Brooklyn, NY - There's recently been an eruption in the United States over the question of birth control. The controversy was initially prompted by the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which mandates that employers provide insurance that covers birth control prescriptions. Earlier this year, right-wingers began to charge that that provision of the ACA threatens religious freedom - the freedom of employers, like universities and hospitals that are run by the Catholic Church, not to be compelled to pay for their employees' birth control. A compromise was quickly reached.

But that didn't stifle the controversy. It has continued to play a major role in the Republican primaries, and states like Arizona are now moving toward legislation that would not only exempt employers from having to provide birth control if they have religious or moral objections to it, but would also allow those employers to interrogate their employees about why they use birth control.

... This whole debate recently led Mike Konczal, a blogger at the Roosevelt Institute, back to Ludwig von Mises' classic 1922 text Socialism. Mises was a pioneering economist of the Austrian School, whose political writings have inspired multiple generations of libertarian activists in the US and elsewhere.