A importância do Mises Institute

The Mises Institute comes at both economic scholarship and applied political philosophy from a very different perspective. It believes that "policy analysis" without principle is mere flim-flam and ad-hocery—murky political conclusions resting on foundations of sand. It also believes that policy analysis that does not rest on scholarly principles is scarcely worth the paper it is written on or the time and money devoted to it. In short, that the only worthwhile analysis of the contemporary political and economic scene rests consistently on firm scholarly principles.

On the other hand, the Mises Institute challenges the all-too-prevalent view that to be scholarly means never, ever to take an ideological position. On the contrary, to the Mises Institute, the very devotion to truth on which scholarship rests necessarily implies that truth must be pursued and applied wherever it may lead—including the realm of current affairs. Economic scholarship divorced from application is only emasculated intellectual game-playing, just as public policy analysis without scholarship is chaos cut off from principle.

And so we see the real point underlying the uniqueness of the Mises Institute's twin programs of scholarship and application: the artificial split between the two realms is healed at last. Scholarly principles are carried forward into the analysis of government and its machinations, just as contemporary political economy now rests on sound scholarly research. From first axioms to applications, both scholarship and applied economics are an integrated whole, at long last.

 

And now, too, we see the real point behind the title of the Mises Institute. It is no accident that the Institute is the only organization in the United States that honors Ludwig von Mises in its title. For Ludwig von Mises, in his life and in his work, exemplified as no other man the fusion, the integration, of scholarly principle and principled application. Mises, one of the greatest intellects and scholars of the 20th century, scorned any notion that scholarship should remain content with abstract theorizing and never, ever apply its principles to public policy.

On the contrary, Mises always combined scholarship with policy conclusions. A man of high courage, a scholar with unusual integrity, Ludwig von Mises never knew any other way than pursuing truth to its ultimate conclusions, however unpopular or unpalatable. And, as a result, Ludwig von Mises was the greatest and most uncompromising champion of human freedom in the 20th century.

 

It is no wonder, then, that the timorous and the venal habitually shy away from the very name of Ludwig von Mises. For Mises scorned all obstacles and temptations in the pursuit of truth and freedom. In raising the proud banner of Ludwig von Mises, the Mises Institute has indeed set up a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.

The Mises Institute is expanding and flourishing as never before. Its scholarly journal, a high level journal in the theory and applications of Austrian economics, serves to expand and develop the truths of Austrian economics. But it also nurtures Austrians, encourages new, young Austrians to read and write for the journal, and finds mature Austrians theretofore isolated and scattered in often lonely academic outposts, but who are now stimulated to write and submit articles.

These men and women now know that they are not isolated, that they are part of a large and growing nationwide and even international movement. Any of us who remember what it was like to find even one other person who agreed with our seemingly eccentric views in favor of freedom and the free market will appreciate what I mean, and how vitally important has been the growing role of the Mises Institute.

The Institute's comprehensive program in Austrian education also includes publishing and distributing working papers, books, and monographs, original and reprinted, and holding conferences on a variety of important economic topics, and later publishing the conference papers in book form. Its monthly policy letter, The Free Market, provides incisive commentary on the world of political economy from an Austrian perspective.

Last but emphatically not least, the Institute sponsors a phenomenally successful week-long summer conference in the Austrian School. This program, which features a remarkable faculty, has attracted the best young minds from the world over, and gained deserved recognition as the most rigorous and comprehensive program anywhere. Here, leading Austrian economists engage in intensive instruction and discussion with students in a lovely campus setting. Participants are literally the best, the brightest and the most eager budding Austrians. From there they go on to develop, graduate, and themselves teach as Austrian scholars, or become businessmen or other opinion leaders imbued with the truth and the importance of Austrian and free- market economics.

 

The Institute encourages fellowship and an esprit de corps among faculty and students. These friendships and associations may be lifelong, and they are vital for building any sort of vibrant or cohesive long-run movement for Austrian economics and the free society.

