The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, and the Rest of Planet Earth. Eric M. Jackson, World Ahead Publishing, Los Angeles, California, 344 pages, $27.95. Almost five years have passed since the heady days of the dot.com boom, an era that began as the “New Economy” and ended in yet another recession and the collapse of stock prices that in
In the past several years, a virtual industry has been created in bashing Wal-Mart. From leftist church groups to the AFL-CIO to the Chronicles , Wal-Mart has been the favorite whipping boy of people on all sides of the political spectrum. Thus, it was no surprise when I recently received an emailed article from the quasi-Marxist Sojourners
I write this after preparing and grading final exams for the fall semester of 2004 here at Frostburg State University, my employer. The tests for my microeconomic principles classes are finished, grades are in my spreadsheet, and I already am beginning to prepare for my classes next semester. Yet, even though I have gone through all the proper
After a recent article I wrote dealing with the Austrian Business Cycle Theory, I received the following e-mail: You have knowledge of the Von Mises business cycle and can predict booms and busts. Go long on the booms and short on the busts and you’ll soon make a bundle. You must all be rich. If not, why not? If you are not all rich, why is that?
For the past few weeks, I have been following the Richard Scrushy trial in Birmingham, Alabama. Like so many other highly-publicized trials, this one has had its media drama, the hype, and all of the other things that come with high-profile cases – sans murder – and it provides part of the “bread and circuses” that the public and news media seem
The Schiavo case, aside from the specifics of the family dispute at the heart of that case, raises fundamental economic questions that cannot be avoided. The welfare state is central to this case, since much of the payment for the services Schiavo received came from that entity. It is increasingly a factor in most institutionalized end-of-life
In his latest column, Paul Krugman demonstrates more than anything that the emperor has no clothes. After correctly identifying the veracity of a recent study that said Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans on college and university faculties, Krugman then attempts to explain why that situation is the case. He starts off well, then veers into
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision overturning the obstruction of justice verdict against Arthur Andersen Company comes too late to save the firm or the jobs of thousands of employees who found themselves out of work when the government destroyed the firm three years ago. Indeed, the Andersen decision—despite going against federal
Read a typical news article, editorial, or even a history or economics text, and the “case” for regulation is posed in the following way: In their zeal for profits, business owners will cut corners when it comes to safety, which is even truer when their product falls into the categories of food and drugs. Capitalists, it is argued, are prone even
People are not happy about this latest round of gas price increases; and, not surprisingly, they are demanding answers — and “solutions” — from the wrong people: the political classes. At the cutting edge is Hawaii, where gas prices will soon be controlled by law , not markets. Hawaiians are about to find out in the near future that 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.
