Rothbard A to Z

ECONOMETRICS

… the very concept of “variable” used so frequently in econometrics is illegitimate, for physics is able to arrive at laws only by discovering constants. The concept of “variable” only makes sense if there are some things that are not variable, but constant. Yet in human action, free will precludes any quantitative constants …

Economic Controversies, p. 13

Econometrics not only attempts to ape the natural sciences by using complex heterogeneous historical facts as if they were repeatable homogeneous laboratory facts; it also squeezes the qualitative complexity of each event into a quantitative number and then compounds the fallacy by acting as if these quantitative relations remain constant in human history.

Economic Controversies, pp. 74–75

While the analytic merits of macro concepts, input-output analysis and econometrics are highly dubious at best, they are surely worse than nothing if the numbers are incorrect.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 376

… the recent conquest of mathematical economics by econometrics is a sign of recognition that pure mathematical theory in economics is sterile.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. liv

The pretensions of econometricians and other “model-builders” that they can precisely forecast the economy will always founder on the simple but devastating query: “If you can forecast so well, why are you not doing so on the stock market, where accurate forecasting reaps such rich rewards?” It is beside the point to dismiss such a query—as many have done—by calling it “anti-intellectual”; for this is precisely the acid test of the would-be economic oracle.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1358

ECONOMIC CALCULATION

The economic calculation made possible by money and the invention of double-entry bookkeeping in the capitalist market, enabled action toward the maximizing of money profit and income, and thereby toward the most efficient realization of man’s ends. In this way, maximization of profit under capitalism is accomplished by following the economic principle or principle of economic rationality, a principle enabling the maximum degree of realization of one’s ends per given outlay, as well as the minimal outlay of means for a given degree of realization of one’s ends.

Economic Controversies, pp. 802–03

Only genuinely private firms, private owners of the means of production, can be truly responsive to profit-and-loss incentives. And moreover, the only genuine price system, reflecting costs and profit opportunities, arises from actual markets—from buying and selling by private owners of property.

Making Economic Sense, p. 424

It is true that such estimates are not precise. The estimates of what he would have received can never be wholly accurate. But this tool of ex post calculation is an indispensable one. It is the only way by which a man can guide his ex ante decisions, his future actions.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 607

… without an external market for wage rates, rents, and interest, there would be no rational way for entrepreneurs to allocate factors in accordance with the wishes of the consumers. No one would know where he could allocate his land or his labor to provide the maximum monetary gains. No entrepreneur would know how to arrange factors in their most value-productive combinations to earn the greatest profit. There could be no efficiency in production because the requisite knowledge would be lacking. The productive system would be in complete chaos …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 608

Economic calculation becomes ever more important as the market economy develops and progresses, as the stages and the complexities of type and variety of capital goods increase. Ever more important for the maintenance of an advanced economy, then, is the preservation of markets for all the capital and other producers’ goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 614

… business accounting is traditionally geared to a world where the value of the monetary unit is stable.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 993

… the market permits the ingenious device of capitalist calculation, a calculation necessary to the efficient and productive allocation of the factors of production.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1363–64

Only the establishment of money-prices on the market allows the development of a civilized economy, for only they permit businessmen to calculate economically. Businessmen can now judge how well they are satisfying consumer demands by seeing how the selling-prices of their products compare with the prices they have to pay productive factors (their “costs”). Since all these prices are expressed in terms of money, the businessmen can determine whether they are making profits or losses. Such calculations guide businessmen, laborers, and landowners in their search for monetary income on the market. Only such calculations can allocate resources to their most productive uses—to those uses that will most satisfy the demands of consumers.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 11

… accounting practice enters the “cost” of an asset at the amount the business has paid for it. But if inflation intervenes, the cost of replacing the asset when it wears out will be far greater than that recorded on the books. As a result, business accounting will seriously overstate their profits during inflation—and may even consume capital while presumably increasing their investments.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, pp. 52–53

ECONOMIC GROWTH

… economic development takes place through greater investment in more roundabout processes of production … investment is the result of greater net savings brought about by a general fall in rates of time-preference.

Economic Controversies, p. 268

… there [is] a causal connection between freedom and economic growth. For it is precisely freedom, the absence or limitation of interpersonal restrictions or interference, that sets the stage for economic growth and hence of the market economy and the developed division of labor.

Economic Controversies, p. 605

Economic growth comes about largely as the result of falling rates of time-preference, which lead to an increase in the proportion of saving and investment to consumption, and also to a falling rate of interest.

Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, p. 32

Economic growth comes about largely as the result of falling rates of time preference, which bring about an increase in the proportion of saving and investment to consumption, as well as a falling rate of interest.

For a New Liberty, pp. 233–34

We need growth, higher living standards, and a technology and capital equipment that meet consumer wants and demands; but we can only achieve these by removing the incubus of statism and allowing the energies of all of the population to express themselves in the free-market economy. We need an economic and technological growth that emerges freely …

For a New Liberty, p. 307

Economic “efficiency” and “economic growth” are not goods in themselves, nor do they exist for their own sake. The relevant questions always are: “efficiency” in pursuit of what, or whose values? “Growth” for what?

Making Economic Sense, p. 165

… in a progressing economy, i.e., in an economy with increases in gross savings and investment, money wages and ground rents may well fall, but real wages and rents will rise.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 526

Amidst all the interest in growth, there are many grave problems which have hardly been touched upon. First and foremost is the simple query: “What is so good about growth?” The economists, discoursing scientifically about growth, have illegitimately smuggled an ethical judgment into their science—an ethical judgment that remains unanalyzed, as if it were self-evident. But why should growth be the highest value for which we can strive? What is the ethical justification?

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 962

… the only viable way to growth is through increased saving and investment.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 963

… government intervention can never raise society’s rate of “growth.” For when individuals act freely on the market, every one of their actions benefits everyone, and so growth is truly “social,” i.e., participated in by everyone in the society. But when government acts to force growth, it is only some who grow at the expense of the retrogression of others. The Wertfrei economist is therefore not permitted to say that “society” grows at all.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 964

Compulsory growth will not benefit the whole of society as will freely chosen growth, and it is therefore not “social growth”; some will gain—and gain at some distant date—at the expense of the retrogression of others.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 969

… improved standards of living come to the public from the fruits of capital investment. Increased productivity tends to lower prices (and costs) and thereby distribute the fruits of free enterprise to all the public, raising the standard of living of all consumers. Forcible propping up of the price level prevents this spread of higher living standards.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 32

ECONOMICS

Political economy deals with general facts or laws …

Classical Economics, p. 13

… political economy is not to be considered, as had Smith and the classicals, a study of wealth; it is instead a study of human exchanges.

Classical Economics, p. 120

… the laws of the political economist are certain …

Economic Controversies, p. 45

… economic science per se cannot establish ethical statements.… If prosperity vs. poverty, for example, are political alternatives, economic science cannot decide between them; it simply presents the truth about the consequences of each alternative political decision. As citizens, we take these truths into account when we make our politico-ethical decisions.

Economic Controversies, p. 313

… there is only one economy and therefore only one integrated economic theory.

Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, p. 15

… economics can and has proceeded in contentious, even zig-zag fashion, with later systemic fallacy sometimes elbowing aside earlier but sounder paradigms, thereby redirecting economic thought down a total erroneous or even tragic path. The overall path of economics may be up, or it may be down, over any given time period.

… important economic knowledge has been lost over time …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. x

The term “economics” is Greek, stemming from the Greek oikonomia, but oikonomia means not economics in our sense but “household management” …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 8

The essence of philosophic thought is that it penetrates the ad hoc vagaries of day-to-day life in order to arrive at truths that transcend the daily accidents of time and place. Philosophy arrives at truths about the world and about human life that are absolute, universal and eternal—at least while the world and humanity last. It arrives, in short, at a system of natural laws. But economic analysis is a subset of such investigation, because genuine economic theory can only advance beyond shifting day-to-day events by penetrating truths about human action which are absolute, unchanging and eternal, which are unaffected by changes of time and place. Economic thought, at least correct economic thought, is itself a subset of natural laws in its own branch of investigation.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 19

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a “dismal science.” But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 202

… economics has been a notoriously contentious science—and yet few people advocate tossing all economics therefore into the discard.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 10

… while praxeological economic theory is extremely useful for providing data and knowledge for framing economic policy, it cannot be sufficient by itself to enable the economist to make any value pronouncements or to advocate any public policy whatsoever.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 214

… economics does not propound any laws about the content of man’s ends.… the truths of economic theory involve the formal relations between ends and means, and not their specific contents.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 72

Economics is a subdivision of praxeology—so far the only fully elaborated subdivision. With praxeology as the general, formal theory of human action, economics includes the analysis of the action of an isolated individual (Crusoe economics) and, especially elaborate, the analysis of interpersonal exchange (catallactics).

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 74

… economics deals with the universal aspects of real action, not with the actors’ inner psychological workings.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 260

Economics is not concerned with the specific content of these ends, but with the explanation of various phenomena of action based on any given ends, and therefore its task in this sphere is fully accomplished by tracing these phenomena back to subjective valuations of useful goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 275–76

Economics cannot itself decide on ethical judgments. But in order for anyone to make ethical judgments rationally, he must know the consequences of his various alternative courses of action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 713

It is impossible for economics to predict the details of the structure of any market.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 799

Economics is praxeological, i.e., its propositions are absolutely true given the existence of the axioms—the basic axiom being the existence of human action itself.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 865–66

The hidden order, harmony, and efficiency of the voluntary free market, the hidden disorder, conflict, and gross inefficiency of coercion and intervention—these are the great truths that economic science, through deductive analysis from self-evident axioms, reveals to us.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1025

… economics—or praxeology—cannot by itself suffice to establish an ethical, or politico-ethical, doctrine. Economics per se is therefore a Wertfrei science, which does not engage in ethical judgments.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1029

… economics can establish no ethical principles by itself … importation of ethics must be grounded on a consistent, coherent set of ethical principles, and not simply be slipped in ad hoc in the spirit of “well, everyone must agree to this.…”

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1215

The laws of economics apply whatever the particular level of the economy.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1335

… economics cannot by itself establish ethical judgments, and it can and should be developed in a Wertfrei manner.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1360

… deductive economic theory proved to be a mighty bulwark against government intervention. For, basically, economic theory showed the harmony and order inherent in the free market, as well as the counterproductive distortions and economic shackles imposed by state intervention. In order for statism to dominate the economics profession, then, it was important to discredit deductive theory. One of the most important ways of doing so was to advance the notion that, to be “genuinely scientific,” economics had to eschew generalization and deductive laws and simply engage in empirical inquiry into the facts of history and historical institutions, hoping that somehow laws would eventually arise from these detailed investigations.

Progressive Era, p. 429

… economics is neutral to ethics …

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 111

The crucial economic question, and one of the most important social questions, is the allocation of resources: where should the various and numerous productive factors: land, labor, or capital, be allocated, and how much of each type to each use? This is the “economic problem,” and all social questions must deal with it.

Science, Technology, and Government, p. 15

ECONOMISTS

… it is impermissible for the economist qua economist to make any ethical or value pronouncements or to advocate any social or political policy whatsoever.

Economic Controversies, p. 84

… the economist who lacks an ethical system must refrain from any and all value-loaded or political conclusions.

Economic Controversies, p. 242

The proportion of believers in laissez-faire is much greater among economists than in other academic disciplines, and that the “average” point on the ideological spectrum in economics is considerably “to the right” of the average in other fields of study. It appears that the economic discipline, per se, imposes a rightward shift in ideological belief.

Economic Controversies, p. 345

… the free-market economist must have some sort of theory of justice in property rights …

… the economist cannot escape a judgment, a theory of justice in the ownership of property.

Economic Controversies, p. 348

… if an economist offers a value judgment or advocates policy, it is incumbent upon him to offer, stand upon and defend an ethical system from which the judgment or policy can be deduced. Anything less is arbitrary, unscientific and illegitimate, and simply amounts to the arbitrary imposition of an economist’s personal set of values upon society. In that case, the economist simply becomes a propagandist, not of a defensible ethical system, but of his own unsupported caprice.

Economic Controversies, pp. 924–25

The libertarian economist can try to offer a few guidelines on how markets might develop where they are now prevented or restricted from developing; but he can do little more than point the way toward freedom, to call for government to get out of the way …

For a New Liberty, p. 242

It is a wonder that the public doesn’t dismiss the entire guild of economists and financial experts (let alone the politicians) as a bunch of fools and charlatans.

Making Economic Sense, p. 169

… you don’t need an economist to tell you whether you’ve been in a recession. …

… If you want to know whether we’re in a recession, the last people to approach is the organized economics profession.

Making Economic Sense, p. 259

The average person knows when we’re in a recession long before economists do. …

The average person knows we’re in a recession long after the economists proclaimed “recovery.”

Making Economic Sense, p. 266

The consumer who purchases directly enjoyable services does not have to be enlightened by economists; he needs no lengthy chain of reasoning to know that his clothing or car or food is enjoyable or serviceable. He can see each perform its service before his eyes. Similarly, the capitalist-entrepreneur does not need the economist to tell him what acts will be profitable or unprofitable. He can see and test them by means of his profits or losses.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 712

The political economist, in fact, is indispensable to any citizen who frames ethical judgments in politics. Economics can never by itself supply ethical dicta, but it does furnish existential laws that cannot be ignored by anyone framing ethical conclusions …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1360

… the economist qua economist must be Wertfrei …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1363

The common charge against sound, free-enterprise economists that they are “apologists for business interests” is invested with a good deal of truth.