 

The basic point of this glittering spectrum of activities is twofold: to advance the discipline, the expanding, integrated body of truth that is Austrian economics; and to build a flourishing movement of Austrian economists. No science, no discipline, develops in thin air, in the abstract; it must be nurtured and advanced by people, by individual men and women who talk to each other, write to and for each other, interact and help build the body of Austrian economics and the people who sustain it.

The remarkable achievement of the Mises Institute can only be understood in the context of what preceded it, and of the conditions it faced when it began in 1982. In 1974, leading Mises student F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in economics, a startling change from previous Nobel awards, exclusively for mathematical Keynesians. 1974 was also the year after the death of the great modern Austrian theorist and champion of freedom, Ludwig von Mises. Hayek's prize sparked a veritable revival in this long-for-gotten school of economic thought. For several years thereafter, annual scholarly week-long conferences gathered the leading Austrian economists of the day, as well as the brightest young students; and the papers delivered at these meetings became published volumes, reviving and advancing the Austrian approach. Austrian economics was being revived from forty years of neglect imposed by the Keynesian Revolution—a revolution that sent the contrasting and once flourishing school of Austrian economics down the Orwellian memory hole.

 

In this burgeoning Austrian revival, there was one fixed point so obvious that it was virtually taken for granted: that the heart and soul of Austrianism was, is, and can only be Ludwig von Mises, this great creative mind who had launched, established and developed the twentieth-century Austrian school, and the man whose courage and devotion to unvarnished, uncompromised truth led him to be the outstanding battler for freedom and laissez-faire economics in our century. In his ideas, and in the glory of his personal example, Mises was an inspiration and a beacon-light for us all.

But then, in the midst of this flourishing development, something began to go wrong. After the last successful conference in the summer of 1976, the annual high-level seminars disappeared. Proposals to solidify and expand the success of the boom by launching a scholarly Austrian journal, were repeatedly rebuffed. The elementary instructional summer seminars continued, but their tone began to change. Increasingly, we began to hear disturbing news of an odious new line being spread: Mises, they whispered, had been "too dogmatic, too extreme," he "thought he knew the truth," he "alienated people."

Yes, of course, Mises was "dogmatic," i.e. he was totally devoted to truth and to freedom and free enterprise. Yes, indeed, Mises, even though the kindliest and most inspiring of men, "alienated people" all the time, that is, he systematically alienated collectivists, socialists, statists, and trimmers and opportunists of all stripes.

And of course such charges were nothing new. Mises had been hit with these smears all of his valiant and indomitable life. The terribly disturbing thing was that the people mouthing these canards all knew better: for they had all been seemingly dedicated Misesians before and during the "boom" period.

It soon became all too clear what game was afoot. Whether independently or in concert, the various people and groups involved in this shift had made a conscious critical decision: they had come to the conclusion they should have understood long before, that praxeology, Austrian economics, uncompromising laissez-faire were popular neither with politicians nor with the Establishment. Nor were these views very "respectable" among mainstream academics. The small knot of wealthy donors decided that the route to money and power lay elsewhere, while many young scholars decided that the road to academic tenure was through cozying up to attitudes popular in academia instead of maintaining a commitment to often despised truth.

 

But these trimmers did not wish to attack Mises or Austrianism directly; they knew that Ludwig von Mises was admired and literally beloved by a large number of businessmen and members of the intelligent public, and they did not want to alienate their existing or potential support. What to do? The same thing that was done by groups a century ago that captured the noble word "liberal" and twisted it to mean its opposite—statism and tyranny, instead of liberty. The same thing that was done when the meaning of the U.S. Constitution was changed from a document that restricted government power over the individual, to one that endorsed and legitimated such power. As the noted economic journalist Garet Garrett wrote about the New Deal: "Revolution within the form," keep the name Austrian, but change the content to its virtual opposite. Change the content from devotion to economic law and free markets, to a fuzzy nihilism, to a mushy acceptance of Mises's ancient foes: historicism, institutionalism, even Marxism and collectivism. All, no doubt, more "respectable" in many academic circles. And Mises? Instead of attacking him openly, ignore him, and once in a while intimate that Mises really, down deep, would have agreed with this new dispensation.

