The Free Market 16, no. 5 (May 1998) Recent blows to quotas in public employment and education such as California’s Prop. 209 and the Hopwood decision have spurred efforts to entrench racial preference more securely in the private sphere. This has inspired its advocates to invent strange defenses that were undreamed-of thirty-four years ago,
The Free Market 16, no. 7 (July 1998) The civil rights juggernaut has now invaded sports, that one-time redoubt of pure merit and standing embarrassment for affirmative action. Not only does this latest beachhead presage significant real-world consequences, it reveals something of the strategy of the privilege lobby. Casey Martin, the most
The Free Market 16, no. 10 (October 1998) The world has just finished what, for Americans, is the curious spectacle of the Soccer World Cup. Every four years since the 1930s teams representing 32 countries have met (in a different venue each time) to decide who is best. Much of Europe, South America, and Africa come to a halt during the three
The Free Market 17, no. 5 (May 1999) According to the standard account, triumphs over gravity frame the century. Man first conquered the air on December 17, 1903, and today a fleet of space shuttles stands ready to build the International Space Station (ISS). The story has its heroes, too, beginning with plucky if starchy Wilbur and Orville
The Free Market 17, no. 12 (December 1999) The workaholic, or more precisely worry about him, is back. During the 1980s, just as the free market’s reputation was beginning to rebound, the guardians of the national psyche discovered “workaholism.” The victim of this disorder was defined as working compulsively, spending far too much time at his
The Free Market 18, no. 5 (May 2000) E.O. Wilson of Harvard University is among the world’s most esteemed biologists. An authority on ants, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes and coined the term “sociobiology,” outraging his peers by suggesting that human behavior has some relation to human nature. Sadly, these triumphs seem to have inspired him to
That philosophic ideas count is no news to Austrian economists, whose economic theories rest on conceptual analyses of action and value. But philosophy can confuse as well as guide. In this article, I will discuss two philosophical mistakes that in recent times have supported dangerous idiocy while undermining the market. Volume 14, Number 1
The Free Market 13, no. 8 (August 1995) As Congress considers cuts in science funding, lamentations are rising. “We’re dominated by fools,” said one Democrat. “At risk is the type of Government-financed research that has put men on the moon,” intoned the New York Times . “Such cuts portend wide changes in American science and American life.” A
It’s Christmas again, time to celebrate the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge. You know the ritual: boo the curmudgeon initially encountered in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol , then cheer the sweetie pie he becomes in the end. It’s too bad no one notices that the curmudgeon had a point—quite a few points, in fact. To appreciate them, it is
It’s Christmas again, time to celebrate the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge. You know the ritual: boo the curmudgeon initially encountered in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol , then cheer the sweetie pie he becomes in the end. It’s too bad no one notices that the curmudgeon had a point—quite a few points, in fact. To appreciate them, it is
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.