Patent trolls are companies whose entire business model is to file patent suits against legitimate businesses, in order to extort them for money. Patent trolls are bad. However, they are not the worst thing about the current intellectual property regime.
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Economic Fallacies about Greece
There has been much unscientific economic pronouncements about Greece’s financial problems and especially how to solve them. Below is a short list of three of these economic fallacies. 1. The euro is too strong a currency for Greece. This statement
Krugman on 2013: Heads He’s a Scientist, Tails You’re a Jerk
Oh boy. Paul Krugman keeps digging himself into a deeper hole with his botched 2013 austerity predictions. In this post, as a service to future archeologists, I want to (a) document Krugman’s shamelessness but (b) also explain that his excuses
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Velocity Lacks Veracity
Typically defined as “the number of times one dollar is spent to buy goods and services per unit of time,” historically low monetary velocity is blamed for stymieing the Federal Reserve’s ability to achieve a targeted rate of price inflation.
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June Mises Meet!
June is here, spring is in full swing, the NSA isn’t allowed to spy anymore… what could be better? I’ve got an idea: How about getting together with your fellow liberty lovers for drinks, food, and discussion? Come on out
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Should We Dump the Euro?
The Greek drama continues to unfold with the risk of a “Grexit” becoming increasingly likely. Yet, a large majority of the Greek people want to keep the euro. This would force the Greek government to live within its means, which
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We’re All Welfare Queens Now
Reprinted from The Daily Bell In 2013, Fox News proudly broadcast an interview with a young food stamp recipient who claimed to be using the government benefit to purchase lobster and sushi. “This is the way I want to live
Modern-Day Social Engineers and Inequality
Reprinted from Acting-Man Is Inequality a Bad Thing? We couldn’t believe what we were seeing when coming across the following headline at Reuters recently: “Fed’s Yellen says research needed to understand inequality issue”. Seriously? Maybe we can help the good
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The Motte and Bailey Doctrine in Mainstream Economics
A “motte and bailey doctrine” is a style of argument (and informal fallacy) that’s based on a motte-and-bailey castle. The bailey is a big courtyard and where people live and work and generally want to be. The motte is a mound
BIS Slams The Fed: The Solution To Bubbles Is Not More Bubbles, It Is Avoiding Bubbles In The First Place
Reprinted from Zero Hedge On one hand there are hard-core Keynesians who will wave the flag of inflation as the only cure to a world drowning in debt, even after the mushroom cloud results of their policies going off around
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Retirement at the End of a Rope
“They were people with great dignity,” Ivo Costamagna said of his neighbors who committed suicide in 2013. Romeo Dionisi, 62, and Anna Maria Sopranzi, 68, hanged themselves after Ms. Sopranzi’s pension evaporated. “People like Romeo would not accept charity or
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Limited Government Is Not Possible in the Interventionist State
Would we have political liberty we must first have economic freedom, for the form of government is determined by the form of economic organization. At first blush the opposite would seem to be self-evident; i.e., that our form of government
The Tax Gatherer
Originally published in the second series of Economic Sophisms (1848). Reprinted from Mises.org JACQUES BONHOMME, a vintner. Mr. LASOUCHE, tax gatherer. L.: You have secured 20 tuns of wine? J.: Yes, by dint of my own skill and labor. L.:
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Solving the Great Piketty Minimum Wage History Mystery
Long-time Mises Canada readers know that I have devoted several posts to a critique of Thomas Piketty’s 2014 bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. For example, here I talk about the poverty of Piketty’s capital & interest theory, and here
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In Denmark You Are Now Paid To Take Out A Mortgage
As per my thougths on “the logical end of Keynesianism is just handing people money”, this article is republished from zerohedge With NIRP raging in the Eurozone and over €1.5 trillion in European government bonds trading with negative yields, many
Loose Fed, Scared Bank Directors
The Fed’s balance sheet now foots to nearly $4.5 trillion, a great leap from early July 2008, when its total assets were less than $900 billion. Interest rates have been held just above zero since then as well, all in
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A Graphical Introduction to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory
A Graphical Introduction to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory By: Gaurav Mehra Twitter: @GMehra_ Email: [email protected] For a pdf version of this article: Intro to ABCT - Final Business cycles, simply put, are the fluctuations of economic growth
