Some of the better articles from The Mises site. As you probably know, this site is filled with free articles and books on line. It is the Bible for Austrian [...]
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Chris Martenson on the Investor Problem:
Debt Ceiling Dilemma: The Foul Choice Facing Investors
Thursday, July 28, 2011, 10:23 am, by cmartenson
For the record, I still believe that there will not be a breach of the debt ceiling and no overt default for the US. Things will be worked out in the nick of time, like they always are.
However, the media is full of articles wondering about what ‘investors’ might do in response to a US default and/or credit downgrade. What will happen to Treasury prices? Will they go down as investors dump them en masse in response to a credit downgrade forcing interest rates to climb?
It’s a big question and the most likely answer is “No, not really”. Partly because these so-called investors have been well-conditioned to believe that another bailout is always around the corner, but mainly because they have nowhere to go.
The big money is trapped.
May 042011
Socialism lives and continues to grow. Now you can see its future (and yours) as clearly as one gentleman did in 1893!
There is no other social organization that has been so destructive and lethal. Arguments have destroyed it both theoretically and empirically, yet like a vampire, it seems impossible to kill. Its appeal is so strong that people willingly abandon both logic and history to flock to its false premises and promises. Remarkably, it has never worked anywhere.
The formula for Socialism is simple and virtually always the same. So are the results. As expressed by Art Carden at Mises.org:
Socialists have generally tried to do two things: dethrone and kill God so that The People or The State might be exalted, and repeal the laws of economics. They seized the opportunity in the 20th century, denouncing God as the “opiate of the masses” and denouncing the laws of economics as peculiar and historically unique artifacts of the particular conditions of production under capitalism. They denounced both as the inventions of flunky apologists for the bourgeoisie. In the 20th century, socialists (and statists of less extreme varieties) got a chance to implement their vision and left a pile of corpses some 260 million bodies deep.
Its rise to prominence as a social organization served to make the 20th Century the bloodiest, by far, in history. The US, once arguably the paradigm of freedom and prosperity, has now fallen for this vampire’s siren song and moves down this path to ruin. Freedom and prosperity have already been seriously compromised with much worse to come if America’s course is not reversed.
The death and impoverishment that results from Socialism was seen long before its mass implementation. A remarkable book was written in 1893 entitled Pictures of the Socialistic Future. Its author, Eugene Richter, foresaw with great clarity the outcomes that would result.
In his review of the book, Carden describes it thusly:
Pictures of the Socialistic Future is presented as a diary by a supporter of the socialist revolution in Germany who eventually comes to see the horrors he has wrought. He is arrogant from the beginning, applauding expropriation, approving of the use of force to prevent emigration, assenting to the reassignment of people to new tasks, and assuring doubters that paradise is just around the corner. Society declines along a series of predictable margins as shortages develop, the remaining wealth from capitalist civilization erodes, and both the military and the police force grow ominously from chapter to chapter.
You might want to read Carden’s review, or better yet, the book itself. It is available free on-line or from Mises.org.
Apr 282011
I am off for a brief vacation for the next few days. Posts will be reduced.
Jan 072011
For those interested in freedom and Austrian economics, there is no better source than the Misese Institute. Here is Jeffrey A Tucker’s description of their top ten books:
This is the biggest year in publishing by the Mises Institute in our entire history. Our open-source model has inspired authors and the staff to do some wonderful things. Donors to the Mises Institute have also enjoyed helping to make our program possible. We never imagined that we would become a full-fledged publishing house and never planned it that way, but this seems to have happened in any case.
But when you look at the list, you have to be struck by how many older books appear in here — the wisdom of the ages! This is a key advantage that the Austrian School has over others. It seeks to present fixed principles that apply in all times and all places, logical structures that explain how the world works regardless of the circumstances of time and place. This is a major difference the Austrians had with the German Historical School – probably even the defining characteristic of the Austrians- and it continues to be a reason for the School’s appeal.
Keep in mind that these sales represent numbers sold, not the dollar figures. This is also hard copy, not PDF or ePub. There is still a demand for paper, no question about that.
1. Economics in One Lesson
We are so honored to be the publisher of the only hardback of this book that Hazlitt wrote in 1946. He did it in about 10 days, and you can tell that the text has a sense of urgency. Simply put, he was fed up with the widespread ignorance of basic economic forces operating in the world, tired of politicians and editors imagining that they can favor or oppose any kind of scheme without predictable results. Here he explains the core of the fallacies that people tend toward — and he blows them up! It remains an outstanding tutorial, and probably the bestselling economics book of all time!
2. Human Action: The Scholar’s Edition
Mises’s friends had to cobble together a real entourage to persuade Yale TO CONTINUE, CLICK HERE
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