Look up the phrase "a unique form of domestic terrorism" on a search engine and you will turn up a story about a man whom the US government is trying to cage from now until the time of his death. And his crime? His unique form of terrorism? He minted silver and copper coins and sold them. In other words, he did what innumerable entrepreneurs from the beginning of time have done. He attempted to provide consumers with a store of value. No one was forced to buy. He met a market demand, and that’s it. Whom did he hurt? FULL ARTICLE

Is it possible to both oppose Gaddafi and oppose a war on Gaddafi? Absolutely.

This is a position that all Americans should adopt. In the same way, it is possible to oppose the Obama administration but also oppose having a foreign army oust him in order to liberate us.

FULL ARTICLE

The citizens of these countries are taking their fate into their own hands, just as it should be, and not waiting for others to free them. It is very possible that Libyan citizens will end up unseating the dictator that Reagan did not unseat — the dictator his successors ended up backing. FULL ARTICLE

For some 60 years, there has been a deep fissure in what is called the American Right. There are those who believe in liberty. And there are those who believe in the American imperial state. They are not the same. Indeed, they are in opposition. The events in Egypt underscore the serious difference, to the point that many spokesmen among the conservative movement can’t even recognize the legitimate aspirations of a people not to be ruled by a dictator.

FULL ARTICLE

James E. Foy, former dean of students at Auburn University from 1950 to 1978 and a great friend to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, died at the age of 93 at October 9, 2010. His funeral is today. To be with Dean Foy was to understand something about what made Auburn “the loveliest city on the plains.” He was charming, genuinely optimistic, and had an unfailingly bright outlook on life. His energy even in his 80s and 90s was an astonishing thing to behold. He loved to golf (and was annoyed when any club insisted that he use a cart rather than run between holes) and won skiing contests all throughout the 1990s. He enjoyed attending Mises Institute events and especially meeting students.

One can see from the obituaries in the local news (here, here, and here) what kind of man he was. In times when greatness is identified with political power on the national stage, Dean Foy’s life provides us with another and more authentic model of what greatness really means: personal character, service to others, and dedication to excellence in every area of life. His commitment to this community, its students and people, made him a legend in his own time, left a permanent mark on this city, and made this world a better place. His memory will always be a living presence at the Mises Institute.

For more than two years now, and even longer depending on your dating scheme, the federal government has waged war on the reality of the incredible Fed-fueled bubble that developed in housing with spillover effects on the rest of economic life. That bubble had to explode to restore some sanity to the economic environment. There is no getting around that. The policies were all about trying to paper over what we did not want to deal with as facts. But the facts won’t go away. FULL ARTICLE

Maybe you saw the headlines blasting the rich (again!) for failing to spend money in order to enable us to get out of this ever-lasting recession. It turns out that in boom times, the rich spent $145 per day. Now they are only spending $119. So, there we go: a new scapegoat! Those greedy rich people are failing to do their duty.

The press reports that the rich are not booking at the Four Seasons, not putting on the Ritz, and not filling their closets with furs and jewels from Saks. It gets worse. The women who shop for goodies by Dries van Noten and John Galliano told the New York Times that their husbands are telling them to cool it on designer bags, shoes, and dresses. Yet another reason for the recession: patriarchy! Let those tax cuts expire!

FULL ARTICLE

Tributes to Murray N. Rothbard are often taken up with a listing his accomplishments. This is because he was so astonishingly prolific that there seem to be many scholars with that name.

As soon as you describe him as an economist, you recall that he wrote some ten large volumes on history. But describe him as a historian and you suddenly recall that he made large contributions to political philosophy. But as soon as you begin talking about his libertarianism, you recall again that he wrote vast amounts of technical economic theory.

FULL ARTICLE by Lew Rockwell

I’m finding it ever more difficult to describe to people the kind of world that the Mises Institute would like to see, with the type of political order that Mises and the entire classical-liberal tradition believed would be most beneficial for mankind.

It would appear that the more liberty we lose, the less people are able to imagine how liberty might work. It’s a fascinating thing to behold.

People can no longer imagine a world in which we could be secure without massive invasions of our privacy at every step, and even being strip searched before boarding airplanes, even though private institutions manage much greater security without any invasions of human rights. FULL ARTICLE BY LEW ROCKWELL

Hillsdale College is starting a Charter School, and while there is no mention of this in the press release, Charter Schools rely on government money. That’s what makes them different from regular private schools. Here is a 1989 explanation by George Roche of the long struggle of this college against ever accepting government money.

