Political Theory

Everywhere we find some warlike tribe of wild men breaking through the boundaries of some less-warlike people, settling down as nobility and founding its state. The goal is always the same: exploitation.

It seems needful to remind everybody what liberalism was in the past, that they may perceive its unlikeness to the so-called liberalism of the present. Most people have lost sight of the truth that in past times liberalism habitually stood for individual freedom versus state coercion.

The well-known problem of the tyranny of the majority is present in both corporate/investor democracies and political democracies. What sets one apart from the other are the remedies available to the disgruntled minority.

Libertarians have not come to promise human beings a technocratic utopia; we have come to bring everyone freedom, the freedom of each individual to pursue whatever his or her dreams of the future may be. Or even to have no vision of the future.

Recorded at the Ludwig von Mises Institute; Auburn, Alabama; 9 October 2010.

Recorded at the Ludwig von Mises Institute; Auburn, Alabama; 9 October 2010.

Recorded at the Ludwig von Mises Institute; Auburn, Alabama; 9 October 2010.

Recorded at the Ludwig von Mises Institute; Auburn, Alabama; 9 October 2010.

Ordinarily I agree with John Stossel.

The leading Baconian in political economy, who was also, fittingly, a pioneer in statistics and in the alleged science of "political arithmetic," was the fascinating opportunist and adventurer Sir William Petty (1623–1687).