Mises Media

Mises examines the doctrine of a “hampered” or regulated market as a distinct third system and answers Schmalenbach’s thesis that free enterprise was giving way to a bound economy.

The central essay: interventionism as a supposed economic system, the real nature of intervention, and how price ceilings, minimum wages, and similar measures defeat their own aims—leaving only a choice between the free market and socialism.

Mises’s 1929 preface, written in Vienna for the original German edition, presenting the essays as a sustained critique of interventionism, then the reigning economic policy across Europe and America.

Hans F. Sennholz, the translator, lays out Mises’s target—the belief in a “third system” of a hampered market economy standing between capitalism and socialism—and why that middle way cannot hold.

Margit von Mises introduces the collection, recalling that these essays date from the 1920s and noting that the final essay was added to the later German edition.

On the latest episode of Minor Issues, Mark Thornton examines the “dupes of war”—citizens trained by government, schools, and historians to accept false stories about the causes, costs, and supposed benefits of war. Drawing on Ludwig von Mises, Mark argues that war is not caused by isolated incidents or sudden crises, but by statism, nationalism, interventionism, and state worship.

He challenges the standard narratives around World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, wartime “prosperity,” and government-funded innovation, warning that war benefits politicians, bankers, the military-industrial complex, and global power elites while destroying lives, capital, trade, and civilization itself.

On Side B, Thornton joins Kai Hoffmann to discuss the three Austrian “bust signals”: asset bubbles, price inflation, and the K-shaped economy. He also covers gold, silver, commodities, war-driven supply shocks, Fed propaganda, and why younger people are increasingly hungry for real economics.

2026 is the Year of Rothbard—Murray's 100th birthday—and we're celebrating by giving away free copies of The Origins of the Federal Reserve through July 31. Grab yours today at https://mises.org/issuesfree

20% off listener offer on the insulated Minor Issues tumbler and three of Mark's books: https://mises.org/MinorIssuesTumbler. Use coupon code Thornton.

Be sure to follow Minor Issues at https://Mises.org/MinorIssues

Austrian economics does not share the same methodology as we see in the economics mainstream. The Austrian emphasis on praxeology provides a better explanation of economic events than does the mathematically-bound mainstream.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/praxeology-within-physics-social-sciences

Ryan McMaken dismantles three persistent myths of American healthcare before tracing the origins of social insurance to Bismarck's deliberate scheme to bind citizens to the state "by the chains of gratitude" and closing with Mises' 1944 prediction that a population half-dependent on government healthcare would never vote to dismantle it..

Recorded in Windham, New Hampshire, on June 27, 2026. Special thanks to Joe and Tracy Matarese for sponsoring this event.

Intervention begets intervention. This was the case following the American Revolution, as the consequences of inflation, credit expansion, and wartime disruptions set up for the depression of 1784 in peacetime.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/depression-1784-revolutionary-inflation-and-post-revolution-depression

While Adam Smith is celebrated in some circles as the “Father of Free-Market Economics” (Austrians would disagree), his writings on the “disadvantages” of the worker are misleading.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-adam-smith-helped-create-modern-unionism