without government intervention. Safety is not an absolute value that automatically trumps all others. Highway safety would increase if everyone drove a

In National Review Online , Lawrence Kudlow offers George Bush some advice on the economy. However, there are some difficulties with his recommendations. The first of these is an undue faith in aggregate numbers, such as GDP. My recent mises.org article pointed out some of the problems with such aggregate numbers; in brief, what they sum up is

While the schools of psychology, philosophy and economics that arose in late 19 th century Vienna have given rise to many wonderful works of literature, there has been relatively little in the way of children’s stories emerging from this tradition. To better propagate these important ideas, The Mises Institute is contemplating a new line of

Let us consider, for a moment, a complex modern economy in which the price of farm products is declining. Farmers may begin pleading for the government to stop the price drop. “Wealth is being wiped out of the economy,” they will complain, “the value of our farms has fallen 50% in the last year. This makes everyone poorer, since we can’t spend as