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Murray Newton Rothbard (1926 — 1995) was one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. I choose the somewhat vague term thinker because Rothbard’s interests were so diverse that they defy conventional classification. Yes, Rothbard was an economic theorist in the “Austrian” tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. But

For years Paul Craig Roberts has been a leading academic critic of free trade, outsourcing, and “globalization” in general; his latest article, “Bush’s Untrue State of the Union,” issues the direst warnings — and hurls the strongest insults — yet. After criticizing Bush’s foreign policy (an issue where Roberts and I totally agree), Roberts cites

With the possible exception of international trade, no topic in economics contains more myths than monetary theory. In the present article I address four popular opinions concerning money that suffer from either ambiguity or outright falsehood. One: “Money represents a claim on goods and services.” Although there is a grain of truth in this view,

For some time now Mises.org has come out squarely in favor of free trade, and has opposed the new attacks on trade and “globalization” (notably from Paul Craig Roberts ). I myself have written numerous pieces along these lines, and have thus received perhaps hundreds of email comments on the topic. One type of argument is typical anti-capitalist

In the intellectual battle for liberty, sometimes it’s a good idea to skip the latest high-brow attack on capitalism from the Left or Right and instead poke fun at a ridiculous news article. A recent AP story, “Scientists in food fight over soda,” provides a perfect target. The article begins by informing us of new reports in science journals that

The latest trend for making economics more “scientific” is to incorporate results from other disciplines, such as psychology and neuroscience. Now as an Austrian economist, I welcome just about any criticism of the neoclassical mainstream. However, some of the proponents of the newfangled ways often overstep when they criticize “flaws” with basic

It’s tough to be an economist. Not only must you endure years of stultifying lectures and readings, you must also brave the feigned approval of those who had innocently asked, “Oh, a professor? What do you teach?” But beyond this, there is a deeper problem: I can’t help watching certain movies without being distracted by nagging problems that

“ Clean Your Plate, They’re Starving in China “ is quite possibly the dumbest article I have ever read (and I frequent National Review Online , mind you). Now before writing a critique, I asked myself: Does this young author, untainted by the dry pages of economics tomes or lectures on symbolic logic, deserve my sarcastic wit (which some have

Stephen Cox, editor of Liberty magazine, recently wrote a well-received article opposing the allegedly suicidal policy of open borders (”The Fallacy of Open Immigration,” available online here ). Cox aimed his article at libertarians who understandably think that the only acceptable position is to insist that the federal government takes no action

Libertarian economists typically adopt a two-pronged approach in their advocacy of free markets. On the one hand, they stress that people have rights (whether God-given or self-evident from the exercise of reason) and therefore should be able to engage in any voluntary activities with each other, free from political interference. Unfortunately,