| Mises Institute

[Free Market, 1988]

In the March 1988 issue of The Free Market, Dr. Walter Block makes a solid case for a free market in human body parts. I agree with Dr. Block’s analysis of the problems caused by governmental intervention into the market for used human body parts, and offer the following as an extension of that analysis.

Our Federal Government

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In every age of the world, the few have found means to steal power from the many. But in our government, if it be indeed a consolidated one, such a result is absolutely inevitable.

Looting in Las Vegas

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The common thief has the decency to leave you alone after he takes your money. But, society’s biggest thief, government, steals money, calling it taxation, and then lurks in the shadows to tell its victims what to do, calling it regulation. And, in Las Vegas the government goes one step further, it taxes, it regulates and then competes head to head with private enterprise in the city’s largest industry, tourism.

The Venetian Hotel’s Sidewalk

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Can there be a right to freedom of speech without that right being firmly based on property rights?

Rothbard and the Nature of the State

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What is that “organization” that claims the monopoly of violence? In other words, what is the state apparatus? We begin to find an answer in Rothbard’s analysis of the behavior of states.

Trust Us: Social Security Works

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Economic theory is to many on the Left nothing more than a constant rephrasing of the old Marxist canards condemning business, coupled with the most childlike faith in the power of government bureaucrats.

The Trouble with Reform

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Good market outcomes occur because exchange is voluntary, consumers are sovereign, property rights are protected, and there are strong incentives to minimize costs. This contrasts with public education.

Fifty Links to Our Healthcare Future?

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Why did efforts to centralize healthcare fail in the early 1990s but succeed today? Baby boomers are now older, grayer, and scared out of their wits by the economic crisis’s effect on their retirement.

Did Rothbard “Borrow” the Income and Substitution Effects?

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From the introductory undergraduate to the advanced PhD courses in microeconomics, most students are taught that the concept of an indifference curve is very useful in analyzing individual choice. I emphasize the term “useful” for a reason. No professor I have asked about the concept ever said it was literally true. I don’t think anyone who understands the concept would ever try to claim that this is how humans actually make choices. Rather, we have been instructed to treat the microeconomic models only as tools for prediction of phenomena.

Machanarchy

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Tibor Machan in Essay on “Government” v. “State” distinguishes between state and government, and says:

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The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

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The Market in Used Human Body Parts