Strictly Confidential, p. 205

… the sound, free-enterprise economist is not simply in favor of business, or big business; he only favors them insofar as their actions are made on the free market. Insofar as they lobby for subsidies (direct and indirect) for themselves at the expense of raids on the taxpayer and crippling of their competitors, the sound economist must oppose them, and the sound historian exposes them.

Strictly Confidential, p. 207

EDUCATION

… universal education has in fact led to a general degradation of cultural and educational standards.

Economic Controversies, p. 566

The overwhelmingly important feature of the growing-up process is mental, the development of mental powers, or perception and reason.

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 1

… a person acquires his education in all activities of his childhood; all his waking hours are spent in learning in one form or another. It is clearly absurd to limit the term “education” to a person’s formal schooling. He is learning all the time. He learns and forms ideas about other people, their desires, and actions to achieve them, the world and the natural laws that govern it; and his own ends, and how to achieve them. He formulates ideas on the nature of man, and what his own and others’ ends should be in light of this nature. This is a continual process, and it is obvious that formal schooling constitutes only an item in this process.

In a fundamental sense, as a matter of fact, everyone is “self-educated.”

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 2

… for each person to be “educated,” to develop his faculties to the fullest, he needs freedom for this development.

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 10

… since the State began to control education, its evident tendency has been more and more to act in such a manner as to promote repression and hindrance of education, rather than the true development of the individual. Its tendency has been for compulsion, for enforced equality at the lowest level, for the watering down of the subject and even the abandonment of all formal teaching, for the inculcation of obedience to the State and to the “group,” rather than the development of self-independence, for the deprecation of intellectual subjects.

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 12

By enforcing certification for minimum standards, the State effectively, though subtly, dominates the private schools and makes them, in effect, extensions of the public school system. Only removal of compulsory schooling and enforced standards will free the private schools and permit them to function in independence.

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 16

One of the best ways of regarding the problem of compulsory education is to think of the almost exact analogy in the area of that other great educational medium—the newspaper. What would we think of a proposal for the government, Federal or State, to use the taxpayers’ money to set up a nationwide chain of public newspapers, and compel all people, or all children, to read them? What would we think furthermore of the government’s outlawing all other newspapers, or indeed outlawing all newspapers that do not come up to the “standards” of what a government commission thinks children ought to read? Such a proposal would be generally regarded with horror in America, and yet this is exactly the sort of regime that the government has established in the sphere of scholastic instruction.

Compulsory public presses would be considered an invasion of the basic freedom of the press; yet is not scholastic freedom at least as important as press freedom? Aren’t both vital media for public information and education, for free inquiry and the search for truth? It is clear that the suppression of free instruction should be regarded with even greater horror than suppression of free press, since here the unformed minds of children are involved.

Education: Free and Compulsory, pp. 17–18

The system of compulsory state education has been used as a terrible weapon in the hands of governments to impose certain languages and to destroy the languages of various national and linguistic groups within their borders.

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 27

To insure the dominance of the new statism over public opinion, to insure that the public’s consent would be engineered, the governments of the Western world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries moved to seize control over education, over the minds of men: over the universities and over general education through compulsory school attendance laws and a network of public schools. The public schools were consciously used to inculcate obedience to the State as well as other civic virtues among their young charges. Furthermore, this statizing of education insured that one of the biggest vested interests in expanding statism would be the nation’s teachers and professional educationists.

For a New Liberty, pp. 14–15

… the entire mass of the population has thus been coerced by the government into spending a large portion of the most impressionable years of their lives in public institutions.

For a New Liberty, p. 145

A crucial fallacy of the middle-class school worshippers is confusion between formal schooling and education in general. Education is a lifelong process of learning, and learning takes place not only in school, but in all areas of life. When the child plays, or listens to parents or friends, or reads a newspaper, or works at a job, he or she is becoming educated. Formal schooling is only a small part of the educational process …

For a New Liberty, pp. 146–147

Abolish compulsory attendance laws and give children their head, and we will return to a nation of people far more productive, interested, creative, and happy.

For a New Liberty, p. 147

Instead of allowing those children with the needed aptitude and ability to go to school, all children are being coerced into schools for their own supposed good, and the result is a distortion of the lives of those not suited for school and the wrecking of proper schooling for the truly educable.

For a New Liberty, p. 148

… the very nature of the public school requires the imposition of uniformity and the stamping out of diversity and individuality in education.

