Can we capture the error of "scientism" in a single reminder? Let's give it a try. Here's the reminder: the error of "scientism" arises when a scientist practices "explanation" by the elimination or the forgetting of non-eliminable components of the problem which gave rise to the theoretical constructions of his [...]
With the almost constant statist apologetics we hear from many government and academic economists, writes Ben O'Neill, it is hard to believe that the discipline of economics was once a thorn in the side of the state and its political elite. So commonplace are fallacious economic arguments [...]
It appears some native Austrians are thinking at the margins: by literally eating dollar bills.
Officially, that is how some of them are trying to fight inflation and dollar devaluation -- by [quixotically?] attacking the supply-side of the problem. [Interestingly enough, a recent court case tackled part of the "supply" [...]
In the newest issue of American Affairs to see the light of day after 60 years, Garet Garrett once again carries the day:
There are only two kinds of planned economy; and for all they may have, or seem to have, in common, there is yet a very simple [...]
From National Review Online's David Frum:
What the gold standard really is, fundamentally, is a rule that the nation's monetary stock should be determined, not by central bankers, but by miners. Why that should be regarded as an improvement by anyone, I cannot understand.Let me add one final note. Even [...]
To call enterprise a risk is really to understate the problem. Entrepreneurs have a special capacity to discern the uncertain future but they possess no power to actually create that future. It could be that tomorrow morning, no one will show up at the grocery store. That [...]
From the NPR web site:
The Austrian theory of the [...]
H.R. 1955 is an absolute attack on the freedom of speech. Not only does it assault my right to question government, it also assaults the right of ardent Marxists to speak their minds. So, I am at a loss at both ends.
You see, I value the ability to [...]
Dollar Got the Blues, by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown!
[...]In order to slow illegal immigration, the US government is going to construct a fence along the international water boundary with Mexico. Not alongside the Rio Grande, but along the international water boundary.
According to the AOL News article Border Fence Sparks Outrage in Town:
"GRANJENO, [...]
 [...] Posted: November 09, 2007, 2:36pm EST by Weekend EditionThe Plummeting Greenback
Posted: November 09, 2007, 11:32am EST by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.Speaking of scary chartsPosted: November 08, 2007, 5:35pm EST by Jeffrey TuckerThe Manichean President
Accordingly, they will neither attack us nor threaten us. A [...] Posted: November 08, 2007, 4:05pm EST by David GordonWe dearly need a dollar crisisOne of the claims made against the gold standard is that there has been more stability since we adopted a paper standard than when we were under gold. The unmentioned: the problems have been papered over at the expense of our savings and the dollar's purchasing power. There has been [...] Posted: November 08, 2007, 11:01am EST by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.General Motors: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Deferred Tax AssetsSo the news is out: GM is going to take a $39 BILLION, non-cash hit this quarter due to a writedown of its deferred tax assets. What in the heck is a deferred tax asset anyways? If you read the business reporters and journalists on this issue, you still [...] Posted: November 07, 2007, 10:14pm EST by Karen De CosterRon Paul vs. the Fed et al.For 94 years, Americans were supposed to be awed and bored by the central bank, and pay no real attention to the greatest counterfeiting machine in the history of the world. Yet Ron has made an issue, and a huge one, out of the Federal Reserve and its destructivism and [...] Posted: November 07, 2007, 5:59pm EST by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.Last Knight Live Blog 14 – KrausIt has been common knowledge at least since Adam Smith that continuous capital accumulation and rising productivity of labor, i.e. economic progress, are objectively possible only under an economic system that already possesses a sufficiently high degree of division of labor. Prof. George Reisman, whose careful analysis