When prepping for a recent presentation about my book, Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies , it struck me that it can help explain why those committed to liberty often have a hard time winning others over to our understanding of the potential of free people. Regardless of the details of a particular policy, faulty underlying premises about the nature
Hillary Clinton’s latest campaign salvo attacked “ quarterly capitalism ,” the supposedly irresponsible corporate focus on short-term results at the expense of long-term growth. She promised government fixes. Short-Termism, Share Prices, and Incentives Is there too much short-termism in business firms? To answer this, let’s look at participants’
There have been almost uncountable times politicians have promoted “comprehensive” political reforms in areas ranging from immigration to health care to taxation and entitlements. However, there are good reasons to be apprehensive whenever politicians talk about comprehensive reforms. Comprehensive politics. Consider how “comprehensive” rhetoric
One of the trickiest needles for libertarians to thread in public policy discussions is what I call the rudeness rebuttal . And today’s explosion in microaggression accusations just makes it trickier. The rudeness rebuttal arises from logic . The logical structure of an argument is from premises to conclusions—A implies B implies Cimplies Z.
May 21 marks the 1983 death of Eric Hoffer, the “longshoreman philosopher.” He was best known for his 1951 book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements , which brilliantly analyzed movements that played prominent roles in world events during his lifetime. He identified the allure of a larger, and therefore seemingly ennobling,
Altruism has commonly been held up as the standard for moral behavior, with those claiming to see deviations from altruism commonly condemning the deviants as selfish or greedy. For example, Martin Luther King claimed that “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
May 29 marks the 99th birthday of Arthur Seldon, a prolific defender of freedom against government control. His biography’s subtitle, A Life for Liberty , reveals his animating commitment. Seldon was the editorial director of the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs for over three decades. He penned 28 books and monographs and over 200
Government now routinely embraces massive amounts of mud- and blame-slinging as standard operating procedure. The “other guys” are always extremists who exhibit unprincipled intransigence, which prevents agreement on self-defined white hats’ solutions. It illustrates that the government we suffer from is not a means to expanding harmony, but the
Americans pay ritual obeisance to liberty. But daily, they say “there ought to be a law” that restricts it. They have only the dimmest awareness of our founders’ views on this central issue and no knowledge of friends of freedom beyond our shores. That is a pity, because such investigation would yield much insight. A good example is Belgian-born
“ Sugar Vs. Corn Syrup ” reads the headline about legal wrangling between enablers of America’s sweet tooth. Big sugar accused big corn syrup of misleading the public with an ad campaign that it is “nutritionally the same as sugar,” asking for $1.5 billion in damages. Corn syrup producers had already sued for $530 million in damages, alleging that
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.