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Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 349.

On Sept. 17–18, 2005, Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann presented a two-day 11-lecture series, “Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics,” in Klampenborg (just north of Copenhagen, Denmark), under the auspices of the Copenhagen Institute and Liberator. Program (local, and at right). See also Copenhagen Institute hosts Hoppe and Hülsmann, Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 1, 2005).

The entire series runs for roughly 10–12 hours and are collected on a PFS Playlist.¹ For further information see: Hoppe University: Hoppe and Hülsmann, Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics, Copenhagen Institute (2005).

This episode: Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method—Extended Version. [continue reading…]

1. Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist. [↩]

In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting them here in this Bookstream.

The first entry was republished at Property, Freedom, and Society Bookstream: Introduction, Hülsmann and Kinsella. Links to the remaining chapters may be found at the book’s landing page here, which will be updated as the book is streamed here. Here’s the next entry. [continue reading…]

Arctotherium, “The Closure of the Internet: The Most Important Social Phenomenon of the Late 2010s,” Not With a Bang (Aug. 9, 2026).

Grok Summary:

Arctotherium’s long essay argues that the “closure of the Internet” in the late 2010s was the most important social phenomenon of the period. Until roughly 2015, major platforms operated with minimal rules beyond real-world crimes (illegal goods, child exploitation, direct threats, etc.). This open environment was backed by institutions such as the UN, EU, U.S. State Department, and mainstream outlets that treated online speech as continuous with offline liberty and expected it to liberalize closed societies.

That changed rapidly in two phases:

• 2015–2019, linked to the migrant crisis, Brexit, Trump’s election, and the online right;
• 2020–2022, intensified by COVID policies and the 2020 U.S. election.

Platforms built large human and machine-learning moderation systems, invented or radically expanded concepts such as “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “malinformation,” “hate speech,” “toxicity,” and “online safety,” and applied them opaquely and selectively. Network analysis was used to map and suppress clusters of accounts; demonetization, shadowbans, algorithmic downranking, and outright bans became routine. The essay details the process platform by platform (YouTube’s post-2017 “adpocalypse” and policy expansions, Reddit’s successive subreddit purges and quarantine regime, Twitter’s evolving rules and later Twitter Files revelations of government/FBI coordination, Amazon’s book removals, etc.). Offline enforcement (firings, street violence, institutional purges) closed the remaining avenues. The result, in the author’s view, was a shift from a relatively open frontier to “closely monitored playpens,” with tens of millions of accounts affected and heterodox (especially anti-woke or right-leaning) discourse largely driven offline or into smaller, lower-capacity spaces. The piece frames this as a classic slippery-slope case with no stable limiting principle once the conceptual and technical apparatus existed.

[continue reading…]

I would argue that it was the May 2025 Revisionist History of War conference that I organized. Murray Rothbard believed that the two most important topics for libertarians and libertarianism are revisionist history and war. War is the health of the state. All states lie their countries in to wars, and then they and their “intellectual” shills lie about what happened during the wars, what caused them, and the consequences thereof. It’s hard to think of a more important Rothbardian research agenda than the revisionist history of war informed by Austrian economics and Rothbardian libertarian philosophy.

The speeches from the conference are online here. The most hard hitting ones were Ron Unz on the false history of World War II; Ilana Mercer on fake history of the Israeli state; a first-hand account of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in which 34 American sailors were killed by Phil Tourney, president of the USS Liberty Veterans Association; Pentagon Lies by retired Air Force Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski; Scott Horton on how D.C. restarted the Cold War with Russia; truths about post-Civil War “reconstruction” by Wanjiru Njoya; the myth of the “righteous cause” from Lincoln to the war in Iraq by Brion McClanahan; and of course myself on the “false virtue” that has been used to “justify” American military imperialism for the past 150 years.

Hans was unable to attend the conference but he did write a paper for it that was to be included in the book containing all of the other speeches. It is entitled “On War, Democratic Peace, and Reeducation: The ‘German Experience’ in Reactionary Perspective.”

Longtime Mises Institute copy editor Judy Thomessen, who is now the top executive (executive director) of the Institute, has written to Hans that they do plan on publishing the book eventually. If so, it would be the most Rothbardian book published by the Mises Institute in thirty years (apart from Rothbard’s own posthumous publications).

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Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 348.

