The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It
After the War to Prevent Southern Independence and the assassination of Lincoln the federal government was said to possess a “treasury of virtue.” The Republican Party, which was the federal government, with a decades-long monopoly of power rivaled only by the Bolsheviks in Russia, made sure that the government-run schools would preach this
One of the reasons that most economists of the 1920s did not recognize the existence of an inflationary problem was the widespread adoption of a stable price level as the goal and criterion for monetary policy. The extent to which the Federal Reserve authorities were guided by a desire to keep the price level stable has been a matter of
[This article is excerpted from Economic Controversies , chapter 21, “The Fallacy of the ‘Public Sector’” (2011). It originally appeared in the New Individualist Review (Summer, 1961): 3–7.] We have heard a great deal in recent years of the “public sector,” and solemn discussions abound through the land on whether or not the public sector should
During the 1930s, the Rockefellers pushed hard for war against Japan, which they saw as competing with them vigorously for oil and rubber resources in Southeast Asia and as endangering the Rockefellers’ cherished dreams of a mass “China market” for petroleum products. On the other hand, the Rockefellers took a noninterventionist position in
The presidential election of 1896 was a great national referendum on the gold standard. The Democratic Party had been captured, at its 1896 convention, by the Populist, ultra-inflationist, anti-gold forces, headed by William Jennings Bryan. The older Democrats, who had been fiercely devoted to hard money and the gold standard, either stayed home
[ A History of Money and Banking in the United States (2002)] “William Jennings Bryan and his pietist coalition seized control of the Democratic Party at the momentous convention of 1896. The Democratic Party was never to be the same again.” Orthodox economic historians attribute the triumph of William Jennings Bryan in the Democratic convention
[In April 1993, Murray Rothbard wrote on the Texas water problem, explaining how the government policy was on a disastrous course that could lead to massive drought. That day has finally arrived.] We all know how the environmentalists, seemingly determined at all costs to save the spotted owl, delivered a crippling blow to the logging industry
[ An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995)] One of the most powerful influences in the legal and political thought and institutions of the Christian West during the Middle Ages was the Roman law, derived from the republic and empire of ancient Rome. Roman law classically developed in the 1st to the 3rd centuries AD.
[ An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 2, Classical Economics (1995)] “The ideologues — Cabanis, DuPont, Volney, Say, and de Tracy — all sent Jefferson their manuscripts and received encouragement in return.” The leadership of the French Smithians was quickly gained by Jean-Baptiste Say , when the first edition of his
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.