Mises Institute

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.

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.

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.

There are fuel protests in Ireland, which are not surprising given the havoc Trump’s Iran war has caused in oil markets. They also should be protesting against the government policies that make the situation worse.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/fuel-protests-ireland-their-lights-and-shadows

Ryan McMaken breaks down what the economic data is actually saying beneath the headlines. The money supply has grown by a trillion dollars in seven months, while the Fed insists policy is tight. Q4 GDP was quietly revised down to 0.5%. Consumer confidence is at multi-decade lows. And the stock market keeps hitting new highs.

Ryan explains why these aren't contradictions. They're symptoms of the same underlying problem: a bubble economy sustained by continuous liquidity injections since 2009 that the Fed has never unwound and never will. He draws a striking parallel to Britain's 1956 Suez Crisis, when an expensive military operation accelerated the decline of sterling as the global reserve currency, and asks whether the Iran war is doing the same to the dollar.

The original episode is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mX0I97xAak

Despite support from some economists in the free market camp, fractional reserve free banking is doomed for failure, as Murray Rothbard pointed out.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/case-against-free-bankers

“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.”

This essay was first published as a monograph in 1938. At the time, Garet Garrett was well established as a financial writer for the Saturday Evening Post. This essay reflects his view—also explored in his essay “Rise of Empire”—that the United States by the late 1930s had already completed its transformation into an administrative state with imperial ambitions. Those who were looking to the future for a coming anti-freedom revolution, Garrett noted, “are gazing in the wrong direction.”

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-daily/revolution-was

The right of self-determination is the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/right-self-determination

Under a system of private ownership, in which the government’s only function is to protect property rights, it is immaterial where the frontiers of people’s country are drawn.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-daily/economic-causes-war

While there is a public uproar about China having access to the work of American scientists, there is a bigger issue at stake: Is science “owned” by “the public”? If not, why are we so worried about the Chinese?

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/if-science-public-good-let-china-pay-it