On Sept. 17–18, 2005, Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann presented a two-day 11-lecture series, “Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics,” in Klampenborg (just north of Copenhagen, Denmark), under the auspices of the Copenhagen Institute and Liberator. Program (local, and at right). See also Copenhagen Institute hosts Hoppe and Hülsmann, Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 1, 2005).

The entire series runs for roughly 10–12 hours and are collected on a PFS Playlist.¹ For further information see: Hoppe University: Hoppe and Hülsmann, Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics, Copenhagen Institute (2005).

This episode: Lecture 5: Capital and Interest (Hoppe). [continue reading…]

1. Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist. [↩]

Redmond David Terrence Weissenberger (July 4, 1975–March 12, 2025) (obituary) passed away last year. From Doug French:

Redmond Weissenberger was the founder of and energy behind Mises Canada, founded March 8, 2011 to spread the teachings of the Austrian School of Economics to Canada. While at the Mises Institute, I began the legal process to start a Mises Canada. I turned over what legal work had been done to Redmond given the lack of interest in the project at the Institute. He quickly carried Mises Canada across the finish line.

At the time, Mises Canada was one of the many Mises Institutes operating in over 20 countries. Its Board included Redmond, Chris Horlacher (Vice-Chairman and Treasurer), Doug French, and Walter Block. Eric Sprott (Sprott Asset Management and Sprott School of Business) was an important donor and supporter.

The mises.ca website has been static for years, but when active its articles were often reprinted on ZeroHedge.com. Mises Canada hosted Rothbard University in 2018 as well as the International Conference of Prices & Markets. David Howden served as editor of Mises Canada’s Prices & Markets, a peer-reviewed academic journal. Weissenberger also hatched the idea to offer Austrian-focused continuing education courses for real estate professionals which were offered at Freedomfest in Las Vegas.

Redmond passed away on March 12th, 2025 in Budapest, Hungary. I was notified just last week of Redmond’s death via an email from Chris Horlacher.

Redmond is survived by his children Finn and Piper Weissenberger, his siblings, Daniel Weissenberger and Janet Goodman, and his parents, Sheila Redmond and Ralph Calistro, Henry and Barbara Weissenberger.

Redmond also interviewed me a few times for his podcast.¹ I liked him. Very smart, solid on IP, earnest advocate for liberty.

As Doug noted above, Redmond also established, with the help of Doug French, David Howden, and others, the Journal of Prices & Markets. Its archives at both Mises Canada and Mises Institute US are incomplete; we have archived the issues we could find here at PFS, at The Journal of Prices & Markets, Mises Canada (2013–2019).

Related

• Kinsella, “My Years with the Mises Institute,” Property and Freedom Journal (May 2, 2026), in particular in the subsections: “French Joins; Mises Global; Mises.org as Hub of Austro-Libertarian Thought,” “Pointless Name Changes, Website Changes, and Journal Confusion” and “Open Publishing Abandoned“

1. KOL121 | Better Red than Dead with Redmond Weissenberger: Copyright and Easter Egg Servitudes, and more; KOL205 | Austrian AV Club Interview—Mises Institute Canada: Net Neutrality, Internet freedom, SOPA, ACTA, child pornography, terrorism, online gambling (2012); KOL165 | Austrian AV Club Interview—Mises Institute Canada: Intellectual Property, Rand, “Creationism” (2012); KOL115 | Mises Canada Austrian AV Club—Kinsella and the Corporation on Trial (2012).  [↩]

The Journal of Prices & Markets was published by the Mises Institute Canada from 2013 to 2019. It was spearheaded by the late Redmond Weissenberger¹ and edited by PFS member David Howden. PFS co-founder Doug French served as associate editor and, as President of the Mises Institute US, assisted Weissenberger when he was setting up Mises Canada and the journal.

As Mises Canada as well as Mises Institute US archives may be unreliable, given Weissenberger’s death, the cessation of publication of the journal, and the Mises Institute’s digital and institutional decline,² we are hosting copies of the volumes we could find here. No, I do not know why there are two Summer 2014 issues from different volumes. [continue reading…]

1. Redmond Weissenberger, R.I.P. [↩]
2. See Kinsella,  “My Years with the Mises Institute,” Property and Freedom Journal (May 2, 2026), in particular in the subsections: “Pointless Name Changes, Website Changes, and Journal Confusion” and “Open Publishing Abandoned“;  see also Kinsella, McMaken: Why Comments Sections Are Not Coming Back to Mises.org. [↩]

Bruce Goldberg, “Ayn Rand’s ‘For the New Intellectual,’” New Individualist Rev., vol. 1, no. 3 (Nov. 1961): 17–24 [omnibus edition pp. 97–104] (html1; html2). Repixeled in part below.

