Audio Mises Wire

While Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) is popular in academic economics and finance, it fails to properly explain profits, mistakenly confusing entrepreneurial profit seeking with risk management.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/risk-uncertainty-profits-and-modern-portfolio-theory

For more than 40 years, the Farmland Protection Policy Act has socialized US farmlands and transferred wealth to politically-connected people. What it hasn’t done is protect farmland.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/farmland-protection-policy-act-crisis-politics-and-quiet-socialization-land

Inflation does more than just force up prices. It destroys the wealth-producing process, especially with young people who are prevented from acquiring the same kinds of assets earlier generations procured. The result is inter-generational conflict.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/inflation-interventionism-and-intergenerational-resentment

David Beito’s new biography on Franklin D. Roosevelt is not the hagiographic nonsense that has dominated the US history profession. That is a good thing. Americans should know how FDR’s presidency led to one disaster after another.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/bursting-bubble-was-fdr

Elon Musk recently claimed that artificial intelligence will make money itself obsolete. He needs to read the literature of Austrian economics.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/elon-musk-claims-money-will-become-irrelevant-he-right

Marion Millar has been charged in Scotland with the crime of “malicious communication” due to tweets criticizing gender self-identification. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-banning-hate-speech-evil

The Mexican-War resulted in more territory for the new American empire, but the US government started it under false pretenses. A young US soldier who fought—Ulysses Grant—knew better, exposing the lies from Washington.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/unjustified-conflict-grants-memoirs-mexican-american-war

The Lane Kiffin saga has dominated sports headlines this past week, highlighting the sea changes that have come over college sports—an especially college football—in the past decade. Much of this change is being driven by the easy money regime of the Federal Reserve.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/lane-train-and-rest-college-football-madness-has-been-fueled-easy-money

New York’s mayor-elect believes he can implement socialist policies through sheer rhetoric, as though mere words can make socialism work. However, economics involves real things and reality will hit New Yorkers soon enough, and they won’t like it.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/zohran-mamdanis-socialism-flunks-basic-economics

For 150 years, Thanksgiving has been primarily an apolitical holiday that's really about family fun and eating a huge meal.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/thanksgiving-celebration-domestic-life

The first English settlers in America learned a hard lesson about socialist economics in the early years of their new colonies as they faced starvation. Once they embraced free enterprise, however, they had something to be thankful for.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/thanksgiving-celebration-free-enterprise

From the perspective of the state, the ideal society is one composed of single parents raising a small number of children in irreligious households.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/families-are-key-building-alternatives-state

In the wilderness of the New World, the Plymouth Pilgrims had progressed from the false dream of communism to the sound realism of capitalism.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/thanksgiving-celebrating-birth-american-free-enterprise

Is minarchism an antidote for the growing statism and socialism infecting our body politic? Think of it as “statism lite.”Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/minarchism-worst-kind-state-idolatry

The rent is too high. However, government interference into rental markets has been the main reason rents are so high in the first place.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/government-intervention-not-blackrock-blame-housing-crisis

Cheney was an architect of both Iraq wars, and he was a perennial supporter of the American surveillance state, torture, and more. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-i-wont-be-mourning-dick-cheney

We must realize that the two most powerful motivations in human history have always been ideology and economic interest, and that a joining of these two motivations can be downright irresistible.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-daily/origins-welfare-state-america

Inflation is not just an economic phenomenon. It also undercuts the foundations of a civilization, leading to the breakdown of society itself.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/road-de-civilization-inflation-and-moral-erosion-society

Roger Williams, the Baptist minister whose libertarian views ran afoul of the Massachusetts Bay Colony authorities, should be honored as one of this country’s early libertarians.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/roger-williams-exemplar-americas-soul

The revolutionaries include the pamphleteer writing in his study, the journalist, the agitator, the organizer, the campus activist, the theoretician, the philanthropist. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/meaning-revolution

The government “shutdown” and the so-called threat to the food stamp program may be abated for now, but we need to understand why this program has metastasized in recent years. James Bovard tells us why.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/food-stamps-and-federal-war-self-reliance

November 11 was once known as Armistice Day, the day set aside to celebrate the end of WWI. In this essay Rothbard discusses the war as the triumph of several Progressive intellectual strains from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/rothbard-world-war-i-triumph-progressive-intellectuals

