View source for Ludwig von Mises Institute (RationalWiki)

<!-- you can have any number of categories here -->
[[Category:RationalWiki]]
[[Category:Ludwig von Mises Institute]]
<!-- 1 URL must be followed by >= 0 Other URL and Old URL and 1 End URL.-->
{{URL | url = http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises_Institute}}
<!-- {{Other URL | url = }} -->
<!-- {{Old URL | url = }} -->
{{End URL}}
{{DES | des = "With its zealous defense of everything free market, the von Mises Institute frequently lapses into bouts of self parody." | show=}}
<!-- insert wiki page text here -->
<!-- DPL has problems with categories that have a single quote in them.  Use these explicit workarounds. -->
<!-- otherwise, we would use {{Links}} and {{Quotes}}  -->
{{List|title=Ludwig von Mises Institute (RationalWiki)|links=true}}
{{Quotations|title=Ludwig von Mises Institute (RationalWiki)|quotes=true}}

{{Text |
The Ludwig von Mises Institute is an American libertarian think tank specializing in Austrian school economics and vulgar libertarian social philosophy. It was established in 1982 with the approval of Margit von Mises, the widow of the Austrian school economist Ludwig von Mises. It publishes several journals on political economy, economics, and philosophy, and has also published several books. The Institute offers fellowships to students of economics. It also gives awards to those who have made (in their opinion) exceptional contributions in the field of economics. Lew Rockwell, a former Ron Paul staffer, was the founder and president of the Institute until his retirement in 2009 (though he remains as a chairman), and also has his own blog and news aggregator site at LewRockwell.com (often shortened to "LRC"), its position summed up as "anti-state, anti-war, pro-market."
Contents [hide] 
1 Political positions
2 Conspiracy theories and pseudohistory
2.1 Pearl Harbor and 9/11
2.2 Global warming
2.3 Racial theory and neo-Confederate nuttery
3 Greatest hits
4 Mises Wiki
5 See also
6 External links
7 Footnotes
[edit]Political positions

The Institute is against statism, socialism, communism, left-liberalism, and pretty much anything else that deviates from libertarianism, which is hardly surprising, since their founders were libertarians. It publishes articles from a libertarian viewpoint, and supports the Austrian School. The Institute leans toward anarcho-capitalism and tends to view more soft-line libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute with some disdain as compromising Beltway insiders.
The Institute supports a non-interventionist foreign policy that includes a retrospective opposition to America's involvement in World War II. They harken back to paleoconservative isolationist stances, feeling that unless or until the US is directly attacked they should be neutral.
Due to its Austrian position, the Institute is naturally a font of gold buggery.
[edit]Conspiracy theories and pseudohistory

[edit]Pearl Harbor and 9/11
The Institute seems to be sympathetic to the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory as well as 9/11 conspiracy theories, going so far as to give a rather favorable review to David Ray Griffin's book The New Pearl Harbor.[1]
[edit]Global warming
The Institute is of the opinion that global warming is a money-making scheme perpetrated by scientists to get grant money.[2]
[edit]Racial theory and neo-Confederate nuttery
It has been accused of racism due to the head of the Institute writing some rather interesting things about black people.[3] In addition, it has a rather interesting interpretation of the American Civil War, viewing President Abraham Lincoln as the statist villain who sought to drastically expand the power of central government at the expense of states' rights, rather than keep the Union intact in the face of a secession motivated by slave ownership. On that last, they feel that compensation for slave owners (as some had proposed back then) would have been better, preserving "states' rights" and averting war, though Murray Rothbard has quipped that it was more the slaves who deserved compensation than their owners, at least. Some also point to various banking conspiracy theories as causes of the conflict. Ironically Lincoln himself feared the rising power of banks and industrial capitalism (as Thomas Jefferson did) while conspiracy theories of his own assassination often name international bankers as suspects.
It has also attracted accusations of racism from the Southern Poverty Law Center due to Rockwell and Rothbard's racially tinged rhetoric and endorsement of questionable policies and candidates.[4][5] It doesn't help your image too much when you employ blatant neo-Confederates like Thomas DiLorenzo and Tom Woods, though.
Mises himself sidestepped the issue of whether some races are superior to others by stating that even if that is the case, the law of comparative advantage (referred to by Mises as "Ricardo's law of association") still enables members of different races to cooperate in mutually beneficial ways: "It may be admitted that the races differ in talent and character and that there is no hope of ever seeing those differences resolved. Still, free trade theory shows that even the more capable races derive an advantage from associating with the less capable and that social co-operation brings them the advantage of higher productivity in the total labour process."[6] Mises believed that due to that economic law, there need not be irreconcilable conflict between the races, or enslavement of any race by another, although he also noted, "It is nonsensical to fight the racial hypothesis by negating obvious facts. It is vain to deny that up to now certain races have contributed nothing or very little to the development of civilization and can, in this sense, be called inferior."[7]
[edit]Greatest hits

With its zealous defense of everything free market, the von Mises Institute frequently lapses into bouts of self parody. For salient and highly comical examples, see:
Stateless in Somalia and Loving It!(Warning: Poe's Law in action!)
The Praxeology and Ethics of Traffic Lights - The gummint can't tell us how to drive our cars!
Environmentalism Refuted - Take that, nature!
Speaking of nature, oil spill got you down? It's BP you should be feeling sorry for! I mean, what has the ecosystem ever done for us?[8]
Nothing is better than curling up by the fire to have a free market Christmas with an annual reading of Scrooge Defended.
They also offer an array of short summer camp style indoctrination educational seminars where the future leaders of tomorrow can learn how to apply Austrian theory to get laughed out of the board room build fruitful business enterprises.
Monarchism is compatible with classical liberalism
Libertopia would have a flourishing free market in children. Also, parents shouldn't be required to feed or clothe their babies. If you were disappointed that A Modest Proposal was satire, you might be a Libertarian.
Bribery and blackmail are beneficial economic activities.
[edit]Mises Wiki

The Mises Wiki is a wiki, owned and operated by the Institute, whose stated purpose is to write and maintain an up-to-date encyclopedia covering economic and political topics from an Austrian school point of view. One of its co-founders[9] writes, "I want the good features of Wikipedia with a certain POV, without devolving into the raving madness of Conservapedia or, Mises forbid, RationalWiki. ;)"[10] Mises Wiki is the successor to the Austrian Economics Wiki, which was hosted on Wikia.
[edit]See also

Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Paleolibertarianism
[edit] External links

Ludwig von Mises Institute
LewRockwell.com
Who wrote Ron Paul's racist and homophobic newsletters?
Angry White Man - The bigoted past of Ron Paul
[edit]Footnotes

↑ Review of The New Pearl Harbor in The Mises Review.
↑ I Was on the Global Warming Gravy Train, Mises Daily
↑ Ron Paul, the Gold Standard, and Neo-Confederates, The Aporetic
↑ SPLC on LvMI
↑ SPLC: The Neo-Confederates
↑ Ludwig von Socialism
↑ Mises, Ludwig von Human Action
↑ Screw the pelicans, they probably would have voted for Democrats anyway.
↑ http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/MisesWiki:About#Administration
↑ http://wiki.mises.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=User_talk%3ANathan_Larson&action=historysubmit&diff=18874&oldid=18867
}}