Talk:Ludwig von Mises Institute/Archive1

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So this where

So this where Pratchett got Moist von Lipwig from? He knows too much that man. - π 14:25, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Alzheimer's is a curse. Tim O'Tei (talk) 14:27, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Whats the point?

Whats the point of writing this article? I could spew random faeces out of myself and it would probably be just as useful as this articles paragraph on one of the most sophisticated economic thinktanks of the 20th century. MarcusCicero 00:54, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Got to love how Human spends the hours working on articles. Now if anyone would just read them and not wonder how anything can be so incompetant! MarcusCicero 13:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Sophisticated? HA there argument is basiclty "The goverment is always wrong". "Lincoln was a communist". Oh and MLK was one too. I think anyone who supports them is probably a bit deluded. ^{— Unsigned, by: 96.42.214.127 / talk / contribs}

I'm curious

The Institute supports a non-interventionist foreign policy that includes a retrospective opposition to America's involvement in World War II.[1]

Opposition to which part of America's involvement in WWII? It's loaning of resources to the Allies before actively going to war (arguable), or declaring war on Japan after taking it in the ass from them (batshit crazy)? Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 03:13, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Since pearl harbor happened like at least 2 years after WW2 started, I suspect the former. the isolationist policy. but links would be nice, wouldn't they ħuman 03:27, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Obvious joke

I hate von Mises to pieces! 21:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

How can you hate them? They produce a good amount of lulz. I'm waiting for articles like "Cooking with Praxeology" or "How to Avoid Dating a Statist." Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 08:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I occasionally lurk their forums for lulz and occasional frequent facepalms. I do take some offense, as an anarchist, at their insistence that only anarcho-capitalism is the One True Anarchism™, although some of them claim they'd be okay with socialist and communist communities in their hypothetical ancap fantasy land. I honestly don't trust them, and I'm not entirely sure how communes would work out unless they became self-sufficient, since I'm not sure how trade would work between moneyless and monied communities (although only anarcho-communism seeks to abolish money). Wait, maybe that's why they're so permissive. Sneaky. HolyKatana (talk) 20:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

RW gets noticed

I found this while searching for something completely unrelated: http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/22410.aspx --ZooGuard (talk) 18:49, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, this is why I can't keep myself away from the nuthouse that is LvMI. Noticed that they took issue with some of the things I wrote as well, but it's a McMegan style "technically true but collectively false" non-rebuttal, pretty predictable from the Austro-bots. Just because I'm a tireless rebutter, I'll post why most of this is rank stupidity:

• "But, but, but, he's cherry-picking the bad stuff about the Gilded Age." Duh, my point in comparing positions libertarians champion with the Gilded Age is to point out the bad stuff they continuously overlook (note a few of them making completely asinine defenses of the Gilded Age as a Golden Age). It was a time of rapid industrial expansion and new wealth, but it came at a cost that libertarians like to overlook (or explain away, and those saying that libertarians don't defend the Gilded Age, I give you this.). My point wasn't to write an entire book on it. That's why we have things called libraries and the internets.
• "The Gilded Age was corporatism, not capitalism!" Okay, so? I'll fully admit that. Government give-aways were known as the "spoils system," and there were state-backed monopolies, especially in the railroad industry as the government owned the empty land it handed out to these industries. Now here's the $64,000 question: How do you end the spoils system? The libertarian position is just to get rid of government regulation to reduce rent-seeking. Sure, if you want to go back to the days when you could lose a leg, get fired because of it, and have no recourse for compensation. Libertarians bring up good points about how regulation can raise barriers to entry, but offer no solutions besides stupidity like "monopolies can't exist in truly free markets!" Companies back then helped perpetuate this spoils system by dumping large wads of dough into political machines, and they damn well made sure that if you worked for them, you voted for the company candidate. And more obviously, if they get to write this off as "not real capitalism," then surely the USSR couldn't be "real communism." I mean, they didn't do things exactly the way Marx said! (I find the Marxist idea of the state stepping aside at "the end of history" just as stupendously naive and idiotic as the libertarian notion that the unfettered "free market" won't lead to corporatism.) And this is why I have that John Adams quote about ideology being the "science of idiocy" in my profile. You end up in the position of defending the indefensible.
• All the other stuff. Specifically, the revisionist histories surrounding Lincoln (covered in Mike Huben's Critiques of Libertarianism page that we link to). Not saying Lincoln was perfect, but the libertarian histories deliberately falsify facts. Gotta love all the rest of it too, the stuff along the lines of, "Well, the private defense agencies and company towns weren't that bad." Goes to show that they haven't ventured very far outside of Cato/LvMI-approved history. And praxeology, all I can say to that is simply "lolwut." Yes, an a priori system of the social sciences derived from one axiom that flies in the face of science, psychology, history, economics, etc. developed over the 20th century should be taken seriously...in some other universe maybe. RW's SPOV has to come into play there. I could go on and on, but it would be mere repetition of many of the things that can be found in Huben's collection of critiques. And don't forget to take a shot -- this is supposed to be RationalWiki right?
• The only truly sensible thing in that thread: There was no golden age in American (or any) history. Can 100% agree with that.Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 22:09, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

