Freedom and Prosperity in Liechtenstein: A Hoppean Analysis

Liechtenstein has long been recognized as one of the most free and prosperous countries in the world. However, there has been little analysis of Liechtenstein’s development because the scant research that existed was in German and therefore inaccessible to most American scholars. Furthermore, many saw no need to study Liechtenstein, viewing it as an accident of history with an anachronistic political system. Liechtenstein’s Monarchy, unlike the monarchies in most other European states, retains extensive powers and is involved in the day-today operations of government.

Is There a Distinct and Valid Libertarian Form of Historical Understanding?

It is a common belief that every historian, in trying to describe any episode from the human past, cannot help but color his narrative with the hues of his own political stances, his positions concerning political economy, his visions of a just society, his religious beliefs, and other such subjective tinctures. Those influences will inevitably enter into his interpretation of the “bare, objective facts” of history, and, as a result, the plain facts are merely the raw material from which the historian sculpts his own creation.

Volume 22, Number 1 (2010)

Two Irreconcilable Theories of Justice: Social Engineering vs. Ethics of Property

If economics is understood as being the science of the implications of voluntary and monetary exchanges among different people (Mises, 1985), the terminology “economics of crime” is a contradiction in terms. Indeed the economic exchange consists in voluntary and peaceful cooperation, whereas crime refers to concepts of violence and coercion (Mises, 1983). The contrast is then more marked between the notion of economics that refers to a process of collaboration and cooperation, and that of criminal activity, which is associated with the invasion of property (Rothbard, 1991 [1970]).

Gary Becker on Free Banking

The recently edited Festschrift in honor of Pascal Salin is a highly varied and disparate collection of contributions by colleagues, admirers and friends of the famous French professor of the Université Paris-Dauphine, ranging over a wide variety of subject matters, from personal testimonies and reflections about the methodology of the social sciences to contributions about the relationship between liberalism and Christianity and a plea on behalf of the liberalization of African economies, besides more conventional topics such as the economic analysis of taxation and the theory of

John Maynard Keynes and Ludwig von Mises on Probability

As regards the views about probability of Ludwig von Mises, it is undeniably true that these display considerable nuance and that they can be considered as being of a sui generis variety. Even if Ludwig von Mises’s views on probability exhibit a closer conceptual affinity with Keynes’s philosophy of probability than with the frequency interpretation espoused by his brother Richard von Mises, an important difference between the views of Ludwig von Mises and those of John Maynard Keynes in this respect will nevertheless be acknowledged.

Volume 22, Number 1 (2011)

Free Rider Problems in Insurance-Based Private Defense

Libertarian writers including Hoppe, Hummel, and Murphy have attempted to deal with the presence of free riders in theoretical private defense constructs. As with the provision of most public goods, free riders are also a problem in the production of security. This paper proposes a solution toward the free rider problem and analyzes further problems previously unconsidered in the literature.

Volume 22, Number 1 (2011)

Terri Schiavo

The case of Terri Schiavo is almost as controversial as it is tragic. In 1990 Mrs. Schiavo, who reached her 40th year in 2005, fell victim to brain damage. She has been in a vegetative state ever since, kept alive not under her own power, but aided by a welter of feeding tubes and other paraphernalia of modern medicine.

The controversy? Her husband Michael is adamant that the doctors pull the plug on Terri, and her parents are just as determined to keep her alive.

Volume 22, Number 1 (2011)

How Not to Defend the Market: A Critique of Easton, Miron, Bovard, Friedman and Boudreaux

Did you ever hear the phrase, “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” This aphorism applies to several “defenses” of the free enterprise system we could all richly do without. In section one we consider an invalid argument for legalizing addictive drugs. Section two is given over to an analysis of foreign aid, from this perspective. The purpose of section three is to critically examine an argument in favor of the voluntary military. We conclude in section four.

Volume 22, Number 1 (2011)