We libertarians may be anti-state, but that we are emphatically not anti-society or opposed to the real world, however contaminated it might be. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/resisting-evil

The dystopian futuristic movie Elysium portrays a terrible future in which only the rich have medical care while the poor suffer on an overpopulated, polluted planet. The film’s theme—that only huge wealth transfers can bring medical care to low-income people—is fundamentally flawed.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/dystopia-misdiagnosed-how-rich-drive-health-innovation

If Hobbes is right about human nature, then he is wrong about the state as a solution. Ironically, his key arguments for the state are actually key reasons against it.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/hobbess-accidental-case-against-state

While giddy socialists are proclaiming that Zohran Mamdani's electoral victory is the beginning of a socialist takeover of the U.S., the Democratic Socialists of America have a long way before they can complete their stated mission.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/election-mamdani-what-it-means-and-what-it-doesnt-mean

When studying praxeology, something as trivial as the recipe for chocolate cake can become a way to better teach us Austrian economics.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/recipes-rothbard-what-chocolate-cake-can-teach-about-economics

Murray Rothbard’s view of the origins of World War II has an important lesson for us today.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/murray-rothbard-and-world-war-ii-origins

Henry Hazlett wrote in Economics in One Lesson that each generation has to relearn economic fallacies that government employs when implementing bad policies. New Yorkers are about to learn a lot of new lessons.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/all-means-elect-mamdani-and-watch-his-socialist-laboratory-work

Trump's team is citing the fentanyl crisis to justify its escalations near Venezuela. But virtually all illicit fentanyl is made and smuggled thousands of miles away. If war or regime change in Venezuela is good for the American people, why hide the true motivations?Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/trump-administration-lying-us-another-war

The food stamp program is a way for Pepsico and the Coca-Cola company to legally rip off the taxpayers.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-food-industry-lobbyists-keep-food-stamp-gravy-train-going

For more than 60 years, the US government has enforced a trade embargo against Cuba, ostensibly to force the communist government into collapse. The only thing that has collapsed, however, is the logic in the US policy.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/brief-history-enduring-american-embargo-against-cuba

September’s fiscal surplus was not thanks to tariff revenue. In truth, it was thanks to Americans paying more in income tax. Tariffs were only 5.7 percent of revenue.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/no-tariffs-did-not-cause-septembers-budget-surplus

Despite the change in the White House, critical race theory is still with us, dominating the academic sectors and being ingrained in progressive culture. We need to better recognize what it is and how it works in order to better refute it.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-recognize-critical-race-theory

No one doubts that the US is a politically and culturally divided nation. Contrary to much of public opinion, politicians like Donald Trump did not cause the crisis. Instead, as Lawrence Mead writes, they are a symptom of the government's assault on our culture.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/recognizing-roots-current-us-political-turmoil

As a true market entrepreneur, as opposed to a political entrepreneur, James J. Hill successfully built a transcontinental railroad, outcompeting his government-subsidized competitors.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/myth-robber-barons-james-hill-versus-crony-competitors

Once again, the Trump administration’s “dealmaking” on international trade has blown up, this time pulling the rug from under US soybean farmers. This isn’t the first trade policy fiasco, nor will it be the last.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/america-hurts-farmers-and-discounts-chinas-soy-imports-while-providing-crutch-argentina

The concept of “planned obsolescence” makes no economic sense and is often an excuse for governments to harass and shake down innovative entrepreneurs. Much of so-called planned obsolescence is really entrepreneurship at work improving products for users and consumers.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/myth-planned-obsolescence

“I see that you are preparing the groundwork for supporting Nixon,” Rothbard wrote Meyer. “Again, for shame! Is this what conservative principles are coming down to...?"Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/new-rothbard-letters-show-his-early-opposition-both-nixon-and-reagan

There have been four gold busts under the fiat dollar money regimes since the “freeing” of the gold price in March 1968. Will the current gold boom end in a similar bust?Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/what-will-next-gold-bust-look

The US Constitution as originally written and understood no longer exists. The first wave of “progressives” reinterpreted it to their liking before later generations of progressives finished the job.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-progressives-broke-constitution-and-praised-themselves-it