 

Into this miasma, into this blight, at the point when the ideas of Ludwig von Mises were about to be lost to history for the second and last time, and when the very name of "Austrian" had been captured from within by its opposite, there entered the fledgling Mises Institute.

 

The Ludwig von Mises Institute began in the fall of 1982 with only an idea; it had no sugar daddies, no endowments, no billionaires to help it make its way in the world. In fact, the powers-that-be in what was now the Austrian "Establishment" tried their very worst to see that the Mises Institute did not succeed.

 

The Mises Institute persisted, however, inspired by the light of truth and liberty, and gradually but surely we began to find friends and supporters who had a great love for Ludwig von Mises and the ideals and principles he fought for throughout his life. The Institute found that its hopes were justified: that there are indeed many more devoted champions of freedom and the free market in America. Our journal and conferences and centers and fellowships have flourished, and we were able to launch a scholarly but uncompromising assault on the nihilism and statism that had been sold to the unsuspecting world as "Austrian" economics.

The result of this struggle has been highly gratifying. Thousands of students are exposed to the Austrian School as a radical alternative to mainstream theory. For the light of truth has prevailed over duplicity. There are no longer any viable competitors for the name of Austrian. The free market again has principled and courageous champions. Justice, for once, has triumphed. Not only is the Austrian economic revival flourishing as never before, but it is now developing soundly within a genuine Austrian framework. Above all, Austrian economics is once again, as it ever shall be, Misesian.

mimimi reformas mimimi

53

"[Editor's Note: Although negotiations concerning the "fiscal cliff" seem to be at an impasse, the one thing both Democrats and Republicans agree on is their desire to close tax loopholes. That is bad news for the economy, because as Ludwig von Mises said, "Capitalism breathes through those loopholes." Closing loopholes to "broaden the tax base" has been a supply-sider, Republican economic policy plank for decades. Murray Rothbard challenged this fetish from the pages of the Mises Institute's The Free Market. This article originally ran as "The Return Of The Tax Credit" in the July 1988 issue of The Free Market, and is included in the collection Making Economic Sense.]

 

 

 

[Rothbard]Modern liberalism works in a simple but effective manner: liberals Find Problems. This is not a difficult task, considering that the world abounds with problems waiting to be discovered. At the heart of these problems is the fact that we do not live in the Garden of Eden: that there is a scarcity of resources available for us to achieve all of our desired goals. Thus: there is the Problem of X number (to be discovered by sociological research) of people over 65 with hangnails; and the Problem that there are over 200 million Americans who cannot afford the BMW of their dreams. Having Found the Problem, the liberal researcher examines it and worries about it until it becomes a full-fledged Crisis.

 

A typical procedure: the liberal finds two or three cases of people with beri-beri. On television, we are treated to graphic portrayals of suffering beri-beri victims, and we are flooded with direct-mail appeals to help conquer the dread beri-beri outbreak. After ten years, and billions of federal tax dollars poured into beri-beri research, beri-beri treatment centers, beri-beri maintenance doses, and whatever, a survey of the results of the great struggle demonstrates the potentially disquieting fact that there is more beri-beri around than ever before. The idea that federal funding for beri-beri has been a waste of time and money and perhaps even counter-productive is quickly dismissed. Instead, the liberal draws the lesson that beri-beri is even more of a menace than he had thought, and that there must be a prompt across-the-board tripling of federal funding. And, moreover, he points out that we now enjoy the advantage in the struggle of having in place 200,000 highly trained beri-beri professionals, ready to devote the rest of their lives, on suitably lavish federal grants, to the great Cause.

