Mises Media

In this article from 1950, Murray Rothbard suggests some of the less bad ways of financing military operations. Hint: monetary inflation and taxing savings and investment are among the worst.

Original article: https://mises.org/articles-interest/economics-war

Karl Marx not only misunderstood value and production, but he also was wrong about large-scale and small-scale property owners.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/marx-was-wrong-about-necessary-ruin-small-landed-property

Who would join a radical minority movement, and commit him- or herself for life to social obloquy and a marginal existence, for the sake of 20% more bathtubs, or 15% more candy bars? Who will man the barricades either physically or spiritually, for more peanuts or Pepsi?

Original article: https://mises.org/articles-interest/duty-natural-outlaws-shut

The recent death of Paul Ehrlich reminds us that his crackpot overpopulation theories still are with us, even as they are being regularly discredited.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/depopulation-wont-save-us-or-planet

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/RadioRothbard

Radio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off

The hypothesis of this essay is that Human Action—particularly the first few hundred pages—was instrumental to the new way of economic thinking that emerged with the new Chicago School, the Public Choice School, price theory, economic imperialism, general equilibrium analysis, and, ironically, the rise of economic formalism. Because the reader is "forced" to "test" and accept all the steps in Mises's argument introspectively, a basis of agreement is established. This unconscious agreement might not be recognized by the reader or might be recognized as nothing more than mere common sense. However, this acceptance by the reader is a form of learning by osmosis.

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."

Chapter 13 from The Influence and Significance of Human Action After 75 Years. 

Human Action is indispensable for comprehending the operation and consequences of interventionism, which is the least understood economic system. The treatise is the culmination of Mises's long-standing research program, which was to analyze and compare the three possible economic systems—capitalism, socialism, and interventionism—from the viewpoint of which best promotes social cooperation under the division of labor. Almost all contemporary progressives have embraced interventionism as the true path to socialist bliss.