For a New Liberty, p. 154

The more that education becomes public, the more will parents and children be deprived of the education they feel they need. The more that education becomes public, the more will heavy-handed uniformity stamp out the needs and desires of individuals and minorities.

For a New Liberty, p. 155

If education were strictly private, then each and every group of parents could and would patronize its own kind of school. A host of diverse schools would spring up to meet the varied structure of educational demands by parents and children.

For a New Liberty, p. 156

What the libertarian is calling for, then, is not as outré as it might at first appear; what he is calling for is a school system as free and varied as most other educational media are today.

For a New Liberty, p. 157

A compulsory public press would rightly be considered an invasion of the basic freedom of the press; is not scholastic freedom at least as important as press freedom? Aren’t both vital media for public information and education, for free inquiry and search for the truth? In fact, the suppression of free schooling should be regarded with even greater horror than the suppression of a free press, since here the tender and unformed minds of children are more directly involved.

For a New Liberty, p. 157

… the operation of district public schools inevitably results in the negation of the very egalitarian goal which is supposed to be a major aim of the public school system in the first place.

For a New Liberty, p. 161

The libertarian prescription for our educational mess can, then, be summed up simply: Get the government out of the educational process.

For a New Liberty, p. 173

It is not only necessary to educate others; continual self-education is also (and equally) necessary.

For a New Liberty, p. 374

Public schools are expensive and massive centers for cultural and ideological brainwashing … Truly radical change is needed to shift education from public to unregulated private schooling …

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 31

… get the State out of the family; and replace State control with parental control. In the long run, this means ending public schools, and replacing them with private schools.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 41

There is no doubt about the ultimate libertarian position on the public school question: it is to abolish that monstrous system root and branch, and return education to the total control, management, and choice of the parents. Another plank in the libertarian program is to abolish the despotism of compulsory school laws, which dragoons kids into either the public school system itself or into private schools duly certified and approved by the State.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 73

If the government educates, it is bound to educate for its goals and indoctrinate in its values.

Left and Right, p. 374

The public-school system … is a vast prison-house and chain-gang for the nation’s youth. The compulsory attendance laws force all of the youth of the country, regardless of their talents or inclinations, into this vast prison-system …

Left and Right, p. 496

… it is only the libertarians who have the answer that can cut through and resolve the numerous conflicts around bussing, textbooks, religion, sex, etc., that are rife in the public schools. And that answer, of course, is to abolish the public school system root and branch, and thereby to allow any groups of parents and students to have the schools, integrated or segregated, Fundamentalist or atheist, disciplined or permissive, that they respectively and individually prefer.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 527

The education disaster in this country has been largely created by the massive federal funds and controls that have already fastened a gigantic educational bureaucracy on the American people, and have gone a long way toward taking control of our children out of the hands of parents and putting it into the maw of the State.

Making Economic Sense, p. 80

One problem with public schools inheres in every government operation: that being fueled by coercion rather than by the free market, the system will be grossly inefficient. But while inefficiency on a free market will fail the profit-and-loss test and force cutbacks, governmental inefficiency will only lead to accelerated waste. The tax system and lobbying by vested interests causes the system to grow like Topsy, or rather like a cancer on the civil society.

Making Economic Sense, p. 157

Governmental schooling is bound to be biased in favor of statism …

Making Economic Sense, p. 157

… all public schools are unnecessary and replaceable …

Making Economic Sense, p. 158

… government schooling permits the influencing of the youthful mind to accept the virtues of the government under which it lives and of the principle of government intervention.… And if government ownership is good and even preferable in schooling, why not for other educational media, e.g., newspapers—or for other important social services?

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 955

The expansion of compulsory public schooling stemmed from the growth of collectivist and anti-individualist ideology among intellectuals and educationists. The individual, these “progressives” believed, must be molded by the educational process to conform to the group, which in practice meant the dictates of the power elite speaking in the group’s name. Historians have long been aware of this process.

Progressive Era, p. 319

… the entire philosophy of public education in this country needs an overhauling.… we must abandon the mind-crippling “life adjustment” philosophy of our schools, which rather indoctrinates children in “group adjustment” than equips them with the mental skills and disciplines of science or any other intellectual subject. Our schools must once again regard it as their basic function to teach subjects, to encourage the rapid maturation of bright young minds. The present educational structure drags all the students down to the level of the lowest common denominator, passes all students, teaches rubbish rather than subject disciplines, and allows hooligans to widen their “self-expression” by tormenting and distracting those eager to learn—all in the name of “democracy.”

