Mises Institute

Purchase an Online Mises Academy Course as a Holiday Gift

by on December 13, 2010 @ 1:21 pm · 1 comment

in (Austrian) Economics, Education, Libertarian Theory

Gift Enrollment Certificate Sample - Anatomy of the FedAs the lecturer for an upcoming Mises Academy course (Study Libertarian Legal Theory Online with Stephan Kinsella), I have to say, I like the idea of Grayson Lilburnd in this Mises Blog post :)

Just in time for the holidays, now you can purchase a Mises Academy course as a gift, and actually have a physical “Gift Enrollment Certificate” to give to the recipient! This option may be especially helpful to parents who would like to purchase Principles of Economics, a course by Robert Murphy (based on his middle/high school textbook Lessons for the Young Economist) for their son or daughter.

The one non-intuitive thing about gifting a course, is that to do it, you need to create an account for the gift recipient, that you then pass to him or her.

Here’s how you would go about it.

  1. Go to academy.mises.org and set up an account with (A) the recipient’s name, (B) your own email address, and (C) a password that you can pass on to the recipient. Confirm the new account via the confirmation email that will be sent to you (check your spam folder, in case your filter catches the message).
  2. Use the new account to enroll in the course that you’d like to give as a gift. See here for available courses.
  3. After you enroll, you will be directed to the course’s “syllabus page”. Near the top of the syllabus page, you will see a “Gift Enrollment Certificate” link. Click on that to download the certificate as a printable PDF file. See the sample certificate below to see a smaller version of what it would look like.
  4. Give the Gift Enrollment Certificate to your loved one. Also be sure to give them the web address of the course, the username, and the password. Tell the recipient that the first thing they should do when they log in is to click on their name to access the user profile settings, and change the email address and password on the account.

We at the Mises Academy wish you an erudite Christmas and an edifying New Year!

{ 1 comment }

Liberty To Not Kill Trees

by on October 11, 2010 @ 9:42 am · 3 comments

in Education, Technology, The Basics

The great Liberty magazine, edited by R.W. Bradford from 1987 to 2005 and since then by Stephen Cox, has decided to abandon paper and become a completely online journal. This is a harbinger of things to come, as the publishing world adapts to the advent of the Internet and digital information. My own journal, Libertarian Papers, was founded in 2009 as an online journal; and, perhaps presaging things to come, Liberty‘s entire archive was recently put online on Mises.org. Cox himself, a brilliant writer, is also the heroic co-editor (with the brilliant Paul Cantor) of the critically acclaimed Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture–published in free online epub and pdf formats by the Mises Institute. The November 2010 issue of Liberty contains the following editorial:

From the Editor

I want to make an announcement about an important change in Liberty. After our next issue — December 2010 — Liberty will cease to be a print journal. Thereafter it will appear online, in a free, fully revised website that will carry features, reviews, reflections, comments from readers, and a complete archive of all the issues we have published since our founding in 1987.

This is a big change, and it brings both happy and unhappy thoughts. Unhappy, because we all value the printed word and the familiar appearance of Liberty. Happy, because online publication will enable our authors’ contributions to appear more frequently, and closer to the events on which they comment. And I predict that an online site will bring us more readers.

[Keep reading…]

{ 3 comments }

How Intellectual Property Hampers Capitalism

by on October 7, 2010 @ 10:55 am · 1 comment

in IP Law

As noted on my media page, I’ll be delivering a speech entitled “How Intellectual Property Hampers Capitalism” at the Mises Institute Supporters’ Summit 2010, Oct. 8-9 2010, Auburn Alabama. The conference’s theme is “The Economic Recovery: Washington’s Big Lie.” There’s a dynamite list of speakers. The heroic Jim Rogers will be awarded the Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize, “For lifetime defense of liberty, given every year, awards $10,000 to a public intellectual or distinguished scholar.” I am looking forward to the entire event, especially the black-tie-optional reception and dinner honoring Mr. Rogers.

{ 1 comment }

Daily Anarchist Interviews Walter Block

by on September 6, 2010 @ 7:33 am · 1 comment

in (Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Education, The Basics

The Daily Anarchist has posted a nice, short interview of Walter Block by Seth King, touching mostly on Block’s history in the libertarian movement and his thoughts on the prospects for liberty and the tactics and strategy libertarians employ. A few interesting excerpts:

Seth: Would you mind explaining to me exactly what Anarcho-Capitalism means to you?

Walter: The first part of this phrase, Anarcho-Capitalism, means that there shall be no government. Private firms will undertake all supposed government functions, such as protection from foreign and domestic enemies, adjudication, supplying supposed public goods such as light houses (in a by gone era), flood control, education, welfare, health, money, etc. The second part means that the law will support private property rights, money, etc., in contradistinction to left wing or socialist anarchism.

[Keep reading…]

{ 1 comment }

How to Mirror a Censored WordPress Blog

by on June 17, 2010 @ 6:12 pm · 6 comments

in Anti-Statism, Police Statism, Technology

A couple of days ago David mentioned that the Mises Institute providing its entire online media and literature library as a set of free torrents can be seen as part of a distributed or grassroots intellectual guerrilla resistance against the state.

This is just one aspect of the Mises Institute’s effort to be completely open source. All of the intellectual eggs of the Austro-Libertarian movement are no longer being kept in one basket. The more people who seed those torrents, the easier the burden on the Mises Institute. But more importantly, should statist or natural disaster strike, the world won’t lose the vast wealth of information hosted by the Mises Institute. Indeed, not only will the information not be lost, but there will be no downtime in its worldwide online distribution. Should states decide to actively move against us, they’ll be in for one hell of a game of ‘whack-a-mole’. They’ll face the same problems the RIAA, Hollywood, and others are facing in their War on Piracy Copying.

Austro-Libertarianism has gone viral, folks.

All this is to set the context for another example of open source anti-state resistance that I recently discovered.

WordPress is an open source website and blogging platform. It’s an easy to use, yet powerful, tool for getting our ideas online where people around the world can access them. It’s free, as in speech and beer. This site is powered by it. My site is powered by it. The Mises Institute’s site is powered by it.

But some countries like China and Australia censor the internet, blocking access to unapproved sites like YouTube and Twitter, filtering or blocking or shutting down or otherwise regulating websites and blogs.

There are ways to get around this censorship, however. Here’s one: The good folks at Global Voices Advocacy, an organization defending free speech online, have heroically created a guide to mirroring a censored WordPress blog. It’s covered by a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, just like The Libertarian Standard. Get it. Share it. Even if you don’t need it yet, someday you might. Others already do. In the spirit of the Mises Institute’s torrented online library, we’re hosting the guide here as well.

Update: Via The Register, Google has put together an online interactive Transparency Report detailing how governments around the world are censoring the internet and Google services. Google also provides a Government Requests map detailing government “requests” that Google provide data on its users.

~*~

Cross-posted at Is-Ought GAP.

{ 6 comments }

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →