Dr. Richard M. Ebeling is the recently appointed BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel. He is conducting courses such as “Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Capitalist Ethics” as well as “The Morality and Economics of Capitalist Society.” Dr. Ebeling is recognized as one of the leading members of the Austrian School of Economics and is the author ofMonetary Central Planning and the State (Future of Freedom Foundation, 2015) as well as the author of Political Economy, Public Policy, and Monetary Economics: Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian Tradition (Routledge 2010). He is currently editing a forthcoming volume in the Collected Works of F.A. Hayek (Univ. of Chicago Press), the noted Austrian economist and Nobel Laureate. Prior to his appointment at The Citadel, Dr. Ebeling was professor of Economics at Northwood University in Midland, Michigan (2009-2014). He served as president of the Foundation for Economic Education (2003-2008), was the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at Hillside College in Hillsdale, Michigan (1988-2003), and Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Dallas in Texas (1984-1988). He lives with his wife Anna and their dog “Fritzie” in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.
In a Pew Foundation opinion survey report in September of 2022, it was found that only 46% of Democrats had a “positive” view of capitalism, down from 55% in 2019. On the other hand, 74% of Republicans said they were positive on capitalism, which was a decrease from 78% in 2019. At the same time,...
The United States and most of the rest of the world are, once again, in the midst of an inflationary crisis. Prices in general are rising at annualized rates not experienced by, especially, the industrialized countries of North America and Europe for well over 40 years. More than 50 percent of the U.S. population is...
Suppose that one evening as the sun was setting and dusk was settling in, a strange mist fell over the United States that resulted in the entire population of the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, falling into a deep and restful sleep. Similarly, as evening settled in across the Russian Federation, the same...
It is very difficult to be a classical liberal or libertarian and not experience bouts of disappointment, frustration, and outright pessimism. The world around us seems to be going to hell in a handbasket. Government continues to grow and, apparently, is out of control. For example, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its semiannual Budget...
Leonard E. Read, the founding and long-serving first president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), once told a story about when he first met the famous Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. It was in 1940, shortly after Mises had arrived in the United States from war-torn Europe. Read had invited Mises to Los Angeles...
Regardless of the reason or rationale, the social effect of affirmative-action policies is to politicize social relationships. And the consequences of this have been everything from systems of privilege and corruption to mob violence and civil war. America was founded upon the idea that it is the individual who possesses rights. This was counter to...
At a banquet dinner held in New York City on March 7, 1956, honoring the famous Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, another equally renowned member of the Austrian school of economics, Friedrich A. Hayek, delivered a talk highlighting the important contributions of his long-time mentor and close friend, going back to when they first met...
Seventy-five years ago, there occurred an important event in the post–World War II revival of free-market liberal ideas. Over the first ten days of April 1947, 39 people from Europe and the United States met in a hotel in Switzerland at a mountain place known as Mont Pelerin. They came together to discuss the future...
Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, advocates of greater government planning and redistribution have used “following the science” as the rhetorical cover to rationalize the growth in political paternalism. Now, however, some of them are coming out of the closet and insisting that economists, for example, must explicitly adopt an authoritarian ethic that requires...
The political paternalists and the social engineers are giddy with hope and anticipation. They are confident that their day has, once again, arrived. The era of even bigger government has returned, and any remaining free-market system is simply out of date. They are full of promises and plans to set the world right, as long...
What passes for ‘deregulation’ or market-based reform has limited connection with any call for a truly laissez-faire capitalist United States.
NOTE: This is an excerpted version of an essay published on the Institute’s website on Aug. 16, 2021. This August marked the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the end to the Soviet Union. During August 19-21, 1991, hardline members of the Soviet Communist Party and the KGB attempted a coup d’état in Moscow to...