Science, Technology, and Government, pp. 37–38

EFFICIENCY

“Efficiency,” in contrast to “ethics” sounds unsentimental, hard-nosed and “scientific.” Yet extolling “efficiency” only pushes the ethical problem under the rug. For in whose interests, and at whose expense, shall social efficiency be pursued? In the name of a spurious science, “efficiency” often becomes a mask for exploitation, for plundering one set of people for the benefit of another.

Classical Economics, p. 63

… the concept of efficiency has no meaning apart from the pursuit of specified ends.… efficiency is an erroneous concept even when applied to each individual’s actions directed toward his ends; it is a fortiori a meaningless concept when it includes more than one individual, let alone an entire society.

Economic Controversies, p. 253

… we cannot decide on public policy, tort law, rights, or liabilities on the basis of efficiencies or minimizing of costs. But if not costs or efficiency, then what? The answer is that only ethical principles can serve as criteria for our decisions. Efficiency can never serve as the basis for ethics; on the contrary, ethics must be the guide and touchstone for any consideration of efficiency. Ethics is the primary.

Economic Controversies, p. 260

ELITES

When state rulers act, then, to use and aggrandize state power, their primary motivation is economic: to increase their plunder at the expense of the subject and the taxpayer. …

… the ruling class, being small and largely specialized, is motivated to think about its economic interests twenty-four hours a day.… But the majority has allowed itself to be misled largely because its immediate interests are generally diffuse and hard to observe, and because the majority comprises not professional “antistatists” but people going about their business of daily living.

Conceived in Liberty v. 3, pp. 352–53; pp. 1116–17

… the natural inequality of ability and of interest among men must make elites inevitable, the only sensible course is to abandon the chimera of equality and accept the universal necessity of leaders and followers.

Economic Controversies, p. 631

… the big danger is the elite, and not the masses …

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 7

… we live in a statist country and a statist world dominated by a ruling elite, consisting of a coalition of Big Government, Big Business, and various influential special interest groups. More specifically; the old America of individual liberty; private property; and minimal government has been replaced by a coalition of politicians and bureaucrats allied with, and even dominated by; powerful corporate and Old Money financial elites …

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 39

Both parties, the Republican as well as the Democrat, have long been run by an effectively bipartisan Big Government elite that is strongly opposed to the interests and the values, economic, moral, cultural, and religious, of the vast majority of the American people.

Irrepressible Rothbard, pp. 116–17

… we oppose not “aristocracies” or elites per se but “artificial,” coercive elites, men who achieve and wield power by means of aggressive violence and exploitation.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 149

… no ruling elite in history has voluntarily surrendered its power on any grounds, much less on massive recognition of its own sins.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 213

EMPIRICISM

… economic theories cannot be “tested” by historical or statistical fact. These historical facts are complex and cannot, like the controlled and isolable physical facts of the scientific laboratory, be used to test theory.

America’s Great Depression, p. xxxviii

… statistics can prove nothing because they reflect the operation of numerous causal forces.… Statistics can only record past events; they cannot describe possible but unrealized events.

America’s Great Depression, p. 85

There can be no genuine laboratory experiments in human affairs.

Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 10

Specific empirical facts cannot give rise to or test theory …

Classical Economics, p. 110

The physical sciences must rest on tentative hypotheses …

Classical Economics, p. 150

… positivists, who always trumpet their method as being the only truly scientific and “empirical” one, turn out to be resting on runaway and uncorrectable false premises. On the other hand, and ironically, the praxeological method, which has long been accused of a priori mysticism, is the only one that bases theory on broadly known and deeply empirical—indeed universally true—premises!

Being universally true, the praxeological method provides complete and general laws rather than partial, and hence generally false, ones.

Classical Economics, p. 152

… there can be no controlled experiments in the social sciences …

Classical Economics, p. 290

Scientism is the profoundly unscientific attempt to transfer uncritically the methodology of the physical sciences to the study of human action. Both fields of inquiry must, it is true, be studied by the use of reason—the mind’s identification of reality. But then it becomes crucially important, in reason, not to neglect the critical attribute of human action: that, alone in nature, human beings possess a rational consciousness. Stones, molecules, planets cannot choose their courses; their behavior is strictly and mechanically determined for them. Only human beings possess free will and consciousness: for they are conscious, and they can, and indeed must, choose their course of action. To ignore this primordial fact about the nature of man—to ignore his volition, his free will—is to misconstrue the facts of reality and therefore to be profoundly and radically unscientific.

