It is an axiom of asset bubbles that—under the bustling surface—widespread malfeasance takes place. This is especially true near the end of asset bubbles, where participants fear missing out on the supposed riches produced therein, but—failing to achieve them—ultimately resort to chicanery and fraud to achieve their ends.
[The following is the Acceptance Address by the Professor Jesús Huerta de Soto, at the ceremony conferring the Order of May for Merit. White Room, Casa Rosada, Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 27, 2025.]
Readers will be aware that Murray Rothbard conceptualized all rights as property rights, derived from the principle of self-ownership. His concept of individual liberty was thus rooted in the defense of private property rights. This is not to say that he disregarded other philosophical perspectives in which the defense of individual liberty plays a central role. On the contrary, as Sheldon Richman has observed, Rothbard’s own political philosophy encompassed a wide range of perspectives on liberty:
In Graeber’s Paradox, Graeber captured something real: many workers today feel trapped in positions they know serve no clear purpose. Yet he located the cause in capitalism/neoliberalism rather than in bureaucracy. He imagined a world where elites deliberately maintain wasteful employment to keep people docile. But the modern West is not a laissez-faire system; it is a dense web of monetary interventions, taxes, subsidies, and regulations.
[Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life by Jonathan Lear (Harvard University Press, 2024; 176 pp.)]
Tel Aviv vows to investigate the leaks, but is untroubled by the rapes themselves.