of the importance and [...] Posted: November 07, 2007, 4:46pm EST by Wladimir KrausGG on CapitalSorry to revisit the same topic so shortly, but in that same AA edition cited in my previous post, I simply cannot praise Garrett's piece, entitled 'Mythologies of Reconversion', enough. This is not just a witheringly effective dismissal of the central planner's and inflationist's folies de grandeur, but one of the [...] Posted: November 07, 2007, 3:52pm EST by Sean CorriganTrademark and FraudAn edited excerpt from my comment in an email discussion: It seems to me that the primary justification for trademark rights is based on the notion of fraud--that the "infringer" is defrauding his customers by misrepresenting his identity and the source of the goods being sold (see pp. 43-44 of my [...] Posted: November 07, 2007, 12:53pm EST by Stephan KinsellaGold and the DollarPosted: November 07, 2007, 10:55am EST by Jeffrey TuckerGarrett Reviews MisesThis collection won't be released for a while but I can't help pointing this out. It is the full issue of American Affairs, 1945, volume 1 but note that it contains a review of Mises's Omnipotent Government and Bureaucracy by...Garet Garrett. Working on making this a daily article. "LUDWIG [...] Posted: November 06, 2007, 5:57pm EST by Jeffrey TuckerLast Knight Live Blog 13 – KrausWhat was Mises’s most important contribution to economic science? My answer, which coincides with the theme of maybe the central chapter of the entire book – chapter 10, A Copernican Shift, is: his analysis of the exact nature and the importance of economic calculation in a division-of-labor economic system. The substance [...] Posted: November 06, 2007, 12:12pm EST by Wladimir KrausLatest Books onlinePosted: November 06, 2007, 10:33am EST by Mises.org UpdatesGreenspan Absolves Himself
Greenspan [...] Posted: November 06, 2007, 9:27am EST by Frank ShostakDonating just to bug the establishmentNational Review--I can vaguely, hazily recall that this publication has some doubts about the merit of the crusading leviathan state--is throughly disgusted that Ron Paul raised $4.2 million in 24 hours online. It proves that we need not be "impressed by anybody able to gather cash over the net." [...] Posted: November 06, 2007, 8:44am EST by Jeffrey TuckerThe Truth about the StrikeSkip Oliva is giving us regular updates on the writers' guild strike, from an informed perspective. He points particularly to the police-state enforcement tactics of the union itself. Excellent reading. [...]Posted: November 05, 2007, 11:01pm EST by Jeffrey Tucker"Last Knight" Live Blog 15 -- Greg RansomWorld war creates a fantastic learning environment for an economist. War-making nations jolt the economy, manipulate the currency, and impose a vast array of controls on production, price setting, and exchange. Economists are called upon to orchestrate these efforts -- and then deal with an ever cascading tumble of new [...] Posted: November 05, 2007, 2:38pm EST by Greg RansomHutt on SayPosted: November 05, 2007, 2:07pm EST by Mises.org UpdatesHarangue: Garrett's novel of Red, to Green, to DeconstructionistThe New York Times headline, which you can read in the archives, says "Warn I.W.W. Raiders: Officials Take Steps to Prevent March on North Dakota Town." That headline appeared in 1921. Another from 1918 reads: "Reveals I.W.W. Plans: Proposed Amalgamation with Non-Partisan League in North Dakota." What is this [...] Posted: November 05, 2007, 12:00pm EST by Jeffrey TuckerMises as RadicalTo what extent, then, is Mises a radical? He comes out as quite radical in the gradal and dialectical senses, albeit less so than some of his later followers. With regard to ideological radicalism, he scores high on the political dimension and admittedly much lower — though not quite so [...] Posted: November 05, 2007, 8:58am EST by Roderick T. LongThe Specter of Stagflation
The upcoming events and the current [...] Posted: November 05, 2007, 8:56am EST by Mises.org UpdatesThe Michigan State Government's 24-Hour ATMThe Michigan government has secured a new, 24-hour ATM machine: the taxpayers. A Michigan government shutdown was averted in the middle of the night when the bozos in the legislature decided to pass a 6% service tax. Governor Granholm says she will "consider a repeal only if other new [...] Posted: November 04, 2007, 7:29pm EST by Karen De CosterWarren Buffett: "There's never just one cockroach in the kitchen."
