Mises Institute

The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution it launched were unique because they were focused on decentralization, liberty, and limitations on state power. This movement did not “create a nation.” Rather, it seriously challenged and limited the Hobbesian state.

As we commemorate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it deserves to be read as its authors intended: as both a universal defense of natural rights and as a formal declaration by 13 free and independent states that they were assuming their place among the nations of the earth.

In this issue of The Misesian, we bring the focus back to the Americans who brought about what Murray Rothbard has called a truly libertarian revolution against the power of states and imperialism.

As long as the explanation for human behavior seems logical and fits their worldview, people can carry on mistakenly believing that they can identify causal relations from studying group disparities.

Contained within Rothbard's multi-volume history of the American Revolution, Conceived in Liberty, is an extended argument against the dominant conservative narrative on the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

Murray Rothbard wrote that statistics are the lifeblood for government intervention. Based on certain presuppositions, statistics allow interventionists to identify “problems” to solve.

By shielding Washington from accountability, the 2008 cover-up institutionalized systemic moral hazard and permanently crippled market discipline.

Despite claims that the Federal Reserve System is a “stabilizing” force in the US economy, the truth is that the Fed is and has been the main engine of inflation for more than a century.

Politicians sell business regulation as benefiting consumers. In reality, as we saw from airline regulation, the system creates cartels that shut out consumers and benefit regulated businesses.

The modern way of dealing with criminal behavior has been mass incarceration, yet crime abounds. Murray Rothbard believed that restitution and other methods were superior to the present state-run system.

We are told ad nauseum that the capitalist system runs on greed. In reality, a successful economy depends mostly upon trust.

From the sixteenth century to today, techno-asset inflation is found where monetary inflation and technological revolution interact to produce virulent asset inflation.