Mises Daily
Contempt for Life
John Gray is Ayn Rand's nightmare come true. Once a classical liberal, he now finds the inanities of Tony Blair's "Third Way",
US Hypocrisy on Trade
Do you remember, asks Tibor Machan, when America was called the leader of the Free World? It seems like so long ago. Now the USA is the leader of the protectionist world, the very opposite of free, at least where international commerce is concerned.
Myth of the Price Level
To speak about average prices is like talking about average precipitation to a golfer, writes Chris Mayer. It either rains during a specific time period or it doesn't. There is no average that is anyway useful for an acting human being on a golf course. The only information that counts is what it is doing right now while he is teeing off. It is the same with prices.
The Tax Shift Racket
Lew Rockwell asks us to think of a robber who promises to stop coming through your front door if you promise to leave open the back door. So it is with the state that promises to stop taxing your income if you let it tax your consumption. The issue is not the method; it is the amount.
Biases of the Intellectual Classes
When intellectuals teach the children of nonintellectuals to hate their own civilization, and regard its achievements as acts of villainy, writes Steven Yates, they only invite waves of understandable anti-intellectual reaction.
Corruption and Foreign Aid
For a few billion dollars, you might expect to be able to bribe some small third world country into cleaning up its act, to defend the property rights of its citizens, to provide a stable currency, and to establish a non-interventionist economic and foreign policy. Not so, writes Mark Thornton.
The Spoils of Victory
Millions of students begin their first day of classes with a profound awareness of the impending make-or-break tests, to be taken at regular intervals from the first to the twelfth grade. On the face of it, writes Jeffrey Tucker, it seemed to work. But reformers forgot one thing: we are dealing here with public school.
Private Oasis in Manhattan
Bryant Park is managed, policed and run by a private corporation, one of the largest experiments of its kind in the nation. A corporation saved this historic park from the depths of degradation. It brought in commerce, which was happy to pay large rents to the corporation because the park has become an urban oasis.
Inequality Serves a Social and Economic Purpose
In a market society, any distinction of classes only serves to represent some snapshot in time as movement between classes is continually fluctuating, writes Christopher Coyne. This is in stark contrast to the non-market caste system where affiliation with a class or caste is hereditary and largely unchanging.