From Hoppe:

Among some followers of Austrianism, the Kant interpretation of Ayn Rand (see, for instance, her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology [1979]; or For the New Intellectual [1961]) enjoys great popularity. Her interpretation, replete with sweeping denunciatory pronouncements, however, is characterized by a complete absence of any interpretive documentation whatsoever. On Rand’s arrogant ignorance regarding Kant, see B. Goldberg, “Ayn Rand’s ‘For the New Intellectual,’” New Individualist Rev., vol. 1, no. 3 (1961).”¹

[continue reading…]

1. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Praxeology and Economic Science (1988), later included in idem, Economic Science and the Austrian Method (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 1995), at 45 n.14.  See also Hoppe: My Discovery of Human Action and of Mises as a Philosopher; Stephan Kinsella, “The Undeniable Morality of Capitalism,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), p. 604. [↩]

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Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 347.

On Sept. 17–18, 2005, Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann presented a two-day 11-lecture series, “Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics,” in Klampenborg (just north of Copenhagen, Denmark), under the auspices of the Copenhagen Institute and Liberator. Program (local, and at right). See also Copenhagen Institute hosts Hoppe and Hülsmann, Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 1, 2005).

The entire series runs for roughly 10–12 hours and are collected on a PFS Playlist.¹ For further information see: Hoppe University: Hoppe and Hülsmann, Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics, Copenhagen Institute (2005).

This episode: Lecture 4: The Theory of Banking (Hoppe). [continue reading…]

1. Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist. [↩]

In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting them here in this Bookstream.

The first entry was republished at Property, Freedom, and Society Bookstream: Introduction, Hülsmann and Kinsella. Links to the remaining chapters may be found at the book’s landing page here, which will be updated as the book is streamed here. Here’s the next entry. [continue reading…]

New piece by Marco de Wit, “Mises Institute’s 5 Purges: Omitting Jewish Bankers— Five Private Steps in the Statist Censorship Continuum,” Unz Review (July 31, 2026) (Portuguese translation). In my view, it is far too much of a strained effort to connect-the-dots and forge a sweeping, overarching theory to explain a sequence of events, like conspiracy theorists are wont to do, but YMMV. But as I have noted previously, I’ve long had an aversion to conspiracy theorizing, and to what I call conspiratoids or ‘toids.

First, such theories are usually not needed; and they are usually maintained by people who have a naive view of the state. For them, if we can just get rid of the bad guys (and often they are bankers, capitalists, etc.) and elect good guys, things return to normal. ¹

De Wit accuses me of being a Zionist because I had a tweet mocking the claim that Israel “controls” the US. I didn’t know that being skeptical of grand, oversimplified and un-nuanced claims makes one a Zionist. Hunh. You learn something new every day. (The suggestion is silly; of course I’m not a Zionist.) But this type of assertion made with scant evidence is typical of ‘toids. This is what they do: they seize on the slightest evidence to make sweeping conclusions. One wonders why I published things such as Rothbard, The Zionist Conquest of American Opinion (unpublished), “Nozick v. Rothbard on Zionism and Israel (1979),” PFS Blog (July 30, 2026), Kinsella, Van De Haar and Besada on Hayek, Mises, Rothbard on Zionism, and Tyler Kubik, “Murray N. Rothbard Bibliography: 1940–1986,” Property and Freedom Journal (May 16, 2026) if I was a puppet of the Zionist overlords. [continue reading…]

1. Kinsella, Rothbard on Conspiracy Theories [↩]

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Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 346.

On Sept. 17–18, 2005, Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann presented a two-day 11-lecture series, “Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics,” in Klampenborg (just north of Copenhagen, Denmark), under the auspices of the Copenhagen Institute and Liberator. Program (local, and at right). See also Copenhagen Institute hosts Hoppe and Hülsmann, Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 1, 2005).

The entire series runs for roughly 10–12 hours and are collected on a PFS Playlist.¹ For further information see: Hoppe University: Hoppe and Hülsmann, Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics, Copenhagen Institute (2005).

This episode: Lecture 3: Division Of Labor and Money (Hoppe). [continue reading…]

1. Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist. [↩]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (51.2MB)

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 345.

