Rothbard Graduate Seminar

Fundamentals of Intervention

Rothbard Graduate Seminar
Walter Block

Power & Market - this second section of Rothbard's book - shows the state was to be protector of the people and property, but  government is contradictory to that task. Government both taxes and demands a compulsory monopoly of defensive services within a geographical area.

Are taxes simply club dues?  Can you have a market without defense services? Do you have a right to secede? If you believe in  government, you have to accept world government. Archy means rule. Anarchy is against arbitrary rule. A truly free market is incompatible with the existence of a state. Private courts could adjudicate.

Autistic (like assault), binary (like taxes) and triangular (like price control) types of intervention all produce conflict.

Rothbard sees classes as net tax payers or net tax producers.

Majority voting under democracy does not protect minorities. Democracy the God that Failed by Hoppe is the full story.

Monopolies, externalities and public goods are the three big objections to markets by progressives.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 1047-1073 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.