Mises Search

This morning’s paper blared a headline, “ 25 arrested on meth-related charges .” There followed a picture of all these very bad people, and an accompanying story. My first thought was, “Well, I guess I was wrong to think that the methamphetamine problem is largely hype; it’s amazing that all these people had meth labs in their basements, and right

[This speech was given on October 24, 2009, at the Birthplace of Economic Theory conference in Salamanca, Spain.]   Standup comedian Louis C.K. has a routine called “everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy.” The gag has people on an airplane, sitting on comfy chairs and flying through clouds. They are complaining that the wireless connection is too

I’m delighted that the live blog from Salamanca, Spain, has been a popular feature of the Mises blog during the last week. It was my “job” to do this in Salamanca during the Supporter’s Summit this year, but it ended up being a joy, and much easier than I expected. I offer links to the full chronicle with some excerpts, going backward in time from

Dale Steinreich once wrote that Halloween has a “socialist tenor” because “menacing figures arrive at your door uninvited, demand your property, and threaten to perform an unspecified ‘trick’ if you don’t fork over. That’s the way the government works in a nutshell.” And yet, for overall kid excitement, Halloween seems to surpass Christmas, at

Some Harvard professors are taking very seriously their “intellectual property rights” and have claimed copyright to the ideas that they spread in their classrooms. What prompted this was a website in which students posted their notes to help other students. The professors have cracked down. It might have been enough to legislate against this

Hit-in-the-head movies are usually pathetic. Some guy takes a fall and learns to see the world a new way, which invariably involves becoming more politically correct and marrying a feminist or some such. “Memento” is not to be confused with one of these. It is surely one of the most brilliant and innovative films to come along in years. I can only

Last year, Salon.com announced that it was very fashionable to fry your Thanksgiving turkey, a tip which the truly fashionable regarded as at least 12 months out of date. For those out of the loop — not that it matters now — frying involves injecting the turkey with hot sauce and submerging it in 6 gallons of lard heated to 450 degrees. The height

My 7-year old daughter asked me the other day whether I was born before email. “Yes,” I confessed. Then she quickly followed up: “Where you born before plastic?” “No,” I said, “I was born after plastic but before email.” Satisfied that she had placed me within the structure of the history of the world, she went back to her weekend play. There’s

The fantastic thing about a recession is that it tightens up the business belt. Deadwood goes, much to the relief of the competent employees, who are only demoralized by the well-paid bum in the next cubicle. Good riddance. In a recession, software upgrades become essential to life itself. Employees feel the need to actually do stuff besides

Digital media — particularly “social” media like forums, wikis, blogs, and tweets — have forced all people, including intellectuals, to engage each other as never before in human history. And yet, people have discovered that to know others is not necessarily to love them. Conflicts and confrontations are a regular feature of daily discussion,