Every map of civilizations is, underneath, a map of transaction costs. The usual stories about nations and civilizations fall into two camps, and both run into the same problem. One camp, the constructivists, sees nations as political projects—the products of state-building, what Benedict Anderson called “print capitalism” in his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, and of deliberate elite mobilization.
Previously, I have argued that sovereign credit systems are structurally biased toward expansion: crises justify new interventions, those interventions are never fully reversed, and each cycle leaves behind a higher institutional baseline than before. The Cantillon effect ensures that the gains from monetary expansion distribute unevenly, flowing first to those nearest the financial system.
Absolute poverty is an old and universal human problem. Over the past few centuries, the spread of property rights, commerce, capital accumulation, and mass production has produced a dramatic decline in poverty and a steady rise in living standards across much of the world.
Murray Rothbard’s “The Mantle of Science,” is an immensely rich paper, and in what follows, I’m going to discuss a few of the many ideas in it. The key point in the paper is that human beings cannot properly be studied by the methods of the physical sciences, because humans are conscious and engage in choice. This point, which is of course the basis of praxeology, will be familiar to most readers, but many of the arguments Rothbard gives for this thesis are startling.
History repeatedly demonstrates the difficulties faced by large conventional powers confronting decentralized resistance movements. From the American Revolution to Vietnam and Afghanistan, weaker forces have often offset military inferiority through mobility, dispersion, decentralization, local support, and the avoidance of decisive engagements.
Unfortunately, widespread misconceptions about libertarianism and capitalism (the free-market economy) exist throughout the world. Films, literature, mainstream media, and a significant portion of academic intellectuals have played a major role in perpetuating these misconceptions—portraying capitalism as the root cause of wars and attributing the crimes of the U.S.state to capitalism. In this environment, libertarianism is accused of supporting the U.S. state’s policies and its wars, and sympathizing with its imperialism.