Economic Controversies, p. 3

… it is highly inappropriate, and moreover question-begging, simply and uncritically to apply the model of physics to man.

Economic Controversies, p. 5

The laws of human action (economics and, more widely, “praxeology”) cannot be “tested” by reference to statistical or historical “data.” In the behavior of physical objects, science begins by empirical observation of constant relations, and then frames tentative hypotheses of explanatory laws, these hypotheses being always subject to testing and revision by referring their deduced consequents to controlled experiments, where all but the relevant, isolated factors are held constant. This is the “scientific method” of physics. But in the study of human action … the facts of human history are not, as in physics, controllable and subject to testing; they are the complex and changing resultants of the interplay of human motives and actions, impinging on the natural environment and on each other. The laws of economic science, therefore, can only be constructed by starting with apodictically known axioms and deducing from them a body of necessarily true laws.

Economic Controversies, p. 26

There cannot be controlled experiments when we confront the real world of human activity.

Economic Controversies, p. 31

… if empirical success is the test, it is surely noteworthy that all the determined efforts of quantitative economists, econometricians, and social scientists have not been able to find one single quantitative constant in human affairs. The mathematical laws in the physical sciences contain numerous constants; but the imitative method in the social sciences is proven vain by the fact that not a single constant has ever emerged.

Economic Controversies, p. 37

… it is the praxeologist who is truly empirical because he recognizes the unique and heterogeneous nature of historical facts; it is the self-proclaimed “empiricist” who grossly violates the facts of history by attempting to reduce them to quantitative laws.

Economic Controversies, p. 75

All the positivist procedures are based on the physical sciences. It is physics that knows or can know its “facts” and can test its conclusions against these facts, while being completely ignorant of its ultimate assumptions. In the sciences of human action, on the other hand, it is impossible to test conclusions. There is no laboratory where facts can be isolated and controlled …

Economic Controversies, pp. 104–05

Empiricism without theory is a shaky reed on which to build a case for freedom.

Making Economic Sense, p. 195

Empiricism has disintegrated economics to such an extent that no one thinks to look for a complete edifice; and, paradoxically, it has falsified economics …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. liv

Economics, therefore, is not and cannot be “empirical” in the positivist sense, i.e., it cannot establish some sort of empirical hypothesis which could or could not be true, and at best is only true approximately. Quantitative, empirico-historical “laws” are worthless in economics, since they may only be coincidences of complex facts, and not isolable, repeatable laws which will hold true in the future.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 866

ENTREPRENEUR

Entrepreneurs are largely in the business of forecasting. They must invest and pay costs in the present, in the expectation of recouping a profit by sale either to consumers or to other entrepreneurs further down in the economy’s structure of production. The better entrepreneurs, with better judgment in forecasting consumer or other producer demands, make profits; the inefficient entrepreneurs suffer losses. The market, therefore, provides a training ground for the reward and expansion of successful, farsighted entrepreneurs and the weeding out of inefficient businessmen.

America’s Great Depression, p. 8

… the entrepreneur is not passive but extremely active. He takes risks, and attempts to forecast the future; he grapples with uncertainty.

Economic Controversies, p. 179

… the entrepreneur harmoniously adjusts the economy in the direction of equilibrium.… the entrepreneur is the main bearer of uncertainty in the real world, and successful entrepreneurs reap profits by bringing resources, costs, and prices further in the direction of equilibrium.

Economic Controversies, p. 270

… the key to the capitalist market economy and its successful functioning is the entrepreneurial forecasting and decision-making of private owners and investors.

Economic Controversies, p. 838

The entrepreneur is not simply “alert”; he forecasts; he appraises; he meets and bears risk and uncertainty by questing for profits and risking losses.

Economic Controversies, p. 847

The entrepreneur, the dynamic innovator, is after all the locus of individual ego and creativity, and is therefore the harbinger of often disturbing social change, as well as economic growth.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, pp. 7–8

The real-world marketplace is permeated by uncertainty, and it is the function of the businessman, the “undertaker,” the entrepreneur, to meet and bear that uncertainty by investing, paying expenses and then hoping for a profitable return. Profits, then, are a reward for successful forecasting, for successful uncertainty-bearing, in the process of production.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 351

The entrepreneur is not the disrupter of equilibrium, the disturber of the peace as it were, but rather the person who leaps toward equilibrium by spotting maladjustments in the economy and taking steps to correct them.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 255