On Sept. 17–18, 2005, Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann presented a two-day 11-lecture series, “Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics,” in Klampenborg (just north of Copenhagen, Denmark), under the auspices of the Copenhagen Institute and Liberator. Program (local, and at right). See also Copenhagen Institute hosts Hoppe and Hülsmann, Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 1, 2005).

The entire series runs for roughly 10–12 hours and are collected on a PFS Playlist.¹ For further information see: Hoppe University: Hoppe and Hülsmann, Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics, Copenhagen Institute (2005).

This episode: Lecture 2: Value, Utility and Price (Hülsmann) [continue reading…]

1. Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist. [↩]

In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting them here in this Bookstream.

The first entry was republished at Property, Freedom, and Society Bookstream: Introduction, Hülsmann and Kinsella. Links to the remaining chapters may be found at the book’s landing page here, which will be updated as the book is streamed here. Here’s the next entry. [continue reading…]

Alessandro Fusillo, “What Is a Dictatorship? The Historical Evolution of VAT and Personal Income Tax in Spain and Italy, and of Public Spending as a Share of GDP,” Property and Freedom Journal (Aug. 6, 2026): A Comparative Study: From Francoism and Fascism to Democratic Tax Reforms, up to the Present Day (1922/1939–2026).

This article contends that Francoist Spain and Fascist Italy afforded citizens substantially greater economic freedom—gauged by tax structures and public spending as a share of GDP—than the democratic regimes that followed. Under Franco, Spain relied on older schedular product taxes and a limited turnover tax, with no modern progressive personal income tax or VAT; public spending stayed low at roughly 13–15% of GDP in 1960 and only about 22.5% in 1970. Italy under Fascism similarly featured a cascade-style general entry tax and real/product levies, keeping spending relatively contained outside wartime spikes. After the transitions, both countries introduced broad-based progressive income taxes (Spain’s IRPF in 1978 with 28 brackets up to 65.5%; Italy’s IRPEF in 1974 with 32 brackets up to 72%) and VAT (Spain 1986, Italy 1973, both starting at 12% and later rising to 21–22%). Public spending then expanded sharply—Spain to the mid-40s percent of GDP and Italy to around 50% or higher—while public debt soared, producing larger fiscal leviathans than under the prior dictatorships.

Both nations followed parallel paths of tax modernization under European pressure, followed by bracket simplification and sustained growth in the state’s claim on national output, with Italy consistently showing higher spending and debt ratios. The author attributes this expansion to the high time-preference of democratic politicians, who act as temporary usufructuaries rather than long-term owners of the state’s capital stock, drawing on Hoppe’s analysis in Democracy: The God That Failed and analogies to late-Roman fiscal overreach.

Read more>>

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Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 344.

On Sept. 17–18, 2005, Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann presented a two-day 11-lecture series, “Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics,” in Klampenborg (just north of Copenhagen, Denmark), under the auspices of the Copenhagen Institute and Liberator. Program (local, and at right). See also Copenhagen Institute hosts Hoppe and Hülsmann, Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 1, 2005).

The entire series runs for roughly 10–12 hours and are collected on a PFS Playlist.¹ For further information see: Hoppe University: Hoppe and Hülsmann, Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics, Copenhagen Institute (2005).

This episode: Lecture 1: Mises and the Austrian School (Hülsmann).

[continue reading…]

1. Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist. [↩]

John AB Da Silva “Is taxation theft?, Observador (July 27, 2026): “Call it public service, sovereignty, or territorial continuity. The name is irrelevant. The bill never was.”

Related

• Rothbard Takes Portugal: 100 Years with Rothbard: A Personal Account

TAP religiously held strikes in August and at Christmas, precisely when the most people depended on it, earning it the international nickname “TAP: Take Another Plane”. Then came the partial privatization of 2015, the relief of no longer having to pay for an expensive and poor service, the renationalization in 2020, and the return to square one. Since one cannot be half-pregnant, here is TAP again, with the deadline for binding proposals from Air France-KLM and Lufthansa closing on July 29th, the third attempt to sell it since 2015. Behind this are the Airbus funds scandal, the compensation authorized via WhatsApp to a public manager, the compensation claimed by the former CEO, dismissed after the supervisory body announced her dismissal without even hearing her side of the story, and an endless number of other absurdities.

