An interesting item from Jeff Jarvis : “eBay is fast becoming one of the largest employers in America. Of course, it hardly employs anyone, but it enables a lot of people to employ themselves and run their own businesses: 724,000 people are using it as their full, or part-time employment, up 68 percent from a year ago; another 1.5 million use it
. . . not that government in the US has been small in the past 150 years, but the Wall Street Journal’s columnist David Wessel announced (subscription required) in his September 8 column that the days of small-government rhetoric are over, too, and the reasons he cites (9/11 and Katrina) are indeed working much as he represents, and many Austrians
The Wall Street Journal’s Cynthia Crossen, whose history column is called Deja Vu, recounted a 1937 incident in which a drug containing antifreeze killed 75 people, leading to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, which led, of course, to many, many more deaths in the decades it has been in force. In this article (subscription to wsj.com
This article in the Economist (subscription required) reports on three different analyses of GATT and its successor, the World Trade Organization, and what their effects may have been on world trade, necessarily a counterfactual analysis. As Austrians might expect, the upshot of the three taken together is . . . not as much as many think, nor as
Mark Trumbull of the Christian Science Monitor has revealed insights from comparing the concurrent First Job Contract riots in France with the demonstrations in the US over new legislation concerning immigration in the March 31 edition . The comparison between labor policies and markets in the European Union vis a vis the United States is made up
Because I think they’re only accessible to people with paid subscriptions, I rarely blog items from the Wall Street Journal. But this one from the Opinion page of today (Friday, May 26) is worth a click just to see if you get lucky. Or grab the PAPER while it’s still in the office/house. The article explains the proposed merger between the New
I just posted a review of the De Soto book here : This is a book for the ambitious layman. It explains how banking practices play into economic fluctuations, and vice-versa, virtually from the invention of banking to modern times. At over 800 pages, it is capable of handling its imposing brief very thoroughly, and it does — not one page is wasted.
For those of you who thought the Bank for International Settlements was replaced by the World Bank and/or the IMF, think again. It’s alive and well in Basel, Switzerland (where it’s always been - nice place if you can afford to live there), and publishing working papers in which Austrian theory is cited - by name - as an argument against inflation
This report in the Christian Science Monitor brings news that surprises little. It seems the affirmative-action program in South Africa has turned into a giveaway to those with government connections. Go here to read the details, which are as familiar as they are
Statist economist Greg Mankiw launches a fresh offensive on freedom with the Pigou Club (to view which, you must register at facebook.com, but Mankiw describes it on his blog). There he and a familiar list of famous (Al Gore) statists and their fellow travellers advocate increased taxes on gasoline to bolster government revenues (now there’s a
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.