Since voicing the idea that perhaps it is not the government's place to go around Solving Social Problems had subjected them to the withering charge of "insensitivity" and "lack of compassion," some conservatives latched onto a shrewd end-run strategy. "Yes, yes," they agreed, "we too are convinced of the urgency of your Social Crisis, and we thank you for calling it to our attention. But we believe that the way to solve the problem is not through increased government spending and higher taxes, but by allowing private persons and groups to spend money solving the problem, to be financed by tax credits."

In short, the social crisis would be solved by allowing people to keep more of their own money, provided they spend it on: aiding hangnail research, BMWs, or combating beri-beri. While the fundamental philosophical problem was sidestepped, at least people were allowed to spend their money themselves, and taxes would fall instead of increase. It is true that people were still not being allowed to keep their money, period, but at least the tax credit was a welcome step away from government and toward private action and operation.

In 1986, however, everything changed. Conservatives joined liberals in scorning the tax credit as a "subsidy" (as if allowing people to spend their own money is the same thing as giving them some of other people's money!) and in rejecting the tax credit approach as a "loophole," a breach in the noble ideal of a monolithic uniformity of taxation. Instead of trying to get people's taxes as low as possible, reducing taxes where they could, conservatives now adopted the ideal of a monolithic, "fair," imposition of an equal pain on everyone in society.

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was supposed to bring sweet simplicity to our tax forms, and to bring about fairness without changing total revenue. But when Americans finally got through wending their way through the thickets of their tax forms, they found everything so complex that even the IRS couldn't understand what was going on and most of them found that their tax payments had gone up. And there were no tax credits to bring them solace.

But there is hope. The liberal Crisis of 1988, displacing the Homeless of the previous year and the Hungry of the year before, is the fact that upper-middle class, two-wage-earner families, the very backbone of the liberal constituency, can't afford the child-care services to which they would like to become accustomed. Hence, the call, heeded on all sides, for many billions of federal taxpayer dollars, by which relatively low-income, single-wage-earner families would be forced to subsidize wealthier families with working mothers. Truly the Welfare State in action!

$20.00 $17.00

In despair, and not prepared to say either (a) that this problem is none of the government's business, or (b) that child care would be both cheaper and more abundant if government regulations requiring minimum cubic feet of space, licensed RNs on the premises, etc. were abolished, the conservatives, in their desperation, came up with our old, forgotten taxpayers' friend: the tax credit. That credit would apply, not only toward professional child care, but also for mothers choosing to tend their children at home.

Let us hope that the tax credit will return in full force. And then we can revive the lost tactic, not of "closing the loopholes," but of ever-widening them, opening them so widely for all indeed, that everyone will be able to drive a Mack truck through them, until that wondrous day when the entire federal revenue system will be one gigantic loophole."

Long Live the Loophole

Mises Daily:Thursday, December 13, 2012 by Murray N. Rothbard

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mises daily 30 de julho de 2012

MAIS BASTIAT

Relacionado ao anterior postado

O post é de lew rockweell jr., mas a citação que o começa [e que está logo abaixo] é de Mises. Há relação com o último texto aqui selecionado, de Bastiat. Vivas ao livre mercado!

"Where there is free trade, foreign competition would even in the short run frustrate the aims sought by the various measures of government intervention with domestic business. When the domestic market is not to some extent insulated from foreign markets, there can be no question of government control. The further a nation goes on the road toward public regulation and regimentation, the more it is pushed toward economic isolation. International division of labor becomes suspect because it hinders the full use of national sovereignty. The trend toward autarky is essentially a trend of domestic economic policies; it is the outcome of the endeavor to make the state paramount in economic matters"

Mises Daily, 21 de Maio de 2012

The Nazis did not invent polylogism. They only developed their own brand.

