McMaken: Why Comments Sections Are Not Coming Back to Mises.org

by Stephan Kinsella on August 3, 2026

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:

https://t.co/ZMU2yly8eL @ryanmcmaken’s defense of keeping comments disabled on @mises raises several legitimate practical concerns, but it does not fully justify the broader dismissal of comment sections as intellectually unhelpful.

One of the article’s arguments is that the…

— 김경훈 Gyeonghoon Kim 🇰🇷 (@ActionAxiom) August 3, 2026

As I tweeted back,

If you have a blog and want to turn off comments, that’s one button. You don’t need to erase years of old archived comments, change the name of the blog, change link structure without redirects, or reimpose strict copyright controls.

I already explained what has gone wrong at Mises.org and what should be done now in “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; Open Publishing Abandoned; Mises.org; Copyright and Open Publishing/Information:

Mises.org; Copyright and Open Publishing/Information

The CC-BY policy previously used should be adopted again, and the website overhauled so that old comments are restored, broken links fixed, and the JLS and QJAE unified in one place each, with all back issues and volume easily findable. Its most useful programs, in particular the Mises U, could be expanded to invite as many students as possible, even if it is more costly. Surely the donors who have provided funds would be in favor of such expenditures. All these are easy fixes if there is a President who understands this and has the support and resources to get this done.