Mises Media

Both progressives and conservatives show a complete unwillingness or inability to distinguish between those who got rich by genuinely creating value by serving others and those who are getting rich by expropriating wealth through force.Read the article here: https://mises.org/mises-wire/progressives-and-conservatives-are-wrong-about-taxing-rich2026 is the Year of Rothbard—Murray's 100th birthday—and we're celebrating by giving away free copies of Anatomy of the State through May 31. Grab yours today at https://mises.org/gabfreebookBe sure to follow the Guns and Butter podcast at https://Mises.org/GB

Ryan McMaken argues that the American constitutional structure has become a suicide pact: states cannot secede, cannot protect themselves from neighboring states' policies, cannot adopt genuinely federal internal governance, and cannot redraw their own borders. It's a system that guarantees growing conflict and provides only one approved solution: more centralized power in Washington.Recorded in San Diego, California, on April 25, 2026. 

Murray Rothbard argues that the nation-state's boundaries—invariably acquired by force—deserve no more sanctity than any other product of conquest. He proposes radical decentralization through secession, down to the neighborhood level, as the path to genuine nations formed by consent rather than coercion.

In this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan McMaken looks at Rothbard's essay "Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation State." The essay provides some key insights into the nature of the nation-state, its origins, and implications for modern-day topics like immigration, citizenship, and national borders. Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off

Mises's response, addressing subsidies more generally, is instructive: "A project P is unprofitable when and because consumers prefer the satisfaction expected from the realization of some other projects to the satisfaction expected from the realization of P. The realization of P would withdraw capital and labor from the realization of some other projects for which the demand of the consumers is more urgent. The layman and the pseudo-economist fail to recognize this fact. They stubbornly refuse to notice the scarcity of the factors of production."

Hoxie visited New York, and asked Johnson to come to his hotel for the evening. Hoxie "was frightening in his appearance." He told Johnson that he was finished. "I can see now, all my work has been bunk. All my writing, every lecture I have ever given, has been bunk." When asked for the reason, Hoxie continued, "I've come to see through Veblen. How could a man be so great a scientist and such a damn fool?" Hoxie concluded that "Veblen knew his equations didn't solve, but he used them just the same." Johnson closes his narrative by writing "I left him, promising to visit him in Chicago and renew the discussion. But before I could get around to a Chicago trip Hoxie killed himself."

Individuals' time preferences determine the societal rate of interest, which Mises calls the "originary interest" rate. The rate of interest found in the loanable funds market is commonly believed to be the fundamental interest rate. But the loanable funds market only "adjusts the rate of interest on loans to the rate of originary interest." Lower time preferences are expressed through a decrease in consumption spending, an increase in savings and investment, and a decline in the originary interest rate, while higher time preferences cause the opposite.

Mises says, "Life itself is exposed to many risks. At any moment it is endangered by disastrous accidents which cannot be controlled, or at least not sufficiently. Every man banks on good luck. He counts upon not being struck by lightning and not being bitten by a viper." The social engineer attempts to bring about a desired outcome by forcing people to behave in a certain way. Mises sees the engineer and the social engineer as having parallel tasks: one manipulates lumber and iron, the other attempts to manipulate human beings.

All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and the ignoble, are ranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside another. Nothing that men aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a unique scale of gradation and preference. Out of the political economy of the classical school emerges the general theory of human action, praxeology.

Alchian began his seminar by reading a paragraph. It was a paragraph about property, and he asked if anyone in the group could identify it. I was the only one; I recognized immediately that that was from Mises' Human Action. As he developed that first lecture—which became I think one of the most important economic articles of the twentieth century, "Economics of Property Rights"—it was like a light bulb went off in my head, it was incredible. All of a sudden, everything that I had done intellectually for thirteen years came together, with this one idea of Alchian's about the real nature of property rights and the Misesian notion of people making choices.

I thought that before turning to the present-day literature, it would be helpful to take a look at the state of monetary thought at the outset of World War I, in order to appreciate the progress that had been achieved since then. I opened the book at Christmas of 1992 and was in for a great surprise. This old master excelled in clarity of expression, and he had dealt with a subject of immense importance—the nature, causes, and consequences of the subjective value of money. From my previous studies I knew that this topic had not made it into the standard texts in money and banking. Mises demonstrated that this omission had been a grave error.

While he was never mentioned in West German economic textbooks, his name figured prominently in Commie East Germany. In one of these textbooks, you could also find some detailed criticisms of Western, so-called bourgeois economics and economists, among them Friedman and Hayek, but in particular also Mises, who was singled out as the most wrongheaded, dangerous, and detestable of them all.