"Sure, if you want to go back to the days when you could lose a leg, get fired because of it, and have no recourse for compensation." Could you please dispense with the strawman arguments? Even the pirates during the Age of Exploration had a form of worker's compensation for lost limbs. Under a free-market society, there will exist public insurance, compensation, and aid to the poor as we have today with non-profit organisations. You also confuse market dominance with monopolies. Most of what you wrote as with Ruben is non-cited opinions and pointless what-ifs.^{— Unsigned, by: 68.38.126.81 / talk / contribs} 14:25, 3 November 2013‎

Any evidence that such a public insurance/compensation system (if it exists; no guarantee there at all) will be anywhere near as effective as the modern welfare state (and yes, it -is- effective; countries that have modern welfare states generally don't have people starving to death, as happens in countries without)?ChrisB (talk) 08:08, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Picture?

So they have this sign at the foot of their parking lot saying that it isn't a cut-through and not to use it that way or something, which is rather amusing because it is a completely worthless cut-through anyhow. Would taking a picture to add a joke (depending on how exactly it reads) be worthwhile, and if I did, what kind of license tag would I need to smack on it? PacWalker 23:18, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what about this could possibly be a joke. 71.126.53.8 (talk) 23:18, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

lawdy lawdy

Really pulling out the stops for this whole libertarians are Nazis thing, aren't we? Guess you guys (sorry people) only want to invoke Godwin's law when some loon is calling Obama Hitler. You do realize that the Austrian nobility was very much at odds with the Nazis and that Von Mises fled during the reich years (because he loved Hitler so much apparently). Michael Lind, notorious Vietnam war enthusiast, couldn't have done it better himself. And of course, opposition to FDR and his policies was rooted in a secret desire to see the Nazis win. And all those pro-segregationists who fought in world war II were big Hitler fans (oh, here's rationalwiki's cue to find some footage of a half dozen losers on a street corner with a swastika. And in a related story, the Westboro Baptist Church is poised to take over America!).

Oh, wait! Here's Charles Manson saying everything the left says about corporations, the environment, America. Wow! I just proved liberals want to kill people just like Manson did!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxUw1jp1EZI

More on the very interesting philosophy of libertarianism as the new fascism

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/378004/twisting-libertarianism-kevin-d-williamson

Good old Michael

https://reason.com/blog/2014/05/12/michael-lind-nearly-a-decade-after-decla

http://www.salon.com/1999/11/24/lind/

And I love how the hoary old notion of the southern strategy is now being employed against the von mises institute.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300432/party-civil-rights-kevin-d-williamson Burkean (talk) 21:27, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Reword section Let the disadvantaged die for the good of the species

Since I keep finding improvements for the wording, then I will put it here for a few days and, when I'm satisfied with the wording, I'll change the article. This is to avoid further pollution of the edit history. Changed words are in bold.

The Institute promotes the book Defending the Undefendable, from Walter Edward Block. The book hails pimps, corrupt cops and drug dealers as heroes. Charity, on the other hand, is condemned as being "undeniably harmful". The reason for opposing charity is their idea that charity disrupts the survival of the fittest, thus obstructing the evolution of the human species. Now remember that the Institute already affirms that the State has no right to invest a single tax dollar in education, orphanages, day care, health care or social security. And on top of that, they actively discourage voluntary charity. So if someone is handicapped, gravely sick, discriminated against, was born in a miserable family, or for any other reason is unable to provide for themselves, libertarian utopia would let them agonize to death for the good of the species.

This book has a foreword by Rothbard and an enthusiastic preface by Hayek.

I've removed the ref as it fucked up the page.--JorisEnter (talk) 19:11, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I was glad to read this article

I'm not part of the community here and I rarely visit this site, but after reading this article I felt the need to express my gratefulness. If you haven't noticed, results from mises.org will almost always appear when you search some economics-related topic on Google. Sometimes they will even be the top result. This really makes me upset, maybe a little depressed. For a source of misinformation so pervasive, I am surprised that there is no parody site or an "anti-mises.org", if you will (to my knowledge). But anyways, thanks.

Need help

I have no idea where to ask this. But this artical smells funny to me, But i have no knowlage of poverty statistics, nor can I count to more then 5.6. Can someone with the knowlage tell me if this artical is in fact bullshit or if it's one of the few times they aren't insane

https://mises.org/blog/poor-us-are-richer-middle-class-much-europe

Gunfreak (talk) 16:18, 18 February 2016 (UTC) Gunfreak