The Free Market 23, no. 11 (November 2003) When they have the resources and political support, would-be central planners like to take their show on the road, always with the same results: huge promises followed by big disasters. Thus is there no reason to be shocked or surprised at the enormous mess the US has created in Iraq. With bombings,
The Free Market 23, no. 12 (December 2003) The Economist magazine asked in a recent issue: “Why on earth can’t the world’s richest country ensure that Baghdad has water and electricity?” One might think that a publication dedicated to covering the world of markets would already know the answer. The US government is trying to solve economic
The Free Market 24, no. 1 (January 2004) The “Coalition Provisional Authority” (the US government) in Iraq has instituted a 15 percent tax in Iraq based on the view that “these collections are for the benefit of the Iraqi people.” The US will tax income, the transfer of “real property,” car sales, and gasoline. The US claims that this is a lower
The Free Market 24, no. ( 2004) Critics accuse libertarians of reveling in government failures. Yes and No. No one is pleased to see the destruction caused by government policies, whether small scale, as when a tighter regulation causes business failures, or large scale, as when wars destroy life for millions. The kernel of truth to the claim is
The Free Market 24, no. 3 (March 2004) A common accusation against the Mises Institute is that it is obsessed with tracing social and economic problems to the state, and, in doing so, it oversimplifies the world. The state is not all bad, people say, and some of its actions yield positive results. It is not inconceivable, they say, that the
The Free Market 24, no. 4 (April 2004) This dreadful election season will spew forth many promises by politicians to “lead us into the future.” I can hardly think of a worse fate for any society than to be led into the future by the political class of gangsters, marauders, looters, and liars. Fortunately, they haven’t the capacity to lead whole
The Free Market 24, no. 5 (May 2004) I am often asked about career paths for freedom lovers. How can one combine professional life with the advancement of liberty? Let’s admit at the outset that it is presumptuous to offer any answer since all jobs and careers in the market economy are subject to the forces of the division of labor. Because a
The Free Market 24, no. 7 (July 2004) T he psychology of the anti-market left can be a puzzle, but even more confounding is the mentality of the anti-market right. There are agrarians, medievalists, and nationalists, and, above all, the neoconservatives, who dread the market as much as any socialist from days of yore. Their critique differs, but
The Free Market 24, no. 8 (August 2004) At our conferences and programs, the students who attend are the first to have been educated in the age of information. Nearly all the students now attending were born on or after the year of our founding (1982). The Mises Institute went online in 1995, about the time that web browsers were becoming more
The Free Market 24, no. 9 (September 2004) In a growing economy with sound money, the purchasing power of your money should and would be always on the rise. Your dollar would buy more this year than last year, not only in terms of quality improvements but also in terms of price. This is another way of saying that prices would constantly fall for
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.
