Spoken Mises

While most intellectuals are neither great scholars nor brilliant thinkers, these "second-hand dealers in ideas" are adept at one thing: taking the original ideas of others and then representing or promoting them to the general public. The battle for freedom must be won not by original thinkers, and not by practical reformers, but by a new generation of ideological — even utopian — classical-liberal intellectuals: journalists, teachers, and public figures who can "make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds."

(Original Text)

The Intellectuals and Socialism (8.25 MB)

(Original Text)

The Downturn Is Good News (1,022.00 KB)

I realize that many teachers today would consider it demeaning to be called a "peddler" — even a peddler of knowledge and ideas. I consider it a badge of honor. In a free market in education, teachers would be sales reps for their schools. Catering to needs and wants is the challenging task of, first, identifying the needs and wants of one's customers, then carefully crafting products that will meet those needs and wants. The teacher who does this successfully year after year is a peddler par excellence and deserves praise.

(Original Text)

Peddlers of Ideas (1.04 MB)

Anyone supporting drug legalization must reconcile their position with the existence of these coked-up hallucinating tattooed hooligans on motorcycles. Most citizens fear legalization would lead to the rapid decline of Western Civilization. With these "esteemed" gentlemen as examples, only the deranged could support drug legalization. That is, until one examines the specifics more closely.

(Original Text)

What Motley Crue Can Teach Us About Drug Legalization (2.23 MB)

(Original Text)

Going for the Heart (1.19 MB)

It's been 75 years since the federal government, on the spurious grounds of fighting the Great Depression, ordered the confiscation of all monetary gold from Americans, permitting trivial amounts for ornamental or industrial use. From the point of view of the typical American classroom, on the other hand, the incident may as well not have occurred. A key piece of legislation in this story is the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, which Congress passed on March 9 without having read it and after almost no debate.

(Original Text)

The Great Gold Robbery of 1933 (2.76 MB)

Is it any wonder that people who enter this world think differently from others? Their blinders are off. They see what is real and true. They don't believe in the great modern lie that the state is our wise master, in whom we should trust our very lives. The owner of gold and silver coins is just a bit less attached to the state than others. And should a time of great crisis come, and you look among the survivors, preeminent among them will be those who love the coin shop as much as I do.

(Original Text)

Truth in the Coin Shop (2.19 MB)

Short selling is a beneficial process that allows anyone to participate in the market's evaluation of share prices. So long as contracts are enforced, even naked short selling can be a beneficial process that allows the quickest possible adjustment in mispriced stocks. The government's recent efforts to "protect" favored firms from naked shorting will do nothing but raise transaction costs. It also provides a sobering hint of more significant innovations in federal government support for particular financial giants.

(Original Text)

Short-Sale Restrictions Are an Exercise in Naked Power (2.26 MB)

No unique individual can fully develop his powers in any direction without engaging in specialization. The primitive tribesman or peasant could have no time or resources available to pursue any particular interest to the full. A necessary condition for any sort of developed economy, the division of labor is also requisite to the development of any sort of civilized society. Without the opportunity to specialize in whatever he can do best, no person can develop his powers to the full; no man, then, could be fully human.

(Original Text)

Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor (15.31 MB)

As unlikely as it would have seemed twenty years ago, I am even more hostile to socialism, egalitarianism, and Romanticism, far more critical of the British classical and modern neoclassical tradition, and even more appreciative of Mises's great insights than ever before. Indeed, for someone who thought that he had absorbed all of Mises's work many years ago, it is a constant source of surprise how rereading Mises continues to provide a source of fresh insights and of new ways of looking at seemingly trite situations.

(Original Text)

The Struggle Over Egalitarianism Continues (5.93 MB)