Keynesian macroeconomics had displaced Austrian business cycle theory and solidly established itself as mainstream macroeconomics. Meanwhile, most of the economics profession sided against the Austrian School in the socialist calculation debate. By the 1940s, the Austrian School was left behind as economic theory developed. Those who were identified as associated with the Austrian School passed away or drifted toward the mainstream. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that by 1950, Mises was the only remaining active member of the old Austrian School.

To understand Mises's position on ethics, it is essential to bear in mind that he is a psychological hedonist. He thinks everyone is always motivated by pleasure and pain, a view that comes straight from Epicurus. We seek pleasure and avoid pain. You might object that this is obviously false. Don't we do things very frequently like go on restrictive diets, exercise, study subjects that aren't fun, and so on? Mises's answer is that even though we are motivated by pleasure and pain, it doesn't follow that we are motivated by what will give us the most pleasure, or the least pain, at a given moment. We can be motivated by our wish for the most pleasure, or the least pain, over a long period of time.

This, of course, is great news for the Austrian School, where anyone in the world can do what Gordon Tullock did and become his own economist by reading Human Action! The University of Michigan students who spontaneously began chanting when Ron Paul showed up there in 2012 to campaign for the Republican nomination were not chanting "Game theory! Game theory!" They were chanting "End the Fed! End the Fed!" because they had read some of the works of Austrian economists.

Bill Anderson offers a ground-level view of California's decline, arguing that the state's deep entanglement of government with water, energy, housing, and transportation has created a self-reinforcing system where every new crisis produces more regulation, more spending, and fewer productive citizens.Recorded in San Diego, California, on April 25, 2026. 

To complain against the state’s actions, argues Hobbes, is to ultimately complain against yourself because you originally authorized the state through social contract and the state represents you!Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/hobbess-state-why-are-you-hitting-yourself

Connor O'Keeffe argues that California's wildfire crisis is not simply a climate story but a government failure story. The state has monopolized nearly all wilderness land, refused to manage it adequately, and then distorted insurance markets to push more people into high-risk fire zones, making fires both larger and more deadly than they would be under a private property regime with real liability.Recorded in San Diego, California, on April 25, 2026. 

On this episode of Power & Market, Ryan, Tho, and Connor discuss the escalating battle over Congressional districts. As Republicans and Democrats engage in an arms race over gerrymandering, assisted by a new Supreme Court ruling over racial districts, is the facade of "representative democracy" finally slipping?

Antitrust populists claimed blocking the Spirit–JetBlue merger would protect competition and consumers. But their effort led to an intervention that strengthened the very oligopoly they set out to fight.Read the article here: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-antitrust-populists-drove-spirit-airlines-out-business2026 is the Year of Rothbard—Murray's 100th birthday—and we're celebrating by giving away free copies of Anatomy of the State through May 31. Grab yours today at https://mises.org/gabfreebookBe sure to follow the Guns and Butter podcast at https://Mises.org/GB

If executed perfectly, this swap allows the Fed to neutralize a shrinking money supply by swapping $2 trillion in mortgages for $2 trillion in government debt. Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/mbs-slope-n-swap

Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History more than 30 years ago, believing that the fall of the communist bloc would lead to a more peaceful world. We are still waiting for that moment of peace.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/fukuyama-was-wrong-history-did-not-end

Philosopher Matt Zwolinski has declared libertarianism to lack any coherent standards. Zwolinski’s confusion is the result of his rejection of libertarianism as outlined by Murray Rothbard and others based upon free markets based on individual rights.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/libertarianism-incoherent

The government created a market for stolen goods, paid criminals cash for five months, watched robberies spike, arrested everyone at a mafia-themed party, then called it a success because arrests went up. The robberies they subsidized didn't count.Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/when-federal-government-subsidized-robberies

The recent DOJ indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center might be controversial, but what is not controversial is that the SPLC engaged in conduct that was more reminiscent of the Ministry of Love in 1984 than protecting someone’s civil rights.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/justice-department-indicts-ministry-love

Gold markets have been volatile, to put it mildly, and the drama isn’t over. Unfortunately, governments are so involved in the gold markets that true market prices are hard to find.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/precious-paper-problem-divergence-western-bullion-markets

In the late 1800s, American finally went in search of empire abroad, taking land by force and subjugating people who simply wanted their captors to leave.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/when-america-chose-empire

When the recent NFL draft was held in Pittsburgh, city officials declared bus fares would be free so fans would pack the auditorium where the draft was held. Who would have thought that making scarce goods free would bring about chaos with the bus riders?Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/nfl-draft-and-public-buses

As the US is involved in yet another pointless war, we would do well to remember the real costs of war, how it strips us of our liberties, and destroys our futures.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/remembering-costs-war