Until the middle of the 19th century no one ventured to dispute the fact that the logical structure of mind is unchangeable and common to all human beings. All human interrelations are based on this assumption of a uniform logical structure. We can speak to each other only because we can appeal to something common to all of us, namely, the logical structure of reason. Some men can think deeper and more refined thoughts than others. There are men who unfortunately cannot grasp a process of inference in long chains of deductive reasoning. But as far as a man is able to think and to follow a process of discursive thought, he always clings to the same ultimate principles of reasoning that are applied by all other men. There are people who cannot count further than three; but their counting, as far as it goes, does not differ from that of Gauss or Laplace. No historian or traveler has ever brought us any knowledge of people for whom a and non-a were identical, or who could not grasp the difference between affirmation and negation. Daily, it is true, people violate logical principles in reasoning. But whoever examines their inferences competently can uncover their errors.

Because everyone takes these facts to be unquestionable, men enter into discussions; they speak to each other; they write letters and books; they try to prove or to disprove. Social and intellectual cooperation between men would be impossible if this were not so. Our minds cannot even consistently imagine a world peopled by men of different logical structures or a logical structure different from our own.

Yet, in the course of the 19th century this undeniable fact has been contested. Marx and the Marxians, foremost among them the "proletarian philosopher" Dietzgen, taught that thought is determined by the thinker's class position. What thinking produces is not truth but "ideologies." This word means, in the context of Marxian philosophy, a disguise of the selfish interest of the social class to which the thinking individual is attached. It is therefore useless to discuss anything with people of another social class. Ideologies do not need to be refuted by discursive reasoning; they must beunmasked by denouncing the class position, the social background, of their authors. Thus Marxians do not discuss the merits of physical theories; they merely uncover the "bourgeois" origin of the physicists.

The Marxians have resorted to polylogism because they could not refute by logical methods the theories developed by "bourgeois" economics, or the inferences drawn from these theories demonstrating the impracticability of socialism. As they could not rationally demonstrate the soundness of their own ideas or the unsoundness of their adversaries' ideas, they have denounced the accepted logical methods. The success of this Marxian stratagem was unprecedented. It has rendered proof against any reasonable criticism all the absurdities of Marxian would-be economics and would-be sociology. Only by the logical tricks of polylogism could etatism gain a hold on the modern mind.

$30.00$24.00

Polylogism is so inherently nonsensical that it cannot be carried consistently to its ultimate logical consequences. No Marxian was bold enough to draw all the conclusions that his own epistemological viewpoint would require. The principle of polylogism would lead to the inference that Marxian teachings also are not objectively true but are only "ideological" statements. But the Marxians deny it. They claim for their own doctrines the character of absolute truth. Thus Dietzgen teaches that "the ideas of proletarian logic are not party ideas but the outcome of logic pure and simple." The proletarian logic is not "ideology" but absolute logic. Present-day Marxians, who label their teachings the sociology of knowledge, give proof of the same inconsistency. One of their champions, Professor Mannheim, tries to demonstrate that there exists a group of men, the "unattached intellectuals," who are equipped with the gift of grasping truth without falling prey to ideological errors. Of course, Professor Mannheim is convinced that he is the foremost of these "unattached intellectuals." You simply cannot refute him. If you disagree with him, you only prove thereby that you yourself are not one of this elite of "unattached intellectuals" and that your utterances are ideological nonsense.

The German nationalists had to face precisely the same problem as the Marxians. They also could neither demonstrate the correctness of their own statements nor disprove the theories of economics and praxeology. Thus they took shelter under the roof of polylogism, prepared for them by the Marxians. Of course, they concocted their own brand of polylogism. The logical structure of mind, they say, is different with different nations and races. Every race or nation has its own logic and therefore its own economics, mathematics, physics, and so on. But, no less inconsistently than Professor Mannheim, Professor Tirala, his counterpart as champion of Aryan epistemology, declares that the only true, correct, and perennial logic and science are those of the Aryans. In the eyes of the Marxians Ricardo, Freud, Bergson, and Einstein are wrong because they are bourgeois; in the eyes of the Nazis they are wrong because they are Jews. One of the foremost goals of the Nazis is to free the Aryan soul from the pollution of the Western philosophies of Descartes, Hume, and John Stuart Mill. They are in search of arteigen German science, that is, of a science adequate to the racial character of the Germans.