It was in this context that an unusual sign emerged. On June 27th, Porto hosted Rothbard 100, the largest libertarian gathering ever held in Portugal, to mark the centenary of Murray Rothbard. Among Hans Hermann Hoppe, Stephan Kinsella, and the other speakers, the phrase that most bothers those who live off the state budget was heard again: “taxation is theft,” said, with some irony, in a city with a historical tradition of the left. A month later, I no longer found it only on billboards. I saw it printed on t-shirts, from Lisbon to the beaches of Sagres. Something has changed in taxpayers’ tolerance for the waste of public money. It is not necessary to accept that all taxes are theft to recognize that a tax levied on everyone to finance the losses of a few is hardly distinguishable from a forced transfer of wealth. That is what TAP and, let’s be frank, also CP have been doing for decades: transferring the cost of companies that never asked taxpayers if they wanted to be shareholders to everyone.

Read more>>

Victor Niederhoffer (December 10, 1943–August 4, 2026) has passed away. From Bloomberg, via Doug French:

Victor Niederhoffer, the famed contrarian speculator who made fortunes as a quant pioneer while taking painful losses in the 1997 Thai stock market crash and the 2008 financial crisis, has died. He was 82.

Niederhoffer died on Tuesday of natural causes, according to his brother Roy.

A five-time US national squash champion who regularly challenged grandmasters in chess and checkers, Niederhoffer got his start applying statistical analysis to financial markets as an academic in the 1960s and 1970s, well before it became standard practice on Wall Street.

Other obits:

• Victor Niederhoffer, pioneer of statistical arbitrage and five-time squash champion, dies at 82
• Tyler Cowen, Victor Niederhoffer, RIP
• Robert Higgs

Niederhoffer well known in Objectivist and libertarian circles, having strong interest in both. According to Wikipedia, he was

the founder of the NYC Junto, a libertarian group that was hosted on the first Thursday of every month from 1985 to 2017. He was an enthusiast of Ayn Rand, and named two of his daughters Galt and Rand. The NYC Junto focused on libertarianism, Objectivism and investing and was inspired by the Junto hosted by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia from 1727 to 1757. He had six daughters and one son.

[continue reading…]

George Koether, born in 1907, is a retired businessman, author, economist, journalist, lecturer, and consult-ant, and a long-time advocate of free-market principles and practices. He lived much of his life close to the Mises circle in the United States and to many Misesians abroad. He knew every important player, including Mises, Hazlitt, Rothbard, and Hayek, on a personal level, from World War II and forward.

From the Vault: “A Life Among Austrians: An Interview With George Koether,” Austrian Economics Newsletter 20, no. 3 (Fall 2000). See George Koether (1907-2006).

A Life Among Austrians

An Interview With George Koether

AEN: When did you first meet Mises?

KOETHER: It was 1947, a few years after Mises had arrived in the United States and a few months after I had been hired by The Foundation for Economic Education to prepare a journal which later became The Freeman. Leonard Read, founder and president of FEE as it came to be called, walked into the room where I was lunching, with a stranger on his arm, and said: “George, this is Dr. Mises, may we join you for lunch?”

I later compared this to a physics student being asked if Dr. Einstein could lunch with him. With Mises on my left and Read on my right we plunged into a discussion of post-World War II economic problems. Mises quickly sensed my interest and asked me: “Would you like to attend my seminar?” I accepted the invitation immediately. From then on Mises became my intellectual father and personal friend. [continue reading…]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 343.

From the Bitcoin Standard Podcast, episode 336: Rothbard at 100 Conference: Talks by Ammous, Hoppe, Kinsella & de Mombynes.

Description: Four talks from Rothbard’s centenary celebration last month in Porto:

Ammous: Rothbard on Palestine

Hoppe: Hurdles, Obstacles, and Surprises on the Road to Rothbardianism

Kinsella: Rothbard’s Greatest Hits

De Mombynes: Rothbard & Bitcoin

The accompanying book, Rothbard at 100, is available from https://saifedean.com/podcast

This is a combined episode featuring four talks from 100 Years with Rothbard (Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026). See Cataláxia Editora Rothbard 100 Youtube playlist.

See Kinsella, Rothbard Takes Portugal: 100 Years with Rothbard: A Personal Account.

[continue reading…]

In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting them here in this Bookstream.

