New in Films on Liberty and the State : A Man For All Seasons (1966) This film is about Thomas More (1478-1535) who served the King of England loyally and honestly but was eventually executed for his silent opposition to Henry VIII’s self-aggrandizing moves against the Roman Catholic Church. What makes the film enjoyable to watch, despite the
New on the Film Page : Lagaan - Once Upon a Time in India (2001) A musical about tax resistance?! Why not! Rothbard once wrote, “...I am notoriously hostile to films that are (a) slow, (b) dark and murky, (c) with long close-ups of suffering actors’ faces substituting for dialogue, and (d) in a foreign language. Indeed these four elements almost
The New York Times reports : “Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Friday proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $7 an hour by 2007, which he contended would benefit working women more than any other group.” It is moments like this that make me wonder why economists even bother. It would be as if mathematicians impotently watched
An article in the New York Times once again illustrates how tenuous “market power” is. In How the iPod Ran Circles Around the Walkman , Silicon Valley based historian Randall Stross points out that all of Sony’s market dominance of the past did not help it when the iPod came along, (emphasis mine): At first glance, digital music is the field in
Nestle chief rejects the need to `give back’ to communities : Companies shouldn’t feel obligated to ``give back’’ to the community, because they haven’t taken anything away, the Austrian-born chief of the world’s largest food company told local executives yesterday. In a stunning broadside to corporate citizenship as Bostonians have come to know
In expressing concern about a bill sneaking through Congress that would make state issued driver’s licenses into national IDs, a New York Times Editorial is concerned that the gov’t will forget: “the real purpose of driver’s licenses: safe drivers.” There’s just one problem. Driver’s licenses were not introduced for that reason. My grandmother,
I’ve been skimming over the early JLS issues and have particularly enjoyed the articles generated by Nozick’s attack on anarchy. One article in particular raises an issue that has bugged me for a long time: Certainty as a goal in social affairs, (e.g. “No Child Left Behind”). Jeffrey Paul in “Nozick, Anarchism and Procedural Rights” (PDF)
A reader of the Mises film page sends in an upcoming film that may be of interest. The Brazilian film The Man Who Copied ( trailer ) is about a young, poor man who works as a photocopier operator. Desperate to win the attention of a girl, he decides to go into the fiat money business. Money quote (forgive me): “[Fiat] Money is only paper that
Please Don’t Call It a G-Rated Dispute : The Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings code — G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 — is so familiar that the initials are used in everyday conversation about subjects that have nothing to do with movies. But that doesn’t mean that the association wants just anybody to use them. Recently the association
Coyote Blog has a fascinating analysis based on experience running nature camps of the impact of rising minimum wage laws: Case Studies on the Minimum Wage (Thanks Cafe Hayek ) There are numerous lessons in this short article. Money income is not the only kind of income, workers may prefer a mix of money income and other kinds of compensation
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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.
