The discussions over IP awakened a memory of an old NPR segment. The summary of “ Copyrighted Music and Phones “: Two Australian artists have written and copyrighted a composition that includes the notes corresponding to the touch-tone phone sounds for every conceivable 7- and 8-digit phone number. Therefore, they say that every time a phone
Aggregates mean nothing to me, an acting man — an individual. Regardless of what the politicized aggregates say, my market basket tells my story — a story of inflation. In the past month: gas at my favored station is up 12%, with my desired in-store candy bar up 13%; milk at the convenient corner drugmart is up 16%; and my self-proclaimed fiscally
Turns out a group of 500 terrorists stormed a food depot and transportation center in Washington state , held six guards hostage, and the police did nothing. Nothing! Oh, wait. They are not terrorist, just an assembly of union workers. And the police may actually arrest a few, but only if they can identify the protesters. (Hey, why not start with
Just when the market cleans the air, in steps the regulators . The e-cigarette solves the smoke issue by atomizing a nicotine solution in a pen-size device. Pretty slick. But, wait. The feds consider the e-cigarette a nicotine delivery system. Sure, and Mountain Dew is a caffeine delivery system, just as Ho-Hos are a sugar and fat delivery system.
Another Earth Hour has come and gone. So what can we learn from the fourth iteration of this event? Earth Hour is a drain on resources. This is true since, if it were otherwise, companies that participated in the event would continue the practice of lights off after the event. So, clearly, the tangible costs of switching off lights are greater
I guess the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Now that the FDA has effectively banned caffeine-laced alcoholic beverages , to be consistent, it will have to take the next logical step of banning the concurrent consumption of caffeine and alcohol, regardless of how the two are mixed. If indeed “combinations of caffeine and alcohol pose a
It looks like the state of Ohio is going to “privatize” the development functions of its Department of Development. Gone will be the bureaucracy that is the state, to be replaced by something else. But what is the right name for this something else, this new beast? Ohio’s new Republican governor John Kasich plans “ to dismantle the Ohio Department
Scott Baker over at OpEdNews recently posted an article under this title: “Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian School are morons, China is full of Geniuses.” Ouch. According to Baker, China’s managed economy is the future, “China is miles ahead of the U.S. in economic management. It is an economy run by serious economists who learn from their
In her latest op-ed piece, Trudy Rubin expresses concern that WikiLeaks may lead to a downgrade in the “hard-won trust between the United States and the leaders of Russia, China and Arab countries.” Hard-won trust? Downgraded by publishing an exposé of backstabbing behavior? Isn’t that the same as the philanderer blaming the private eye for the
Death panels? Of course there will be death panels when the deal is done. Not in iterations one or two, when legal alternatives exists. But in the end, under total state control, death panels will exist — they must exist. A death panel implies an agency that functions as the final arbiter of life and death. Such a panel can only exist where no
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.