We may reasonably assume as hypothesis that man's mental abilities are the outcome of his bodily features. Of course, we cannot demonstrate the correctness of this hypothesis, but neither is it possible to demonstrate the correctness of the opposite view as expressed in the theological hypothesis. We are forced to recognize that we do not know how out of physiological processes thoughts result. We have some vague notions of the detrimental effects produced by traumatic or other damage inflicted on certain bodily organs; we know that such damage may restrict or completely destroy the mental abilities and functions of men. But that is all. It would be no less than insolent humbug to assert that the natural sciences provide us with any information concerning the alleged diversity of the logical structure of mind. Polylogism cannot be derived from physiology or anatomy or any other of the natural sciences.

Neither Marxian nor Nazi polylogism ever went further than to declare that the logical structure of mind is different with various classes or races. They never ventured to demonstrate precisely in what the logic of the proletarians differs from the logic of the bourgeois, or in what the logic of the Aryans differs from the logic of the Jews or the British. It is not enough to reject wholesale the Ricardian theory of comparative cost or the Einstein theory of relativity by unmasking the alleged racial background of their authors. What is wanted is first to develop a system of Aryan logic different from non-Aryan logic. Then it would be necessary to examine point by point these two contested theories and to show where in their reasoning inferences are made which — although correct from the viewpoint of non-Aryan logic — are invalid from the viewpoint of Aryan logic. And, finally, it should be explained what kind of conclusions the replacement of the non-Aryan inferences by the correct Aryan inferences must lead to. But all this never has been and never can be ventured by anybody. The garrulous champion of racism and Aryan polylogism, Professor Tirala, does not say a word about the difference between Aryan and non-Aryan logic. Polylogism, whether Marxian or Aryan, or whatever, has never entered into details.

Polylogism has a peculiar method of dealing with dissenting views. If its supporters fail to unmask the background of an opponent, they simply brand him a traitor. Both Marxians and Nazis know only two categories of adversaries. The aliens — whether members of a nonproletarian class or of a non-Aryan race — are wrong because they are aliens; the opponents of proletarian or Aryan origin are wrong because they are traitors. Thus they lightly dispose of the unpleasant fact that there is dissension among the members of what they call their own class or race.

The Nazis contrast German economics with Jewish and Anglo-Saxon economics. But what they call German economics differs not at all from some trends in foreign economics. It developed out of the teachings of the Genevese Sismondi and of the French and British socialists. Some of the older representatives of this alleged German economics merely imported foreign thought into Germany. Frederick List brought the ideas of Alexander Hamilton to Germany, Hildebrand and Brentano brought the ideas of early British socialism. Arteigen German economics is almost identical with contemporary trends in other countries, e.g., with American Institutionalism.

$13.00$11.00

On the other hand, what the Nazis call Western economics and therefore artfremd is to a great extent an achievement of men to whom even the Nazis cannot deny the term German. Nazi economists wasted much time in searching the genealogical tree of Carl Menger for Jewish ancestors; they did not succeed. It is nonsensical to explain the conflict between economic theory, on the one hand, and Institutionalism and historical empiricism, on the other hand, as a racial or national conflict.

Polylogism is not a philosophy or an epistemological theory. It is an attitude of narrow-minded fanatics, who cannot imagine that anybody could be more reasonable or more clever than they themselves. Nor is polylogism scientific. It is rather the replacement of reasoning and science by superstitions. It is the characteristic mentality of an age of chaos.

Mises Daily, 14 de Maio de 2012

"Production left to the market satisfies the profit-and-loss test of socially beneficial production.

