This past summer, some 200 South Korean activists and North Korean defectors launched 50 balloons into North Korea. The purpose? To deliver 10,000 Choco Pies—a cake and marshmallow combination coated in chocolate (think Moon Pie)—to the citizens of North Korea. The pies saw their introduction in North Korea in 2004. The treats were given...
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“The twenty-first century will be a magnificent time to be alive. Dare be an optimist.” —Matt Ridley On November 12, 2014, the world watched with excitement as another historic human achievement unfolded: After a decade-long journey that covered 4 billion miles in space, the first human spacecraft landed on a comet. This remarkable event...
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One remarkable aspect in the recent fall in global oil prices is that Saudi Arabia has not cut production to prop them up. Much of the speculation about why the Saudis have sat by passively and allowed the oil price decline has been that they are trying to undermine higher-cost producers in the US...
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September 14 marked the 65th anniversary of the publication of Ludwig von Mises’s masterpiece Human Action. I have been studying Mises’s classic text very carefully the past two years, as I’ve completed the manuscript for a forthcoming Independent Institute book, Cooperation and Enterprise: The Economics of Choice, that crystallizes the essence of Human Action...
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How can Americans overcome record government spending and debt, escalating healthcare costs, intrusive federal surveillance, endless wars, ongoing economic malaise, high unemployment, failing schools, and increasing abuses of civil and economic liberties? In this superb, new video from the recent, sold-out event sponsored by The Independent Institute and The Smith Center for Private Enterprise...
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The Challenge of Liberty Student Seminars are returning for another exciting season! Thanks to the generous support of donors, we will hold two seminars for college students—one at the University of Denver (June 16–20) and one at the University of California, Berkeley (July 7–11)—and one seminar for high-school students at the Independent Institute’s headquarters...
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At the beginning of the twentieth century, President Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy was, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” At the beginning of the twenty-first, President Obama’s policy appears to the the opposite: “Speak loudly and carry a small stick.” President Obama threatened Syria not to step over a “red line” by using...
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Russia’s Vladimir Putin has obtained a Pyrrhic victory in forcing the Ukraine to reject a free-trade agreement with the European Union that would have eliminated 95 percent of custom duties on its exports to those 28 countries and, more importantly, institutionalized its ties to the Western world. The move has triggered protests that have...
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France’s National Front, the far-right organization that has become a symbol of the xenophobic, Euroskeptic, nationalist reaction against the prevailing problems in Europe, has sent ripples across the world by topping the latest polls and winning a significant by-election. Marine Le Pen, its leader, is busy giving birth to a continent-wide movement of like-minded...
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Despite enjoying impressive economic growth over the past century, Americans have also been the victims of scores of stupid government mistakes that have made them poorer. For many the blunders led only to temporary setbacks, but for others the errors created life-altering disasters from which they never recovered. In the new book The Terrible...
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