You [...] Posted: November 03, 2007, 11:40pm EDT by Karen De CosterHemingway on the Costs of War and InflationA selection of quotes from Ernest Hemingway's "Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter" first published in Esquire (September 1935): - "War is no longer made by simply analysed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who [...] Posted: November 03, 2007, 8:40pm EDT by Justin PtakHollywood's Workers and PeasantsThese nice people wanted a piece on the writers' strike in Hollywood. [...]Posted: November 03, 2007, 12:19pm EDT by Jeffrey Tucker"If I were Bernanke I would abolish the Fed and resign"Those were the closing words of Jim Rogers on a lengthy interview broadcast today on Bloomberg News. While the entire discourse is worth watching, the first couple of minutes attacks the facade, the skewed employment numbers published by both the Fed and most of the banking-bureaucratic establishment; or in his [...] Posted: November 03, 2007, 1:30am EDT by Tim SwansonTime and PraxeologyPosted: November 02, 2007, 5:58pm EDT by Weekend EditionGovernment Control, 1946Look at this wonderful pamphlet from 1946, called One Year After, by Virgil Jordon: WAR, which we profess to fear or hate, is only one expression of the growth of the power of the State over men's life and work, which in recent years so many have come to accept, [...] Posted: November 02, 2007, 12:46pm EDT by Jeffrey TuckerNew PDF booksReassessing the Presidency, John Denson (ed.) Epistemological Problems of Economics, by Ludwig von Mises (improved version) [...]Posted: November 02, 2007, 10:23am EDT by Mises.org UpdatesFor the Want of Bill Gates's Money
Redistribution is not ethical; it's [...] Posted: November 02, 2007, 9:23am EDT by Jim Fedakoan approach to assessing crime severityIn 1977, the US Department of Justice conducted an interesting auxiliary study as part of the National Crime Victimization Survey. They asked 60,000 people how severe 204 crimes were (each person rated 25 criminal events). Yes, yes, interpersonal utility alert; but let's go on. On a scale where 10 = [...] Posted: November 01, 2007, 6:52pm EDT by Gil GuilloryLiveblogging My Old Right Journey With Dr. Rothbard, Part IV(To read the earlier installments, go here.) "Taxation Is Robbery." Upon seeing these words, the title of a Frank Chodorov pamphlet printed in 1947, a young Murray Rothbard was stunned. "This was it. Once seeing those shining and irrefutable words, my ideological outlook could never be the same again," Rothbard [...] Posted: November 01, 2007, 6:47pm EDT by Anthony GregoryNock's shocking book on education
1. Albert Jay Nock's incredible disquisition on the real meaning of education and its role in a free society. Posted: November 01, 2007, 6:07pm EDT by Mises.org UpdatesHutt on SayA Rehabilitation of Say's Law by W.H. Hutt. [...]Posted: November 01, 2007, 5:22pm EDT by Mises.org UpdatesRizzo's edited classicTime, Uncertainty, and Disequilibrium edited by Mario Rizzo. [...]Posted: November 01, 2007, 5:14pm EDT by Mises.org UpdatesTheory and HistoryPosted: November 01, 2007, 5:03pm EDT by Jeffrey TuckerThe Postwar Renaissance II: Politics and Foreign Policy
In the realm of direct politics, it seemed clear that there was only one place for those of us not totally disillusioned with political action: the "extreme right wing" of the Republican Party. It was solidly isolationist and [...] Posted: October 31, 2007, 9:35am EDT by Mises.org UpdatesLast Knight Live Blog 12 – KrausWe write the year 1919. The lost war and the hardships that followed only intensified the process of political and economic disintegrations of the once mighty Austria-Hungarian Empire. Hopeless economic conditions contributed to greater, not less, tensions between nationalities, culminating in a total politico-territorial break-up, with entire nations seceding and [...] Posted: October 30, 2007, 9:16am EDT by Wladimir KrausFires of the Feds: How the Government Has Destroyed Forests
Posted: October 30, 2007, 8:48am EDT by William AndersonSarbanes-Oxley and the PCAOB: No Profit Motive = Bigger BloatThe PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) is a corporation created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Tom Selling at the Accounting Onion presents some interesting facts regarding the PCAOB. Tom - who has an impressive resume - says he attended a presentation by a senior PCAOB staff member [...] Posted: October 29, 2007, 11:23pm EDT by Karen De Coster25th AnniversaryPosted: October 29, 2007, 5:41pm EDT by Mises.org UpdatesMises on FacebookPosted: October 29, 2007, 1:52pm EDT by Jeffrey TuckerFour new books in literatureCapital and Production by Richard von Strigl The Theory of Education in the United States, by Albert Jay Nock The Gold Standard: Perspectives in the Austrian School. edited by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Posted: October 29, 2007, 11:38am EDT by Mises.org UpdatesMisesian Economics in Truly Private Schools
Posted: October 29, 2007, 10:11am EDT by Jeffrey HerbenerYou Can't Do This, But We CanPayola is a criminalized activity in which radio stations are paid money by record companies to play and promote certain songs. And while the latest shenanigans involving FEMA are being unscrambled, it turns out that their fraudulent practices are neither new nor exclusive to this controversial agency. In fact, in [...] Posted: October 29, 2007, 1:48am EDT by Tim SwansonWhat the state sees is not realityBrad DeLong, self-professed Keynesian and social democrat, writes an excellent review of Jame's Scott's Seeing Like a State. He points out that Scott doesn't seem to understand the intellectual roots of his own ideas: those roots are Mises and Hayek. This is a very good review and very much [...] Posted: October 28, 2007, 7:25pm EDT by Jeffrey TuckerDoing What They Do BestNot only did interbureaucratic red-tape prevent "nearly two dozen water-dropping helicopters and two massive cargo planes" from partaking in extinguishing the numerous brush fires this past week, but FEMA actually staged a press conference earlier this week -- passing it off as if it was the real deal. [...] Posted: October 28, 2007, 5:02am EDT by Tim SwansonWarren Buffett Has An Austrian Economics MomentRemember that Citigroup, Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have formed a superfund to bail out troubled structured investment vehicles (SIV). The US Treasury Department and Henry Paulson "back" this plan. What it amounts to is another move on the part of the Wall Street-government partnership [...] Posted: October 27, 2007, 7:26am EDT by Karen De CosterThe cure for wildfires ... acronym soupOf course, chaos is the entrée. As of yesterday, here is the response from the Department of Homeland Security ... No additional comments needed. This dispatch says it all. from:
Major Response Operations: The Federal [...] Posted: October 26, 2007, 9:20pm EDT by Jim FedakoLVMI on WikipediaI am quite impressed with the article on the Mises Institute on Wikipedia. It has come into its own in recent months and does a great job of detailing the extent of the work done at 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, AL. I also enjoyed the interview with Lew [...] Posted: October 26, 2007, 9:05pm EDT by Justin PtakBirth of a Movement
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Greenwald's argument is a simple one: Because of the overwhelming military might of the United States, no other country can attack us without facing utter destruction. Other countries, wishing rationally to advance their own interests, grasp this fact. 
Now that Alan Greenspan is no longer the Fed chairman, some financial commentators are daring to suggest that perhaps the present financial crisis is the result of the extremely low interest rate policy of Greenspan's Fed between December 2000 to June 2004 that fueled the housing bubble. 
If mainstream economists and market analysts' predictions (wishes?) come true, and the US Federal Reserve lowers rates several times in the next few months, contrary to popular belief, things in the medium and long term will unequivocally get worse, writes David Saied. 
Action is always directed toward the future; it is essentially and 
" Mises coined the term Fourier Complex in 1927 to describe the ends sought by those who dream of the world envisioned by Charles Fourier, the utopian socialist of the 19th century. Its sufferers desire equality in starvation rather than variation in plenty.
Murray Rothbard discusses the critical turning point in Republican politics: 1946-1950. 
Fires are natural in that they have always occurred on earth, and will continue to occur. The real problem with the current fires, however, is government. Governments — in the name of "scientific" and "ecological" management — have grossly mismanaged the natural environment. Environmental policy has operated on 
State interference in education usurps the child's rights and displaces the custodial role of the parents in exercising those rights. That the state would seize the custodial rights from the parents demonstrates that it has its own interests in mind. The state must resort to force because 
For a while the postwar ideological climate seemed to be the same as during the war: internationalism, statism, adulation of economic planning and the centralized state, were rampant everywhere. During the first postwar year, 1945–46, I entered Columbia Graduate School, 
If Garet Garrett (1878–1954) is known at all today, it is by those who are captivated by the handful of intellectuals after World War II who wrote retrospectively in opposition to the New Deal planning state and the regimentation of national life it brought about. They were 
Edmund Burke always claimed that his 1756 defense of anarchism, 
Once, when my newborn son was barely back from the hospital, I was holding him in my arms with my wife looking on. I asked him, "Can you say marginal rate of substitution?"
How fashionable it is to love nature. 
Mises knew that it is not enough to hold the right views, though this is an essential step. It is just as important to do everything possible to see that these views are propagated and made compelling in a way that will transform society and politics. And this 
The advent of World War II brought the Old Right to its darkest days. Harassed, reviled, persecuted, the intellectuals and agitators of the Old Right, the libertarians and the isolationists, folded their tents and disappeared from view. While it is true that the isolationist Republicans experienced a 
Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission, writes Isabel Paterson. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends. 
I have never had much enthusiasm for following politics; I found that a blanket condemnation of the whole subspecies Officeseeker stood me in good stead and saved me time to focus on more useful things, such as Lindsey Lohan's