Even though I entirely disagree with The Upcoming Robot Revolution , I really like it. It is a sort of unintended Bastiat satire for our time. Here we see the Luddite fear of technological innovation pushed to a reductio ad absurdum. I think it just makes it all the funnier that the author is entirely earnest and sincere in painting his dystopia
Those who continue to tout the positive role of the state in technological innovation (”the gov’t made the Internet !”) should read this chilling tale of what happened to the inventor of FM radio, Edwin Armstrong. In short, the FCC and established big businessmen (naming names: David Sarnoff of RCA) kept FM buried for decades and devastated its
Scott Adams, author of the Dilbert comic strip, had some interesting observations regarding subsidies and taxes that different bodied people avoid and pay. The gist of it can be seen in his all-you-can-eat buffet example: those with smaller appetites essentially subsidize those with larger appetites. The same concept could be therefore applied to
The absurdity of intellectual property is starkly illustrated by a new campaign of the Music Publishers’ Association (MPA). Having gone after lyric sites on the Internet they are now shutting down sites that publish, get ready for this, guitar tablature (sheet music for guitars of popular songs). Cui Bono? “The MPA represents businesses that make
Tomorrow Digg.com releases version 3.0 . Why is this significant? Take a look at this comparison to the New York Times website. Digg.com has about 800,000 unique visitors every day and is doubling in traffic every two months. Digg is a social news site. There are no editors at this site. Instead the users of Digg submit stories and vote on the
A fascinating interview with playwright/screenwriter/director David Mamet by Charlie Rose (jump to 29:00) features his comments on economics and Hollywood (jump to 36:00). The interview is about his book Bambi Vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business . He says that he has been studying economics and has been
Learn about more films with libertarian themes at the Mises Film Page . Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005) On February 22, 1943, Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans Scholl, and their friend Christoph Probst were beheaded for treason by the Nazi regime. Sophie Scholl was 21. They had committed no violence but had secretly written and distributed
When the U.S. government initially brought an antitrust case against Microsoft in 1998 at the behest of competitors Netscape and Sun, beltway types marvelled that Microsoft did not even have a lobbyist in DC. Somehow this technology company had become a huge corporation without playing the usual political game. Well, Microsoft has matured. (I’ve
Mystery solved. I first heard about the deadly flu pandemic of 1918 in an obscure blues song from that era. As I learned more about it, like that it was the worst pandemic in world history, I wondered why there was relative silence about this horrifying event, relative to, say, World War I and the Great Depression about which any schoolchild
Murray Rothbard noted some years ago, somewhat ruefully, the connection between science fiction and libertarianism in his comments on the “modal libertarian”. But, well, what other genre of literature can be argued is fundamentally libertarian? Eric S. Raymond, known because of his role in the open source movement and his seminal essay The
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.