The first entry was republished at Property, Freedom, and Society Bookstream: Introduction, Hülsmann and Kinsella. Links to the remaining chapters may be found at the book’s landing page here, which will be updated as the book is streamed here. Here’s the next entry —

1

A Life of Ideas

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.^*

My first full exposure to the brilliance of Hans-Hermann Hoppe came at an early Mises University in which he gave the main lecture on methodology. Here he offered a new take on Mises’s Kantian method. Hoppe explained Kant’s typology of propositions, and showed how Mises had appropriated them but with a new twist. [continue reading…]

Some interesting recent comments by Elon Musk about patents and competition:

Elon Musk: “Nothing any of my companies have done has been to stifle competition. In fact, we’ve done the opposite,

At Tesla, we have open-sourced our patents. Anyone can use our patents for free.

At SpaceX, we don’t use patents. Once in a while, we’ll file a patent just so some patent troll doesn’t cause trouble. But we’ve done nothing anti-competitive.”

Elon Musk: “Nothing any of my companies have done has been to stifle competition. In fact, we’ve done the opposite,

At Tesla, we have open-sourced our patents. Anyone can use our patents for free.

At SpaceX, we don’t use patents. Once in a while, we’ll file a patent just so… pic.twitter.com/0y7m8WrY3Q

— Zen (@TeslaZenX) August 3, 2026

Now it is true that most billionaires are mainstream on most issues and pro-IP, or neutral at best. A couple better than average, however. Mark Cuban, to his credit, at least opposes “stupid” patents, and endowed EFF’s “Mark Cuban Chair To Eliminate Stupid Patents”. Even if neither he nor EFF oppose patents on principle,¹ and even if the problem with patent law is not bad patents or patent trolls—it is good patents by non-trolls.² [continue reading…]

1. See Mark Cuban Funds EFF’s New ‘Mark Cuban Chair To Eliminate Stupid Patents’; Mark Cuban: Patent law is killing jobs; Independent Institute on the “Benefits” of Intellectual Property Protection. [↩]
2. Patent Trolls, Bad Patents, and Incompetent Examiners are Not the Problem. [↩]

Gilbert Cavanaugh, “Libertarians and Race Realism,” American Renaissance (Oct. 11, 2013). An interesting article I must have missed, by “Gilbert Cavanaugh is a proud Middle American Radical.” As it is subject to copyright and does not use a permissive copyright policy, I excerpt only the beginning and then provide a summary from Grok. At the end, I append some notes and links concerning developments since this article was written in 2013.

[continue reading…]

In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and I spearheaded to honor our friend and mentor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. As we noted there,

Hans-Hermann Hoppe is one of the most important scholars of our time. He has made pioneering contributions to sociology, economics, philosophy, and history. He is the dean of the present-day Austrian School of economics, and is famous as a libertarian philosopher. He and his writings have inspired scholars all over the world to follow in his footsteps and to provide a scientific foundation for individual freedom and a free society. The following pages are a modest attempt to honor the occasion of Professor Hoppe’s 60th birthday. The contributors are former students, colleagues, and collaborators, united in admiration for, and friendship with, the laureate.

Our 2009 Festschrift was followed in 2024 with A Life in Liberty: Liber Amicorum in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Stephan Kinsella, eds. (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2024), on the occasion of Dr. Hoppe’s 75th birthday.

Some of the entries in the 2009 Festschrift were published elsewhere, e.g., on Mises.org, but not all. PFS will occasionally serialize these pieces here, beginning with —

Introduction: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe

by Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Stephan Kinsella

[pdf; also published as “Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe,” Mises Daily, Aug. 7, 2009]

Hans-Hermann Hoppe is one of the most important scholars of our time. He has made pioneering contributions to sociology, economics, philosophy, and history. He is the dean of the present-day Austrian School of economics, and is famous as a libertarian philosopher. He and his writings have inspired scholars all over the world to follow in his footsteps and to provide a scientific foundation for individual freedom and a free society. The following pages are a modest attempt to honor the occasion of Professor Hoppe’s 60th birthday. The contributors are former students, colleagues, and collaborators, united in admiration for, and friendship with, the laureate. [continue reading…]

Ryan McMaken attempts to explain “Why Comments Sections Are Not Coming Back to Mises.org,” Power & Market (07/31/2026). He makes the obvious point that the owner of the site can set whatever policy it wants. But as one commentator noted:

One of the article’s arguments is that the Mises Institute has no obligation to provide a platform for its critics. That is true, but it addresses only the Institute’s right to close its comment sections—not whether doing so is intellectually wise. Property rights determine who has the authority to make the decision; they do not establish that open criticism has little value or that eliminating it best serves the Institute’s educational and scholarly mission.

And of course his screed ends with this censorious little graphic: [continue reading…]