A couple of years ago I posted an article concerning a traffic (anti)planner who thought road signs were a sign of poor design. A former student (Paul Poenicke) alerted me to this similar piece . Even though the guy explicitly says he’s not an anarchist, I think he’s doing it because in his mind anarchist=nut. Maybe someone should send him a copy
I’m sure most readers of this blog are familiar with Julian Simon’s wager with Paul “The Population Bomb” Ehrlich. For those who don’t know, Simon let Ehrich pick any five metals in 1980, and he bet that a basket of them would be cheaper (after adjusting for inflation) in 1990. Simon easily won, and Ehrlich’s boasts at the time of the wager are
With its successful venture into Earth’s orbit, SpaceShipOne has clinched the privately funded $10 million “X Prize” and has excited everyone from potential investors to serious scientists to Star Trek geeks. (I consider myself a member of all three categories.) Beyond the obvious implications, the episode illustrates several lessons from
After reading my recent piece on Republican fiscal policies, former Hillsdale College colleague Kirby Cundiff convinced me that one of my arguments was fairly weak. Because Reagan had cut marginal rates but “closed loopholes,” I was trying to gauge the overall effect. To this end, I compared federal tax receipts as a percentage of GDP between
My wife alerted me to this (unintentionally) humorous article on the possibility of replacing (heh) the IRS with a national sales tax. Notice that in order to be “fair” to the poor, people still need to report their income to the government. And check out this quote from a Cato guy: Despite the heavy opposition, even skeptics are loathe to
I wrote a short piece for Hillsdale’s student paper in response to a physics professor’s warnings about an impending oil shortage. (He’s a nice guy so please don’t insult him...) I thought some people might be interested in my fanciful arguments. Last week’s Collegian contained a letter from physics professor Kenneth Hayes, who challenged the CCA
Skype goes for the gold : In this topsy-turvy world, Skype represents the competitive extreme, wielding a weapon that few others are willing or able to match: Using peer-to-peer architecture, it claims it can offer its software service for free to tens of millions of people, and still make boatloads of profits by persuading only a fraction of its
This CNN article explains a failed “privatization” attempt. I put that word in quotation marks because, as the article reveals, it seems that the government still interfered. I don’t know any more details, but I bet this is comparable to the failure of “deregulation” in California
Yesterday Joe Salerno gave an interesting talk on “The Debate on the Socialist Calculation Debate” ( audio or video ). I completely agree with Salerno et al. that there is an important difference between the Hayekian knowledge problem and the Misesian calculation problem, but in the journal battles over this, something never quite sat right with
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.
