BUILDING BLOCKS FOR

Critical Essays by Walter Block

Edited by

Iulian Tãnase and Bogdan Glãvan

Foreword by

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

© Walter Block 2006

© Libertas Publishing 2006

First hardcover edition published in 2006 by Libertas Publishing, Bucharest, Romania (www.libertaspublishing.com).

First English edition © 2010 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and published under the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Ludwig von Mises Institute

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This book could not have been published without the advice and contribution of many libertarian colleagues and friends.

We are most grateful to Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, for helping us pursue this project and writing a wonderful Foreword.

Murray Rothbard, in his life, was known as Mr. Libertarian. We can make a solid case that the title now belongs to Walter Block, a student of Rothbard’s whose own vita is as thick as a phone book, as diverse as Wikipedia. Whether he is writing on economic theory, ethics, political secession, drugs, roads, education, monetary policy, social theory, unions, political language, or anything else, his prose burns with a passion for this single idea: if human problems are to be solved, the solution is to be found by permitting greater liberty.

This book Building Blocks for Liberty: Critical Essays by Walter Block is dedicated to the notion that libertarianism is not only a political economic philosophy that is powerful and insightful, but it is also unique; it is neither of the right nor of the left (Walter Block, “Libertarianism is Unique; It Belongs Neither to the Right Nor the Left; A Critique of the Views of Long, Holcombe, and Baden on the left, Hoppe, Feser and Paul on the right,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, 2010).

1

On Property and Exploitation

(with Hans-Hermann Hoppe)

1.

2

Toward a Universal Libertarian Theory of Gun (Weapon) Control: A Spatial and Geographical Analysis

(with Matthew Block)

3

Environmentalism and Economic Freedom: The Case for Private Property Rights

This paper shall attempt to reconcile environmentalism and economic freedom.

4

Enterprising Education: Doing Away with the Public School System

(with Andrew Young)

Besides national defense, no government-provided service enjoys as much exemption from scrutiny as the provision and subsidization of primary public education. Even presumed champions of the free market, such as Milton Friedman, support the government subsidization of education through high school: