Supposedly, the "big news" is the decline of inflation. However, the monetary and political forces driving the latest bout of inflation have not gone away. Original Article: "The Great Phony Disinflation Enters Its Finale"
Scott Lincicome Thirty‐four years ago tomorrow, Boris Yeltsin — then a newly elected member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union — visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where he toured the U.S. government facility and the various technologies therein. But it’s a brief, impromptu
In the past decade, the growth of the Internet and social media has brought with it a dramatic uptick in populist sentiment. Legacy institutions have declared war against populism, referring to its claims as “misinformation” or “disinformation” and calling on the government or government-adjacent actors
Property and Justice: A Liberal Theory of Natural Rightsby Billy ChristmasRoutledge, 2021; xii + 184 pp. What is the basis for property rights? Murray Rothbard’s answer starts from self-ownership. Each person owns himself and on that basis can acquire unowned resources by appropriating them. Most contemporary
Since the end of World War II, the US dollar has been the world's reserve currency. That status may well change because US monetary authorities insist on inflating the dollar into oblivion. Original Article: "Dollar Hegemony Is Ending Due to Geopolitical Changes"
The other day in my intro environmental and natural resource economics class we used the BDM method to elicit willingness to pay (WTP) values for an App State travel tumbler (I paid $26 with a faculty discount at the university bookstore). I explained the BDM
The Economist reported on August 14, 2023, that “Argentina could get its first libertarian president.” They added that Javier Milei, the winner of Argentina’s election primary was, imagine this, a “free-market radical.” The problem, as I see it, is that few people actually know what
After governments create crises, they use those crises to seize new powers. After the crisis subsides, governments give up some, but not all, of their new authority, which we call the ratchet effect. Original Article: "Beyond Crisis: The Ratchet Effect and the Erosion of Liberty"
California's decision to grant reparations to black Americans has galvanized activists across the globe. Activists think that doing so will remedy the black-white wealth gap. Ensuring that blacks are on par with whites, however, is a strange goal, since East Asians outperform whites on several
On this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop look at the domestic costs of 9/11 and its continuing impact on Americans. The two discuss articles they wrote this week about how the events sowed the seeds of the current regime, how it reversed