In the United States people who need medications to treat illness are dependent on the mercy of Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It serves as a gatekeeper to drug services, deciding which medications will and will not be available to consumers. The FDA demands that developers and manufacturers of drugs furnish data on a drug’s efficacy and side
...Brought on by articles like this one . It turns out that everything that went so horrifically wrong with the response to Katrina was not a failure of government, but the result of combining government and capitalism. The combination of government and socialism, on the other hand, would have succeeded admirably. Or so says this article, which
There has been much discussion on this blog and elsewhere about whether to rebuild severely hurricane-damaged areas so people can live there again, and who should assume the risk for doing so. This lawsuit by the government of Mississippi doesn’t bode well for sensible decision-making about rebuilding. One possible scenario that occurred to me:
Reading the thread on global warming below, I see a common mistake that pops up in a lot of arguments at the intersection of science and policy. With all due respect to the participants in the thread, they are largely talking past one another. This often happens in arguments over global warming, and I think there’s a specific reason for it: there
...That Congress is finally going to do something about gasoline price gouging. There’s really no commentary I could come up with that could improve on this article from the NYT. Consider it your entertainment for the
The NYTimes has a fascinating article about the obstacles confronting those who seek to establish a new government in Somalia. There have been several debates on this blog about the nature of anarchy as it currently exists in Somalia, and whether the country would be much better off than it is now if some sort of state governed it. The
Jeff Tucker’s cold medicine post got me thinking. As the government’s creeping power to regulate all sorts of things continues to expand, for each new regulation you always hear the same argument: “But it’s really not a big deal!” There are always people ready to argue that it is not really a big inconvenience or a great restriction on your
Brought to you, surprisingly enough, by the New York Times, in an article describing how the crackdown on legal pseudoephedrine-containing medications has changed the black market for methamphetamine. One of the government’s hapless drug war strategies has been attacking drugs from the supply side, trying to cut off the sources (when they’re not
I think I need one of these for the wall next to my desk. And if you need any proof that this pithy little observation is really true, check out this meeting of the states’ attorneys general. That’s right, boys and girls, only the feds can save us from the evil that is price gouging. I wonder if only an economic distortion of this type on a
The Washington Post reports that the government of Massachusetts is threatening the grocery chain Whole Foods with criminal penalties for the unspeakable crime of...considering opening on Thanksgiving. I’m familiar with blue laws, but until I read this I didn’t realize that some states’ blue laws apply to holidays. As an example of business using
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.