With great art, genius looks effortless. Think of Fred Astaire dancing or Jascha Heifitz playing violin. A whole symphonic work can appear graceful and natural, even easy, but it is merely a mask: you do not observe the blood, sweat, and tears. The audience only participates in the thrill of achievement at its final stage. This is as it should be.
Gary North recently suggested that we count our capitalist blessings and name them one by one, while inviting people to add to a list that would be inexhaustible. My addition: shoes. For years I’ve read to my kids a story about a cobbler and his wife who can’t seem to make enough shoes to bring in enough revenue to put food on the table. One day
When Murray N. Rothbard (born 1926) died on January 7, 1995, ten years ago this day, he merited a headlined obituary in the New York Times , and many other tributes in that first sad and shocking week. Later a book appeared, and also special issues of journals and tributes of every sort. His memorial service in New York brought together people who
Pundits and bloggers are addicted to decrying the supposed cell-phone addiction of Americans. ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , and 11 ). Calls for government to do something about it can’t be far behind, especially considering the other claims that cell phones give us tumors, gut our memories, and jackhammer our brains. There are even
A lesser known episode of “The Jetsons” speaks directly to our current plight: the relentless but eternally floundering attempt to militarize a bourgeois society that is more interested in consumption and leisure than serving a mythical national ethos. Let’s first review the setting. The Jetsons is a cartoon made by Hanna-Barbera from 1962–1963
In a classic case of News of the Weird, President Bush gave a press conference the other day to announce yet another central plan to deal with yet another disaster — this time an impending disaster, or so he claimed. It seems that some birds are catching a flu called Avian Influenza or, more commonly, the bird flu. It causes ruffled feathers and
The Department of Energy may soon be paying a visit to a certain shower-head manufacturer in Arizona. The company is Zoe Industries Manufacturing. It runs Showerbuddy.com , a popular site that sells amazing equipment for bathrooms. Consumers love the company but one man doesn’t. He is Al Dietemann, head of conservation for the Seattle Water Board.
If you want to make a geek laugh derisively, suggest that responsibility for computer security be turned over to the government. This reaction is guaranteed, regardless of ideology. Everyone knows that this is not possible, but rarely are the implications for political economy noted. Now, keep in mind that geeks know that producing fabulous
Angelo Mike noted a strange aspect of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: before being broken, the students had made an exceptionally organized life for themselves—a cell of ordered liberty on so-called public property in a totalitarian society. For a brief time, they lived and experienced the possibility of self-organized social order but
“What are you in for?” the inmate of Lee County jail asked the new prisoner. “Rolling through a stop sign in my subdivision,” answered the new inmate, to gales of laughter from others languishing in the same cell. As they laugh, crumbs from their hard, dry sandwiches — distributed by the wardens twice per day — flew from their mouths to add to 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.
