The old debate between socialism and capitalism is back.

The federal government has discovered another menace to the republic: the vacuum cleaner.

Liberty’s history is often presented as a direct consequence of the Enlightenment: inherited authority was subjected to reason, persecution gave way to toleration, monarchy to constitutional government, and privilege to individual rights. In this account, classical liberalism leads naturally to Austrian economics and modern libertarianism. That sequence is useful but incomplete.

[Murray N. Rothbard: The Making of an Austrian Economist by Joseph T. Salerno and Patrick Newman. ( Mises Institute, 2026; x + 196p.)]

The authors have cast illuminating new light on both Murray Rothbard’s early career as an economist and on the significance of Man, Economy, and State and other works of the same period.

It’s a very common example used to illustrate the plight of the poor.

Boots, you see, are a required piece of equipment for anybody working a blue-collar job or other forms of manual labor. The boots protect your feet, keep you warm, and provide essential traction on sometimes slick surfaces where you may be carrying hefty objects. Suffice it to say, it is likely that a poor person needs boots. But boots aren’t cheap. Thus, the math of poverty ensures that a poor person stays as they are—poor.

Originally, this article was intended to be an exploration as to how—after a period of initial patent monopoly and an all-too-brief episode of freer market competition—cronyism reestablished a telephone monopoly that would last for decades.

This article was originally published in the New York World Telegram & Sun, May 7, 1951. It will be included in the forthcoming book, Why Mises Matters Today, edited by Shawn Ritenour, and available spring 2027 from the Mises Institute.

The government provides a part of the funds required for rearmament by inflation, that is, by increasing the quantity of money in circulation and the amount of bank balances subject to check.