For Tim Cook to obtain computer chips, glass screens, labor, and other resources to produce iPads, he must bid them away from other entrepreneurs who would have used them to produce other goods. By incurring the costs of production, Apple Inc. compensates the owners of resources for the value of the other goods they could have produced to satisfy a different group of consumers. Apple then uses the resources to produce iPads, which consumers of its products value more highly as demonstrated by their generating enough revenue for Apple Inc. to more than cover its costs."  

MISES DAILY, 12 de Março de 2012

Um texto de Rothbard que eu nem conhecia, nem tinha lido a respeito e que foi escrito nos anos 90! Entre tantos e tantos argumentos - mais dados históricos - achei um aqui que dá uma mãozinha para questionar os que adoram NOSSA Constituição como um ato mais que meramente político, [a] "sort of permanent one-way trap", que vêem ali algo de bom , "inovador"[que não seja desmentido cabalmente em "outra parte"; resumo:  não há muito de essencial, de justo, è tudo relativo, não há princípio que não possa ser derrogado lá na frente, por outro "igual", que, mais à frente ainda, cederá espaço a um outro. Solidez das Instituições é uma dessas]. 

Ou formalistas ao menos, que prezam alguma suposta importância para "legalizar" a "ordem [e o pogresso?] institucional"[querem uma vagyuinha no STJ, né seus putos?], ou seja, apenas sob o aspecto de chancelar, CONSTITUIR uma nação - INDEPENDENTEMENTE DO QUE ESTIVER ESCRITO?, pergunto. Eram foda mesmo os parlamentares da Constituinte? Benza-Deus! Chega de ragear contra a amada e sublime CF/88, mas vai aí um sutil argumento contra ela [mas há de se ler o texto todo, lá no link pro mises institute. Ou soa muito Hippie, exagerado, sem Deus no coração [com tantos escolásticos citados, fica difícil de crer] ser contra guerras e totalitarismos ao mesmo tempo? 

"These 13 separate republics, in order to wage their common war against the British Empire, each sent representatives to the Continental Congress, and then later formed a Confederation, again with severely limited central powers, to help fight the British. The hotly contested decision to scrap the Articles of Confederation and to craft a new Constitution demonstrates conclusively that the central government was not supposed to be perpetual, not to be the sort of permanent one-way trap that Grotius had claimed turned popular sovereignty over to the king forevermore. In fact, it would be very peculiar to hold that the American Revolutionaries had repudiated the idea that a pledge of allegiance to the king was contractual and revocable, and break their vows to the king, only to turn around a few short years later to enter a compact that turned out to be an irrevocable one-way ticket for a permanent central government power. Revocable and contractual to a king, but irrevocable to some piece of paper!"

MISES DAILY, 28 de Setembro de 2011

"Marx was economically ignorant; he didn't realize that there can be doubts concerning the best means of production to be applied. The big question is, how shall we use the available scarce factors of production. Marx assumed that what has to be done is obvious. He didn't realize that the future is always uncertain, that it is the job of every businessman to provide for the unknown future. In the capitalist system, the workers and technologists obey the entrepreneur. Under socialism, they will obey the socialist official. Marx didn't take into consideration the fact that there is a difference between saying what has to be done and doing what somebody else has said must be done. The socialist state is necessarily a police state."

MISES DAILY, 14 de Novembro de 2011

Detonando a falácia de que os 1% mais rycos comandam e exploram os outros 99% http://mises.org/daily/5799/The-Rich-Arent-Dispossessing-the-Rest [dica: capitalismo é mobilidade]

MISES DAILY, 10 de Novembro de 2011

Crusoé e Sexta-feira, sempre imperdíveis: http://mises.org/daily/5790/What-Gives-Rise-to-Society

The Swedish Model Reassessed [AFFLUENCE DESPITE THE WELFARE STATE]

"The Swedish model is often dramatized in the public policy debate, described as either a social democratic utopia or a failed socialist experiment. These views are far from the truth. Sweden is a successful country in terms of low poverty rate and long life expectancy. However, these factors have much to do with Swedish culture that existed already when taxes were still relatively low.

