Contra Marx, Mises understood that human desires and needs are not determined merely by biology. Karl Marx held that human interests are “uniquely and entirely determined by the biological nature of the human body.” He thought that people were exclusively interested in gaining as many tangible goods as they could. Therefore, a person’s wants would not depend… Read More

In terms of their widespread application and rapid implementation, covid-19 policies have been the most egregious violations of Canada’s constitution, ever. But my opinion doesn’t matter, because judges are the only people allowed to interpret the constitution—a convenient arrangement for the government. Canada’s constitution includes the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter). Freedom of… Read More

The Thanksgiving holiday in the United States has a checkered past. Its more recent origins lie largely in government attempts at pushing propagandistic narratives. For example, Abraham Lincoln demanded Americans be thankful for “the advancing armies and navies of the Union” during the Civil War. George Washington instructed Americans to give thanks for the new constitution… Read More

While GMU economist Tyler Cowen may have dismissed the idea of more pandemic lockdowns as being “a straw man” and saying that the extreme measures that started in March of this year “are now behind us,” it seems that governors and other politicians around the country have failed to get the message. More and more… Read More

Nick Hankoff Nick Hankoff lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with his wife Alice Salles Affonso Hankoff and their two children, soon to be three. His website nickhankoff.com is where you can find all of his recent writings and a forthcoming return of the fugacious Nick Hankoff Show. Let’s block ads! (Why?) Mises WireRead More

With all the attention commanded by the presidential campaign, election, and aftermath, plus the ongoing covid-19 story, many other issues have faded into the background. Though escaping the headlines, some of these other issues will be with us for a long time, and contributions to the public discussion of such issues often have a long-term… Read More

There’s at least one good reason to support Donald Trump’s ongoing lawsuits challenging the election results in several states: the US foreign policy establishment doesn’t want you to. As Newsweek reported last week, “A group of more than 100 national security experts” from Republican administrations have condemned the president’s challenges to some states’ vote-counting process.… Read More

Let’s clear up some misconceptions about Austrian economics. If people want to dismiss this school of thought, which many seem inclined to do for political (not theoretical) reasons, at least they should do so based on facts and knowledge, not on falsehoods. Here are corrections:  “Austrian economics is not empirical.” False. Empirical studies (“history”) are… Read More

Pfizer recently announced that its covid vaccine was more than 90 percent “effective” at preventing covid-19. Shortly after this announcement, Moderna announced that its covid vaccine was 94.5 percent “effective” at preventing covid-19. Unlike the flu vaccine, which is one shot, both covid vaccines require two shots given three to four weeks apart. Hidden toward the end of both… Read More

Covid-19 has unleashed a pandemic of restrictive measures on the population. Lockdowns and mask mandates are becoming widespread. Libertarians have been vociferously denouncing covid-19 containment strategies as draconian. Evolutionary psychologists, however, argue that reactions in favor of government restrictions are the norm in environments where the public fears contamination. According to the parasitic stress theory… Read More

As in so much else, the French revolutionary regime (1789–94) was the precursor of the centralized, totalitarian, managerial, pseudo-democratic despotisms that now reign over the West. It is also reminder that mass democracy and inflation go together, as surely as thunder and lightning. Let us revisit the Revolution, from a free-market, hard-money perspective. After two… Read More

On October 29, the nineteenth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party concluded its fifth plenum, a four-day meeting devoted primarily to laying the groundwork for China’s fourteenth five-year plan, which covers the period from 2021 to 2025. Most of what has been made publicly available about the planners’ thinking is hardly novel—no one would have been… Read More

Contact Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Tom Woods, a senior fellow of the Mises Institute, is the author of a dozen books, most recently Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion. Tom’s articles have appeared in dozens of popular and scholarly periodicals, and his books have been translated into a… Read More

If Democratic candidate Joe Biden is elected America’s forty-sixth president, what happens to the mandate to end the endless wars? It doesn’t go away, but rather falls on the Democrat-controlled House and (presumably, for now) Republican-controlled Senate. President Donald Trump was elected partly due to his promise to rein in the US government’s military intervention… Read More