Mises Search

“As in 1989, the one demand is that the dictator go.”   Those of the young generation, people too young to remember the collapse of Soviet bloc and other socialist states in 1989 and 1990, are fortunate to be living through another thrilling example of a seemingly impenetrable state edifice reduced to impotence when faced with crowds demanding

When the Egyptian protests first broke out, most Americans celebrated. Though Mubarak’s military must still be circumvented or overthrown, the revolt has spread, like a cleansing fire, to Bahrain, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Jordan, and beyond. What is all this all about? Thanks to Western rule since WWI, this is a region of dictators and

We are living in an Orwell novel, so it is not expected that anyone would remember President Ronald Reagan’s war on Libya in 1986. Both Reagan and his vice president, Bush, were on television daily to decry Libya as a terror state ruled by a wicked dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The US bombing campaign was supposedly in retaliation for the

Austrian School economists have often explained the business cycle using the metaphor of liquor or drugs. The expansion of paper money and credit gives a sense of exuberance, an economic high that leads to excessive risk taking and balloons of production. But it can’t be sustained. There is a morning after. Then what? There is a choice: more drugs

Following the US-lobbied UN authorization of military death dealing in Libya, the murderous regime of Colonel Gaddafi said immediately that it would stop all killing. That put Obama’s war on hold, for now. It seems that the crazy colonel has learned a thing or two about American foreign policy. If you pretend to favor the stated goals of the

The worst effect of the state is intellectual. It puts our brains in a prison, simply by defining the terms in which we are permitted to think and speak. The one nonnegotiable point becomes the state itself. You are permitted to argue about what the state’s priorities ought to be (bombs or butter), but not to question the fundamental model of a

Look up the phrase “a unique form of domestic terrorism” on a search engine and you will turn up a story about a man whom the US government is trying to cage from now until the time of his death. And his crime? His unique form of terrorism? He minted silver and copper coins and sold them. In other words, he did what innumerable entrepreneurs from

Watching the public debate on the budget, we are reminded of two boys on the floor playing with toys. One has a bear and the other has a dinosaur. They are forever threatening the other kid with taking the toy away. One warns he will take away the dinosaur (military spending) and the other says he will grab the bear (domestic spending). They pull

Political upheaval has hit Finland, and it’s merely a foreshadowing of bigger changes ahead. The core issue is whether Finland ought to be paying for bailouts for other EU states. In reaction to establishment support for the bailout, voters ousted the probailout ruling party and gave an upset victory to the bailout-critical conservative party.

The American pharmaceutical system is a highly controlled apparatus for restricting access to much-needed drugs and violating the rights of those who want to purchase them. This has long been true. Vast amounts of those drugs that people should be permitted to purchase of their own free will are withheld from the market. Instead, people who know