As Milton Friedman has previously noted, the millions of US residents of Swedish descent also have a low poverty rate. As is shown in this report, they combine this with a living standard that is over 50 percent better compared to Swedes living in Sweden. The transformation of Sweden from an impoverished agrarian society to a modern industrialized nation is a rarely mentioned, but quite significant, example of the role of free markets.

One should remember that the golden age of Swedish entrepreneurship, where one successful firm after another was founded in the small country and gained international renown, occurred during a time where taxes and the scope of government were quite limited. Sweden shifted to radicalized social democratic policies in the 1960s, 1970s, and the 1980s.

However, this transformation was not successful, as it led to long-term diminished entrepreneurial growth, lagging behind in terms of wealth compared to other industrialized nations, and an erosion of previously strong work and benefit norms. The move towards high taxes, relatively generous government benefits, and a regulated labor market, is related to the situation in which Swedish society has had difficulty integrating even highly-educated immigrants, and where a fifth of the population of working age are supported by various forms of government handouts. It is, however, important to remember that Sweden, like other Nordic nations, has compensated for these policies by improving economic liberty in other fields. Some reforms, such as the partial privatization of the mandatory pensions system and voucher systems in schools and health care surpass what has been possible to implement in most developed nations.

Swedish society is not necessarily moving away from the idea of a welfare state, but continuous reforms are implemented towards economic liberty within the scope of welfare. The rise of government has been stopped and even reversed in recent years. The nation is again returning to the free market policies which served it so well in the past."

MISES DAILY, 26 de Setembro de 2011

O burocrata como eleitor.

Highlights:

             "The political structure of Germany and France, in the last years preceding the fall of their democratic constitutions, was to a very great extent influenced by the fact that for a considerable part of the electorate the state was the source of income"

                 "Their main concern was to get more out of the public funds. They did not care for “ideal” issues like liberty, justice, the supremacy of the law, and good government. They asked for more money, that was all"

                 "To create new offices with new employees was called a “positive” policy, and every attempt to prevent squandering public funds was disparaged as “negativism”    

MISES DAILY, 19 DE JULHO DE 2011

Savings and Capital Goods

http://mises.org/daily/5455/The-Central-Role-of-Saving-and-Capital-Goods

A AmaZônia não é de ninguém [Fernando Chiocca no Mises.org ]

http://mises.org/daily/5451/Who-Owns-the-Amazon

MISES DAILY, 3O DE JUNHO, "How Blessed Is the State That Thus Destroyeth the Car"

MISES DAILY, 3O DE JUNHO, "How Blessed Is the State That Thus Destroyeth the Car", escrito por Jeffrey A. Tucker. O contexto é a luta contra o carro em favor do "environment", como se carros NÃO fossem algo que utilizamos por alguma lógica, fossem SOMENTE desperdício.

"The problem with "urban planners" — as Jane Jacobs saw — is that they do not think of people as individuals with interests who act according to their own plans with a resulting spontaneous order that makes cities great. Instead, they want to plan with a bird's-eye view of the place and force everyone to comply whether it makes people miserable or not. In the worst case, these planners are secretly horrified by the sight of millions of people living well and doing their own thing, and, like Chairman Mao, cry out for what they believe should be a more orderly system.

Armed with the power of the contemporary state — which is destroying prosperity and civilizational advance because, as it turns out, doing this is the only thing it is good at — the urban planners are accomplishing their goal, but to what end? Is reversing a century of progress a good way to make life better? The planners think so, because they have a different idea of what life should be like. They want the city to be more like an ant farm than a place for choosing, dreaming, and accomplishing. The static existence of workers and peasants under communism seems much more to their liking."