Popular views of capitalism and free markets are not shaped by the facts, but rather by anti-capitalist intellectuals and the media.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/popular-media-romanticism-and-statist-insinuation

The yearning for a state-controlled system is not born of compassion for others but rather of infantile selfishness.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/economics-and-infantilization-culture

“Science” is now indistinguishable from politics. As the “acid rain” hysteria showed back in the 1970s and 1980s, “follow the science” is just a political slogan, unrelated to actual science.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/acid-rain-scare-and-science-industrial-complex

Once upon a time, American firms built with the long term in view, and the government did not try to hinder them. Today, thanks to reckless federal government spending, we are living hand-to-mouth, accumulating massive debts, and soon enough will be broke.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/going-broke

“The Civil War was really the watershed,” he wrote Meyer. “Lincoln was America’s first dictator, and almost all the Republican Acts were monstrous.”Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/letters-frank-meyer-reveal-rothbards-views-lincoln-slavery-and-popular-sovereignty

The recent assassination of Charlie Kirk has focused attention on political violence. Ludwig von Mises, not surprisingly, understood that tying morality to politicized state helps create the climate where political violence is prevalent.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/mises-separating-morality-and-state

During the Middle Ages, taxation was considered to be appropriate only as an extreme measure in times of emergency, and as a last resort. Kings were expected to subsist on revenues from their own private property.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-taxes-were-so-hated-middle-ages

Leftists seek to create a new society that supposedly is peaceable. However, they also celebrate violence done against political opponents, something that Murray Rothbard understood as undermining every supposed peaceful goal they claim to be pursuing.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/individualism-and-violence-identitarian-left

According to mainstream economists, inflation aids economic growth while deflation impairs growth. Austrian economists, however, point out that in much of US history, economic growth was accompanied by deflation.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/inflation-and-economic-growth

Advocates for US military intervention have invoked the war against the Barbary pirates as justification. Yet, an examination of that conflict shows that President Jefferson’s actions were limited and followed the direction of Congress.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/jeffersons-war-barbary-pirates-unjustified-password-military-intervention

Was Jackson’s victory over the Second Bank of the United States a triumph for liberty, or did it merely expand federal authority under the guise of constraining it? His legacy is complicated, but there is much we can learn from it.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/complicated-legacy-andrew-jacksons-bank-war

The Renaissance period is seen as mostly positive by historians, but the sinister development of absolutism and the imperial state complicates the legacy of that time.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/absolutism-and-reason-state-rothbard-growth-statism

Although the political establishment claims the Comey indictment represents an unprecedented moment in our history, the truth is much different. Federal prosecutors have a long history of bringing unjustified, politically-motivated prosecutions.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/james-comey-not-innocent-victim-lawfare-he-helped-create

By trying to protect dairy farmers and raise their incomes, the government created a massive cheese surplus, then gave it away, thus harming the farmers they were trying to support.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/wheels-government-cheese

Created to assure that newly-freed slaves would receive equal legal protection, the Fourteenth Amendment has come to dominate federal jurisprudence. This is not a good thing.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-fourteenth-amendment-empowers-judicial-activism

Individual voters have little reason to become informed. Politicians have strong incentives to pander rather than persuade. Partisans are rewarded for tribal loyalty rather than epistemic integrity.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/when-political-violence-becomes-signal

President Trump’s latest anti-broadcast media actions are portrayed in legacy media as being unprecedented. While they definitely are outrageous, they hardly are the first time presidents have used federal agencies to go after broadcast opposition.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/presidents-have-long-history-using-fcc-silence-their-critics

Men can be trained to regard their exploiters as the virtuous architects of safety and prosperity, as so many so-called "citizens" in America are so relentlessly trained to do. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-government-so-loved-so-many

The irony of the Jimmy Kimmel controversy is that he owed his spot at ABC precisely because his work was non-political. Unfortunately in modern America, professional clowns feel they must become political tools.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/jimmy-kimmel-american-tragedy

“Hate speech” does not exist. At all. That’s a concept the Left invented to justify state-enforced censorship of speech the Left doesn't like.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/hate-speech-isnt-real-and-pam-bondi-enemy-freedom

