Mises Daily

Roosevelt solidified trends toward centralization that had been at work since the 1860s and institutionalized what amounted to a revolution in the American form of government.

With Man, Economy, and State, Mises concluded, "Rothbard joins the ranks of the eminent economists."

But because of his interaction with Robert LeFevre in Colorado in the '50s and '60s, libertarian ideas were among those he toyed with and dramatized in certain of his stories.

"The quality of a university graduate has been devalued in recent years to the point where an employer will no longer be impressed at all by an undergraduate degree."

"The modern notion that the acts of a political council have, as such, better moral foundation than the acts of the stock exchange is of course nonsense."

When an economy is on the ropes, the last thing in the world it needs is for politicians to squander more resources and for the central bank to print up more green pieces of paper.

"But if peace meant disaster to the company, it also taught it an important lesson. A company that manufactured more rifles than it could sell to hunters, or to its own government, must seek foreign business."

For several years I have been a prophet of libertarian optimism, preaching to all who would hear the good news of impending success for the liberta

Bruno Leoni (1913–1967), an Italian classical-liberal political philosopher and attorney, was a professor at the University of Pavia, president of the Mont Pèlerin Society, and author of Freedom and the Law, expanded 3d ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991 [1961]). This paper was originally published in English, under the same title in Il Politico 31, no. 3 (1966), pp. 535–38, and has been only lightly edited for publication here. Carlo Lottieri, editor of the recently published Bruno Leoni book Law, Liberty, and the Competitive Market, Gian Turci & Anne MacDiarmid, trans. (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2009), assisted with providing this piece and obtaining necessary permissions.]

"What if the management is done by the government? Then we abandon the realm of service and enter into the realm of policy."