There are some great libertarian themes in Catch Me If You Can , the DVD of which was released earlier this month. Leonardo DiCaprio stars in the more-or-less true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr., a kid and master of deception who managed to work as a teacher, a physician, an attorney and prosecutor, and an airline pilot, all before his 18th
Most people never have occasion to navigate the “intellectual-property” thicket so they might be susceptible to arguments like one I recently heard. I was asking permission to use a certain text for a final printed publication. The rights holder knew of my own views on these matters — I see copyright as government coercion — and so he couched his
What do you do if you are on a long car trip, you have heard all your Renaissance polyphony CDs, it’s too dangerous to answer email at 80 mph, and there is no GPS on the dashboard to keep you entertained? Well, what else but turn on FM radio? Yes, it can be painful, but there are also ways to make it fun. Starting on the left side of the dial, we
The best thing about the five-finger Vibram shoe — the craze has certainly reach the tipping point — is that it lets the runner navigate terrain that had previously been inaccessible. With heel-first running, I had always been restricted to sidewalks and streets. Now that I run as the body’s frame and leg muscles intended, I can utterly dominate
Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics was written in 1871 during the dawn of a great economic transition. Steel displaced iron, the middle class grew as never before, and average life spans increased as never before in human history. Menger’s brilliant book on economics seemed to speak to the new age of market-driven prosperity for Europe and the
Microcredit is one of those fashionable political ideas that soars above the ideological fray, uniting everyone in a celebration of its glorious contribution to the public good. The idea is that special lending institutions should be chartered to give loans to the underprivileged, particularly to women and minorities, to start their own
What are the economic effects of market dominance by one firm? To hear the Justice Department tell it, market dominance spells disaster. A market-share monopoly must be supplanted by a competitive environment imposed by the government. This view is shared by the man-on-the-street, who also fears the “market power” of a single provider of a good or
The tech-stock sector is a wasteland today, only a year after appearing invulnerable. There are economic lessons here that point to the folly of unsustainable, credit-fueled booms. But others want to draw moral lessons as well, as if the hand of justice is smiting all those cocky dot-com millionaires to show them that their good fortune was at
The Bush administration has announced its support for “sky marshals” on commercial aircraft, with the hope that an armed federal agent will deter future hijackings. On the downside, however, the administration opposes the easiest route of simply permitting the airlines to arm themselves and thereby take responsibility for their own security.
Ten years ago, Pope John Paul II released Centesimus Annus , an encyclical, at once subtle and sweeping, that addressed the future of the post-communist countries of Europe and the general subjects of freedom, society, and faith. The document represented the fullest embrace that the Catholic Church has given in the modern period to classical
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.