One of the reasons Charlie Kirk was considered "divisive" was that he spoke out against the civil rights laws, which was interpreted as his supporting Jim Crow segregation. Yet, these laws did not increase liberty but rather imposed a new progressive vision on Americans.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/charlie-kirk-and-sacred-totem-civil-rights

Since the French Revolution, leftism has served as the impetus for many of the state’s worst massacres and totalitarian impulses.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/unique-evil-left

Modern political life in the U.S. is increasingly defined by violence and toleration of violence against one's perceived enemies. The murder of Charlie Kirk has exposed the left's endorsement of deadly violence as a political tool.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/dehumanization-charlie-kirk-came-establishment

Political elites insisted that the 9/11 attacks occurred because the US Government lacked power and authority. Unfortunately, the elites got their wish and Americans received war, economic calamity, and massive government debt in return.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/911-attacks-exposed-major-government-failure-americans-learned-wrong-lessons

According to the neo-conservative war hawks, every so-called enemy is the Next Hitler and every year is 1939. The failure to seek new conflicts abroad is equated to the failure of Great Britain and France to stand up to Hitler before World War II broke out.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/every-year-1939-war-hawks

The US and its Western allies may scoff at this challenge, but it only became possible due to high-handedness (to use the kindest word imaginable) and outright illegality of US actions.Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/more-thoughts-brics-and-gold-versus-us-and-dollar

The hackneyed argument for government regulation of speech -- yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theater -- has always been a red herring. As Murray Rothbard wrote, private property rights should be front-and-center when dealing with free speech issues.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/you-cant-yell-chicken-jockey-crowded-theater-except-when-you-can

The media is spinning President Trump‘s “trade deals” as a “victory” for the White House. Yet, when we break down these “deals” into their particulars, we find that American producers and consumers will be worse off than before.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/tariffs-wont-spawn-good-trade-deals

In both cases, the use of nationalism and patriotism by Brazilian governments reveals a recurring strategy: appealing to national pride to divert attention from self-inflicted crises.Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/ambiguous-nationalism-patriotism-brazilian-politics

After the tragic 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI rolled out the same "lone nut" narrative about who did it. However, much evidence exists to show that FBI informants and agents embedded with white supremacy groups may well have been involved.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/oklahoma-city-bombing-lesson-government-lawlessness

From seminary classrooms to Supreme Courts, a network redefined justice, democracy, and freedom in the name of social control. Many goals of the Foro de São Paulo, launched in 1990 by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Fidel Castro, sadly, are being realized.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/silent-war-latin-america-how-foro-de-sao-paulo-subverted-liberty-within

When presidents Trump and Putin meet this Friday, the political and military landscape is much different than it was when war broke out more than three years ago and Putin was willing to talk about a real cease fire. Thanks to western dishonesty, Ukraine's future is bleak.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/trump-putin-meeting-how-did-we-get-here

Following World War II, President Truman helped produce the modern national security state by creating the Central Intelligence Agency. Only later did Truman regret what he did, as the CIA turned into a monster that could never be tamed.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/harry-truman-founding-father-national-security-state

Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/you-created-jobs-robots

How do we define liberty? Hayek saw it as the absence of most (but not all) coercion, but that depends upon how one defines “coercion.” Murray Rothbard believed that Hayek was too willing to accept forms of coercion that were anti-freedom.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/meaning-coercion-hayekian-philosophy

Mainstream economists claim that they can use econometric models to emulate human action and, thus, create an economic laboratory. These models, however, cannot tell us about cause-and-effect, which is vital to understanding praxeology and economic behavior.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/can-econometric-models-fulfill-role-economic-laboratory

Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/jamaicas-beaches-and-property-rights

Long a constitutional monarchy with ties to Great Britain, many in Jamaica are looking to end the old relationship and become a republic. But is this movement simply a reaction to anti-colonialism, and what kind of constitution would the new republic create? So far, no answers.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/will-jamaica-become-republic

A relic of the Cold War, the US embargo and travel restrictions to Cuba violate American freedoms and they accomplish nothing to end Cuba's communist regime or win freedom for Cubans. Yet, this failed policy has persisted for nearly 65 years with no end in sight.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/us-travel-restrictions-cuba-violate-freedoms-americans-and-cubans

