Philosophy and Methodology

All action is really exchange. What the actor prefers less is exchanged for something he prefers more, including gift giving. It is a fallacy to say that the goods exchanged have equal value.

The July-August 1983 issue of Libertari

In this first lecture of a series of lectures covering the basics of applied Austrian economics,  Joseph Salerno introduces a number of basic concepts including utility, exchange, psychic cost, choice, value, and marginal utility. 

Robert Nozick, 1938-2002, was a professor at Harvard whose best known book is Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) – a libertarian answer to Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971). Murray Rothbard, 1926-1995, wrote The Ethics of Liberty as his main political philosophy work.

John Rawls, 1921-2002, was the most influential figure among American philosophers. His first, and main, work, A Theory of Justice (1971), made him famous. It aimed to resolve the seemingly competing claims of freedom and equality.

John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, was the most famous classical liberal. Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903, was a prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era. Lysander Spooner, 1808-1887, was an American individualist anarchist and abolitionist.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778, influenced the French Revolution with his political philosophy and his social contract theory. The perspective of many of today’s environmentalists can be traced back to Rousseau, espousing that all degenerates in man’s hands. The Social Contract (1972), his most important work, outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism.

Narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.

Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, was called the most evil person by Ayn Rand. His classical republican theory was extended in the Science of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). G.W.F. Hegel, 1770-1831, was definitely not a classical liberal.

The following thoughts on the current economic and financial environment formed part of a recent commentary sent to our firm’s clients.