The age between the 8th and 16th centuries was a time of amazing advance in every area of knowledge, such as architecture, music, biology, mathematics, astronomy, industry, and — yes — economics. FULL ARTICLE

Hans Mayer (1879–1955)

Hans Mayer was born in 1879, two years before Mises. He died in 1955. While Mises worked at the Chamber of Commerce because he was denied a paid position at the University of Vienna, Mayer served as one of three full professors there.

Yet he was no original thinker.

Mises wrote that his “lectures were miserable, and his seminar was not much better.” Mayer wrote only a handful of essays.

But then, his main concern had nothing to do with theory and nothing to do with ideas.

His focus was on academic power within the department and within the profession. FULL ARTICLE

You can use all the fancy words you want, but in the end government has no money. Everything government has it gets from you. That is the most fundamental lesson of political economy, without which no clear thinking takes place. And yet it seems to be the most covered-up truth of our times. So if you know this one point, you will be leagues ahead of almost everyone else in thinking about these issues: one way or another, you will pay. FULL ARTICLE

In the private sector, there is always a test of success. The business must make a profit. It can sustain some losses, but the clock is always running on those. At some point, after all cuts have been made and costs are trimmed to a minimum, the business has to close shop. The summer of losses must become the autumn of profits, or else it’s all over.

Not so in government. Failing projects can go on forever. There is no profit and loss test. There is no test at all, in fact. Agencies like the Government Accountability Office (GAO) can blast away at a particularly egregious case of government waste, but hardly anyone pays attention. Congress has no reason to scrap it. No one does. Taxpayers have no means to pull the plug, because the whole thing is run outside their purview.

Now, with an intro like that, you might think I’m about to talk about Medicare or public schools or the post office. It would be easy enough. But let us never forget that foreign policy constitutes another sector of government management, central planning, and bureaucratic-driven missions that are no more or less successful than anything else a government does. FULL ARTICLE

There is something affected, something not believable, something agitpropish, about all the cheers for the glorious economic recovery we are supposed to be experiencing. Even some of the recovery’s biggest boosters don’t quite believe it.

I’m thinking of the reporter on National Public Radio a few days ago who, at the end of a segment, offered a passing warning that the bust did not come to an “organic” end, but rather was artificially stopped by government intervention. FULL ARTICLE

On Wednesday, September 9, 2009, I’ll be speaking at the Economic Liberty Lecture Series held jointly by the Future of Freedom Foundation and the GMU Economics Club. There will be pizza at 5:30pm, I’ll talk at 6:00pm, and then we will adjourn to the pub next door. Meet me in the Student Union 2, Room 5. Google map. .

The Clearing House Association says that the Fed has to keep its business under wraps else negative rumors lead to runs. Well, it didn’t say runs; it only alludes to unnameable “negative consequences.”

Writing in The State and Revolution in 1917, Vladimir Lenin summed up the economic aim of socialism as follows: “To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service….”

Incredible, isn’t it? After centuries of treatises and miles of paper and tubs of ink, this is the great historical turning point: government employees carrying sacks of paper mail from house to house — and operating at an economic loss.

It’s fascinating how it all comes down to the post office, again and again, in the history of public policy. And so it is in our time, with Obama’s admission/gaffe/slip concerning the post office and its analogy to what he wants to do with healthcare. FULL ARTICLE

Travel with me back to yesteryear, the early days of the Reagan administration, when taxes were being cut and spending increases were being curbed (actual spending cuts were few), and when journalists were losing their heads about the supposedly catastrophic state of the economy.

The prevailing ethos in those days in the White House was somewhat sensible. The idea was that the recession had to be permitted to run its course. The late-1970s inflation coupled with recession had wrought dollar depreciation plus high unemployment and high interest rates. These were part of the adjustment process. No one doubted it. FULL ARTICLE

Mandating benefits for employees imposes costs on employment. The would-be worker bears the cost. It makes the worker more expensive to hire. The employer has to pay not only a salary but also a benefit. If you make it more expensive to hire people, fewer people will be hired.

It is no different from eggs at the supermarket. If they are $2 each, you will purchase fewer of them — you will economize. This is nothing but the law of demand: consumers will demand less of a good at a higher price than of a good at a lower price. A salary plus benefits amounts to a price that the employer must pay to purchase the work of a laborer. At a higher price, less work will be purchased by the employer. FULL ARTICLE