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Who are the capitalist folk heroes of our time? The Social Network is a film that celebrates one of the greats, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It might seem at first like an impossibly boring story that resists movie making: how Facebook came to be founded and grew, meeting trials along the way and becoming the giant that it is today. In fact,

There are moments in history when the people are on the move, consistent with the logic of history, and no force on earth can stop them. You can see it in the images of Russians in 1990 pulling down cast-iron statues of Lenin. You can see it in the images of the Romanian people charging Ceausescu’s palace in 1989. And I just saw it last night at

Recently, I’ve seen two sets of neighborhoods with ripped-up lawns. The neighborhood in West Texas had destroyed grass caused by the remarkable proliferation of this monstrous black pig. No one knows for sure where they came from. Some say they walked from Mexico. Some say they are indigenous but just recently out of control. No one doubts that

This is the biggest year in publishing by the Mises Institute in our entire history. Our open-source model has inspired authors and the staff to do some wonderful things. Donors to the Mises Institute have also enjoyed helping to make our program possible. We never imagined that we would become a full-fledged publishing house and never planned it

The story goes like this. A Democratic administration with lefty ideas gets elected, pushes hard for a series of goofy reforms like protosocialized medicine, which prompts a backlash and thereby a rethinking among the rulers, who then tack to the right and become “centrist” by praising the great contribution that the business sector makes to

I’m the guy who just last week managed to find a plumber who would increase the water pressure in my entire house, defying government controls and thereby causing all appliances to work better. It’s not surprising that this was necessary. Government regulations have made a mess of our daily lives. Whether it is banning effective products or

I’m watching the movie Unknown , which is about what happens when a man’s identity is stripped away while in a foreign country. Without a passport or any other proof of identity, he is left to wander and then turn to a battle for recapturing who he is. It is a thrilling film in every way, one that taps into a deep anxiety we all have. The whole

Every once in a while, we gain a glimpse of how things might work in a fully privatized society. When it occurs, like a flash of light in the darkness, we should take notice, try to understand its source, and seek ways to make the flash the norm to light up the world. And so it happened with my yard this week. Yes, I’m part of the whole American

In the freezer section of the grocery store, there’s Vanilla Bean, French Vanilla, and yet another vanilla flavor called Homemade Vanilla. Now, come on! I’m in the store here, looking at rows and rows of commercial products produced by a vast capitalistic machinery, a cornucopia of frozen goods made by advanced industrial technologies, made from

[ Against Intellectual Monopoly • By Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine • Cambridge University Press, 2010 • 306 pages] “This book helped me see the world more clearly and understand so much that had previously remained cloudy.” Introduction A Book That Changes Everything Authors: Beware of Copyright What is Your Attitude Toward IP? The