Spoken Mises

Watch the conventions with an eye to what the political class wants to do for you. Everything they promise has a flip side of what they want to do to you. And the power to do these things has to come from the violence of the state, and using that violence requires a form of total control over government and society.

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Longing for Dictatorship (1.11 MB)

While watching the Olympics, we tend to cheer participants along national lines. We root for our country's athletes over those from the rest of the world. While there is nothing wrong with this fun diversion, the concept of the individual must never be lost amid the ideal of the collective — the belief that the members of the collective (the nation in this instance) are faceless automatons dedicated to serving the whole.

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The Fallacy of We (1.50 MB)

Why is it that talk of tax policy doesn't seem to have a relationship to policy generally? Whether it's a bailout of subprime mortgage holders, large investment banks, or going to war, whether or not the resources exist to do these wonders rarely enters into the equation. Why is it that tax cuts don't curb the government? And why do politicians not feel the need to tax us more when they spend more?

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Why Taxes Don't Matter Much Anymore (1.28 MB)

What Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez have in common is the conviction that prosperity can be achieved by consuming the means of production. But capital accumulation and economic progress depend on saving and innovation and these in turn depend on the freedom to make high profits and accumulate great wealth.

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Anti-Obamanomics: Why Everyone Should Be in Favor of Reducing Taxes on the "Rich" (6.90 MB)

The local Swiss press carried a summary of a report compiled by a panel of so-called "experts" of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Science (SATW) under the startling rubric that motor gasoline "should" henceforth be priced, by fiat, at no less than four francs per liter — roughly double the current market price and representing what, to an American, must seem like the eye-watering equivalent of around $14 a gallon.

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Make Ourselves Miserable Now (2.33 MB)

Americans should consider how the US government would react if (say) Texas declared its independence and received massive amounts of military aid and advice from the Russians, all while the Texas president feted his Russian counterpart at state dinners in Austin and promoted Texan membership in a post-Cold War Warsaw Pact that had already expanded greatly in the previous 15 years. To me, the economic lessons dominate.

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The Economics of War (Georgia Edition) (1.35 MB)

One of the fundamental problems in the social sciences is that correlation is not necessarily causation. Unfortunately, correlations are often reported and causality is inferred based on the predispositions of the analyst without adequately accounting for alternative hypotheses. There is nothing intellectually dishonest about this; indeed, empirical research is extremely difficult. However, it should cause us to view claims about causal relationships with some skepticism.

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Sex, Violence, and the Culture War (2.10 MB)

Building the world's tallest building has been a matter of particularly bad timing by entrepreneurs. Even if they were able to successfully steal away enough tenants from the remaining pool of renters, the economic problem for society is that valuable resources are lost in the process of constructing buildings that are underutilized. However, it is not the entrepreneur's formula that is at fault, but a system-wide failure known as the business cycle.

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Skyscrapers and Business Cycles (14.15 MB)

George Bush, with the clock ticking down the last months of his presidency, nearly started yet another war that might have escalated in the manner of World War I: a diplomatic failure backed by arms that resulted in a superpower clash. It is a wonder that the world has survived his "war on terror," which turned out to be a war on American liberty and anyone in the world who got on his nerves. His confrontation with Russia in defense of a belligerent little client state of the United States could have sealed his fate and ours too.

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Disarm: The Lesson of the Georgia Fiasco (1.44 MB)

A recent study from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has zero credibility. It pegged likely taxpayer losses in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts at $25 billion. For those with a sense of history, it is worth remembering that the S&L bailout had a $160 billion price tag. The numbers diverge so far from reality as to be laugh-out-loud funny. Funny, that is, except that the CBO estimate demonstrates a willful disconnect with the actual consequences of federal government actions. The real cost of the bailouts could easily exceed $1.3 trillion.

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The Real Cost of a Full Bailout (1.34 MB)