What do we mean by equality? F.A. Hayek believed that equality under law and the socialist belief of material equality were opposed to each other. Furthermore, he held liberty to be necessary for civilization itself to flourish.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/equality-under-hayekian-rule-law

Before the American Revolution, there were the Levellers, who sought liberty during the English Civil War. While their influence on the American colonists would be indirect, nonetheless, many of their ideas reflected what came after American independence.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/reintroducing-levellers

In most of the world, inflation is no longer an exception, it is the rule. Official inflation targets of 4 percent, 5 percent, or even 6 percent per year have become normalized.Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/inflation-design-how-keynesian-dogma-undermines-capitalism

In this week's Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon reviews Profit Without Apology: The Need to Stand Up For Business by Onkar Ghate and Dan Watkins. While praising the effort, he also shares some concerns.Original article: https://mises.org/friday-philosophy/we-should-not-apologize-businesses-being-profitable

In examining the Austrian Regression Theorem of Money, Joshua Mawhorter takes on the Chartalist/MMT claim that government gives money its value. The Chartalist/MMT advocates lack a necessary cause-and-effect mechanism to prove their claims.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/last-day-barter-and-questions-first-day-chartalism

How did Europe move from a collection of impoverished city states and kingdoms to a prosperous state of affairs? Europeans learned the value of contracts, private property, and the limited power of the state, and in turn, they flourished.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/european-miracle-how-contractual-politics-and-divided-power-gave-birth-western-prosperity

There is much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair by just about every leader in the West, especially by an almost apoplectic President Trump, over a so-called “sinister threat” by the BRICS.Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/can-brics-nations-lead-us-better-world

One cannot deny that American institutions have been corrupted by leftist thought, which demonstrates the success of Italian communist Antonio Gramsci's call to bring about socialism in the West by eroding the institutional barriers against it.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/scholars-and-schemers-how-left-ruined-higher-education

Artificial Intelligence is advancing, but people often fear it for the wrong reasons. AI is not a threat in itself, but rather becomes a threat when the state uses it as one more tool to limit individual liberty and to engage in oppressive behavior.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/threats-ai-come-state

The recent attack by Israeli setters on the village of Taybeh in the West Bank has brought attention to the conflicts between Israel and the Christian population in Palestine. American Christians who uncritically support Israel should take a harder look at what is happening.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/americas-war-arab-christians

The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. If Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-daily/harry-truman-and-atomic-bomb

Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/cold-war-20-heats

Whether President Trump overreacted to the recent BLS is irrelevant to the fact that government data often is inaccurate and politically suspect. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/no-matter-who-president-dont-trust-government-data

"Anarcho-Capitalism is good in theory, but it would never work in the real world." That is a common objection to A-C, but is it correct? What are the objections and how do we answer them. Stanisław Wójtowicz provides some answers.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/anarcho-capitalism-nine-most-important-objections

Apparently, Ireland's government has not learned any lessons from rent control disasters elsewhere. Thus, the Irish will have to learn this hard lesson and face the consequences of their economic folly.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/bad-worse-irish-rent-control

A yacht—like any good exchanged on the free market—represents countless value-maximizing exchanges and represents an industry that employs thousands of people to provide goods and services to others.Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/jeff-bezoss-yacht-driver-economic-activity

Understanding any era of history requires the ability to view complex things. However, people often employ simple narratives as their historical guides, which leads to wrong conclusions. The pre-war history of the American South is one that is much more complex than the narratives imply.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/complexity-historical-narratives

What use is the Fed's supposed devotion to being "data-driven" when the data itself is unreliable and the Fed is basing its policies on data that is thoroughly wrong?Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/fed-says-it-data-driven-data-isnt-any-good

Thanks for modern Keynesian economics, most people believe money gains its value from the government that issues it. Money's value, however, is historically tied to the value of the commodity from which money was derived.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-does-money-acquire-its-value

In an attempt to compete with the Soviet Union by bringing future elite political leaders from Africa to study in US universities, Sen. John Kennedy and the CIA inadvertently spread Marxism here and abroad. One product of this program was bringing Mamdani's Marxist father to the US.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-jfk-and-cia-gave-nyc-zohran-mamdani-and-obama-us