[This is a transcript of a talk given June 17, 2021, at the Mises Institute’s Medical Freedom Summit in Salem, New Hampshire.] On behalf of everyone at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma and the Free Market Medical Association, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. Just over twenty-four years ago the operation of the Surgery Center of…

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Mainstream macroeconomists may—and do—disagree with such an assessment, but Austrian macroeconomists rightly consider the Misesian/Hayekian1 theory of the business cycle to be one of the signal achievements of the entire Austrian School of thought. This Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) offers a unique perspective on the destructive array of private sector incentives created by central bank manipulations of the supplies…

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When the Trump administration pushed capping the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes (SALT), the plan was billed as a way to punish Democrats in high-tax states. But the move also increased federal revenues by as much as $100 billion. Now the Biden administration is showing little enthusiasm for undoing Trump's cap. The cap means more federal revenues…

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[This passage is excerpted from Murray N. Rothbard's Conceived in Liberty, vol. 5, The New Republic: 1784–1791.]  One of the most important aspects of the proposed Constitution was its authorization for a permanent national standing army, a striking contrast to the simple reserve constituting the state militia. The standing army was a particular objection of the Antifederalists, who, in the liberal antimilitary…

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Markets clear. Or so was the accumulated wisdom in the half century before John Maynard Keynes. The British economist proposed a novel theory of economics in 1936 based on the opposite premise: markets don’t clear. While Keynesian theory is quite complex and his book widely regarded as unreadable, in his system, chronic idleness of useful resources is the rule. In…

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  Curiosity and Its Twelve Rules for Liveby F. H. BuckleyEncounter Books, 2021xx + 228 pages Frank Buckley, a Canadian-born lawyer who teaches at the Scalia School of Law at George Mason University, has given us in this remarkable book a philosophy of life, based on unusually wide knowledge and penetrating reflection. In what follows, I shall discuss only a…

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Policymakers know they hold immense power to regulate and punish firms that don’t play ball. Industry leaders know this too. So it’s likely both sides will indeed end up “playing ball."  The Democrats in Congress want comprehensive regulation of social media which will ultimately allow regime regulators to decide what is and what is not “disinformation.” This has become very…

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You know hypocrisy, as when the pot calls the kettle black? Well, this news report gives new meaning to the idea: The rise in American consumer debt has been accompanied by a sharp increase in complaints about aggressive and sometimes unscrupulous tactics by debt collection agencies, a phenomenon that has government regulators increasingly concerned. So the government is concerned about…

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Historically, meetings of the largest economies in the world have been essential to reach essential agreements that would incentivize prosperity and growth. This was not the case this time. The G7 meeting agreements were light on detailed economic decisions, except on the most damaging of them all. A minimum global corporate tax. Why not an agreement on a maximum global public…

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This spring Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes asked Fed chair Jerome Powell, “And you believe the system, because of the oversight of the Fed, has the wherewithal to stand a significant shock to the markets?”  After pointing out that the markets survived a 25 percent drop in GDP and the loss of 30 million jobs last covid spring, Powell admitted…

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