Mises Search

Before eyes turned to the investigation of the US murders of civilians in Haditha, Iraq, or the US murders of civilians in Ishaqi, Iraq, and new outrage broke out over the military murder of two women, one of them pregnant, in Mosul, Iraq, there was news pouring out from another outpost of the US empire. Only last week, Kabul, Afghanistan, was on

Fifteen glorious years without a central government in Somalia! It was typically described as a “power vacuum,” as if the absence of a taxing, regulating, coercing junta is an unnatural state of affairs, one that cannot and should not last. Well, now this “vacuum” is being filled, with an Islamic militia claiming to be in control of the capital of

An interesting challenge to the idea that markets can produce safety and quality comes from a report from the federal buildings inspection team . The National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the Commerce Department, looked at homes that were damaged in Katrina and Rita last year. They found that many of them were not built to the

There is something morally creepy about the way the White House responded to the news — released as inconspicuously as possible — that the 2,500th American soldier has died in Iraq. “It’s a number,” said White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. Yes, and so is 5,000, and 10,000, and 15,000. Is there is no amount of American bloodshed that would

Let there be no doubt that the war on malaria has failed. It is estimated that 800,000 children in Africa die from the disease every year, and as many as three million people altogether every year. We know how people contract it: from mosquitoes. We know how to control it: kill the carrier mosquitoes. And we know what kills them: DDT. So why has

You know hypocrisy, as when the pot calls the kettle black? Well, this news report gives new meaning to the idea: The rise in American consumer debt has been accompanied by a sharp increase in complaints about aggressive and sometimes unscrupulous tactics by debt collection agencies, a phenomenon that has government regulators increasingly

So you thought that the US went into Iraq to uproot a dangerous dictator and establish democracy? Well, the US military has taken on a job a bit more difficult than that. It is trying to build an economy, which no state in the history of the world has been able to do without the assistance of a vibrant market. Fallujah, Iraq, has no economy to

Well, aren’t we all having lots of fun heaping scorn and derisive laughter on Senator Ted Stevens for his hilariously uninformed commentary on how the internet works? The audio is all over the web, and doesn’t he just sound ridiculous? Actually, I’m not sure that a single elected official in this country, at any level of government, could speak

[This talk was given in New York, New York, March 21, 2006.] When Mr. Bush went to war, he put little thought into financing it, which signifies fiscal irresponsibility. Under the framers’ design, he is supposed to go to Congress to ask for the money, all the money, and if Congress doesn’t have it, the war can’t go on unless taxes are raised or

Sometimes (well, often) you just want to say: down with the state! Consider that an outburst, the kind you feel like making when the lights won’t come on. And the heat wave — and the public utility response — is the news that prompts it. All last week, major parts of Queens, New York, were without electricity following a failure of power that