Bob responds to a new working paper from the Geo-chartalism project, which claims to offer a complete theory of the price level by combining insights from Menger, Cantillon, and Warren Mosler. Bob argues that the paper overlooks a crucial prior contribution: Mises' regression theorem, developed in The Theory of Money and Credit, which already solved the circularity problem in monetary theory that the paper claims required Mosler to resolve. Along the way, Bob also explains chartalism, Georgism, and Mises's explanation of the absolute price level.Related:Bob's Paper Critiquing Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy: Mises.org/HAP548aGeorge Charles, “The Mosler-Cantillon-Menger Synthesis”: Mises.org/HAP548bMMT vs. Austrian School Debate: Mises.org/HAP548cThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

The bulk of the US gold reserves held in Fort Knox are made up of impure “non-standard” bars that don’t qualify for use in international settlements.Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/ft-knox-full-impure-gold-unfit-international-transactions

In his concluding argument, Molinari envisions a society where security is provided by competing private firms chosen voluntarily by consumers. He contends that such a system would deliver better protection at lower cost while preserving individual freedom.

Molinari describes the inevitable consequences of monopolized security: rising costs, declining quality, and the use of force against the very citizens the government claims to protect. He illustrates how monopoly governments tend toward oppression and fiscal exploitation.

This section critiques the justifications used to legitimize government monopoly, from the divine right of monarchs to the sovereignty of democratic majorities. Molinari argues that majority rule is no more legitimate than royal absolutism when it violates individual rights.

Molinari distinguishes between society, which arises naturally from voluntary human cooperation, and government, which imposes itself through force. He argues that conflating the two leads people to accept unjust authority as a necessary feature of civilized life.

This section traces how governments historically established and maintained their monopoly over the production of security. Molinari describes how coercive control over defense led to the familiar abuses of taxation, war, and the suppression of individual liberty.

This section outlines the two fundamental ways a community can organize the production of security: through monopoly or through free competition. Molinari frames this choice as the central political question that determines whether a society will be free or oppressed.

Molinari confronts the common objection that security is somehow different from other goods and must be exempted from market provision. He systematically challenges the reasoning behind treating defense as a unique case requiring government monopoly.

Molinari applies the general principle of free competition directly to the provision of security services. He contends that, just as with bread or iron, the quality of security improves and its cost decreases when multiple producers compete for consumers.

This section lays out the economic principle that all goods and services are best provided through free exchange governed by competition. Molinari argues that the division of labor and voluntary cooperation form the natural basis of social organization.

Molinari opens by establishing that humans have a fundamental need for security of their persons and property. He frames security as a commodity like any other, one that must be produced and supplied to satisfy this universal demand.

Rothbard introduces Molinari's essay as a pioneering work that took free-market principles to their logical conclusion by questioning the state's monopoly on defense. He situates Molinari within the French liberal tradition and highlights the essay's enduring relevance to libertarian thought.

On this episode of Power and Market, Ryan, Tho, and Connor discuss Fed drama, plummeting consumer sentiment, and how the American economy is becoming increasingly like a casino. Why The Crash Was Delayed by Robert Aro

On this episode of Power and Market, Ryan, Connor, and Tho look at the updates on the Iran war front, including whether or not a ceasefire will last and recent reporting on Israel's influence on Trump's war decision. Plus, discussion about a recent Tucker Carlson Show guest and his view that Christianity is inherently socialist.

On this episode of Power and Market, Ryan, Connor, and Tho discuss Pam Bondi being fired, the SCOTUS taking up Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship, and the difference between realist and naive libertarians. 

Drawing on Rothbard's writings on money and central banking, Murray Sabrin makes the case that inflation is a hidden tax, the Federal Reserve is neither independent nor beneficial, and that ending central banking is the unfinished business of the American Revolution.Part of the faculty panel entitled "What Rothbard Can Teach the Informed Layperson About Economics". The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition.

Dr. Tate Fegley uses Rothbard's theory of demonstrated preference to dismantle the mainstream public goods framework, showing that claims of market failure and welfare improvement by the state have no scientific basis because they contradict what individuals actually reveal through their choices.Part of the faculty panel entitled "What Rothbard Can Teach the Informed Layperson About Economics". The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition.

Dr. Per Bylund unpacks Rothbard's concept of the capitalist entrepreneur as the economy's true mover and shaker: the figure who not only forecasts future consumer demand but puts real capital behind those forecasts, bearing uncertainty and driving the structure of production.Part of the faculty panel entitled "What Rothbard Can Teach the Informed Layperson About Economics". The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition.

On this episode of Power and Market, Ryan, Tho, and Connor talk about the historic waits thanks to DC's monopoly on airport security, and Joe Kent's resignation over the Iran War.

Professor Joseph Salerno traces how Rothbard's mastery of the praxeological method led him to the controversial but logically airtight conclusion that business cycles have a single, exogenous cause and a single cure.The Murray N. Rothbard Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Steve and Cassandra Torello.The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition.