It was a close call, but “A court on Wednesday refused to grant a preliminary injunction requested by the Christian Louboutin company against Yves Saint Laurent, alleging trademark infringement on shoes that featured red soles suspiciously similar to those of Louboutin. The decision not only cleared the way for YSL to continue producing its shoes,
The Fort Worth paper this morning had some details on how stimulus money is being used: to buy massive military-style weaponry for local police in towns that have next to no crime at all. Ah, what a peace-loving president we have. (I was in Fort Worth for our Mises Circle meeting, which went fabulously well, by the way!). So I see here that we
Farmers’ Markets are suddenly the place to be seen in this college town. The University itself sponsors one, and so I visited. I don’t know why I was expecting the workers and peasants to be there buying up local produce from bearded guys in overalls. Instead it was the same crowd I see at the local art museum’s special exhibits. The shoppers were
Murray Rothbard used to joke that the United States should just get it over with and invade the whole world. It seems like the US has already done so. See the map. Just a few more countries to go, and troops will be everywhere on the whole
You can tell that intellectual property rights are not real property rights just from this very interesting item on BoingBoing, a report on round one of the Google vs. Viacom case. With real property rights, people do not usually go around actively violating their own rights in order to collect from innocent defendants. I’m not even sure I
The U.S. government has indicted Aaron Swartz for downloading too many scholarly journals from JSTOR. The penalty could be 35 years in jail. A few points: large numbers of these articles are in public domain, the authors of the ones not in public domain are thrilled for the distribution, they are only in the “possession” of the publisher because
A fascinating chart from J.P. Morgan provides a look at the percentage of cabinet level political appointees who have private sector experience from Roosevelt to Obama. Of course there is a downside to private-sector experience. In government, these people tend toward corrupting partnerships between government and business. And yet, it seems
The WSJ reports on an interview with a Fed official who says that the central bank will keep rates at 0% for two more years at least. But right now, banks have no reason to lend (zero earnings) and no one has any reason to save (zero earnings), and the risk associated with long-term projects is nowhere reflected in these obviously phony rates
Some years ago, I was watching and listening to a communist poetry/rap group in a public park and rather enjoying the spirited rhythmic presentation. Hundreds of people were enjoying it too. The message was goofy but harmless in some way, essentially a bunch of tuneful hectoring on how we need to come together and share and be one, etc. At some
ABC news provides a helpful round up of the latest national poll on national politics, in PDF with plenty of detail, that shows a continued fall in approval ratings for the Obama administration, in nearly every area of domestic policy. These polls could make it more difficult for Obama and Congress to impose health-care socialism, so that’s
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.