… uncertainty factors enter into the actor’s decision in one way or the other. The delicate procedure of weighing all the various factors in the situation is a complex process that takes place in the mind of every actor according to his understanding of the situation. It is a decision depending purely on the individual judgment, the subjective estimates, of each actor. The “best” decision cannot be exactly, or quantitatively, decided upon in advance by objective methods. This process of forecasting the future conditions that will occur during the course of his action is one that must be engaged in by every actor. This necessity of guessing the course of the relevant conditions and their possible change during the forthcoming action is called the act of entrepreneurship. Thus, to some extent at least, every man is an entrepreneur.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 64

… the active entrepreneurial element in the real world is due to the presence of uncertainty.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 434

… the market tends to reward its efficient entrepreneurs and penalize its inefficient ones proportionately. In this way, consistently provident entrepreneurs see their capital and resources growing, while consistently imprudent ones find their resources dwindling. The former play a larger and larger role in the production process; the latter are forced to abandon entrepreneurship altogether.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 515–16

The entrepreneur-capitalists take the risks of speculating on the uncertain market; their investment may result in profits, in breaking even with no profits at all, or in suffering outright losses. No one can guarantee profits to them.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 548

… the entrepreneur is the actor in relation to natural uncertainty …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 604

Entrepreneurship is the action on the market that takes advantage of estimated discrepancies between selling prices and buying prices of factors. The better forecasters make profits, and the incorrect ones suffer losses.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 677

… all entrepreneurs are engaged in anticipating the uncertain conditions of the market.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 848

… entrepreneurs are always seeking profit-making opportunities …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 857

Entrepreneurship is not just the founding of new firms, it is not merely innovation; it is adjustment: adjustment to the uncertain, changing conditions of the future.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 858

Successful entrepreneurs are those who best forecast the future.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 873

… entrepreneurial skills act only through investments …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 963

… it is the entrepreneur’s business to forecast, and he is rewarded for correct forecasting by profits.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1125

Entrepreneurs with poor foresight are quickly expelled from their positions through losses.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1125n55

ENVIRONMENT

Men find themselves in a certain environment, or situation. It is this situation that the individual decides to change in some way in order to achieve his ends. But man can work only with the numerous elements that he finds in his environment, by rearranging them in order to bring about the satisfaction of his ends. With reference to any given act, the environment external to the individual may be divided into two parts: those elements which he believes he cannot control and must leave unchanged, and those which he can alter (or rather, thinks he can alter) to arrive at his ends. The former may be termed the general conditions of the action; the latter, the means used. Thus, the individual actor is faced with an environment that he would like to change in order to attain his ends. To act, he must have technological ideas about how to use some of the elements of the environment as means, as pathways, to arrive at his ends. Every act must therefore involve the employment of means by individual actors to attempt to arrive at certain desired ends. In the external environment, the general conditions cannot be the objects of any human action; only the means can be employed in action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 3–4

… an actor chooses means from his environment, in accordance with his ideas, to arrive at an expected end …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 4

… natural events, however, are not ex ante relevant to human action, and therefore from the point of view of action this land is rightly considered as “permanent,” until the natural changes occur.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 485

Man must necessarily work within a given real environment of inherited land and durable capital.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 635

ENVY

… envy is evil …

Economic Controversies, p. 243

… envy can certainly not be eliminated even by enforced equality.

Economic Controversies, p. 565

… the socialist attempt to eliminate envy through egalitarianism can never hope to succeed.

Economic Controversies, p. 633

… the heart of socialism and communism is an overwhelming desire to eliminate envy by appeasing its aggressive appetites: by rendering everyone uniform and equal.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 144

A person’s “envy,” unembodied in action, becomes pure moonshine from the praxeological point of view.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1068

EQUALITY

… the individualist must always be anti-egalitarian.

Betrayal of the American Right, p. 28

… there is no meaning to the term “equality” without some sort of definable unit …

Economic Controversies, p. 315

… the egalitarians are arguing not for equal freedom but for equal slavery or equal robbery in the name of “fairness.”

Economic Controversies, p. 511

… infinite variety and inequality of talents among human beings makes the goal of egalitarianism absurd and antihuman, better suited to an ant-heap than to human society.

Economic Controversies, p. 565

It is an absurd and pernicious doctrine of “justice” that each child should “start” absolutely equally. It is an anti-human position, since each child manifestly begins completely unequally—with unequal abilities and parents. If parents have a right to beget and raise children without state interference, then parents have a concomitant right to provide that environment, and that amount of money for them, that they think best. To provide “equality of opportunity” in the sense of equality of infants would have to mean that the state nationalizes all infants and raises them in State nurseries under precisely “equal” conditions (although, even here, absolute equality is not possible).

Economic Controversies, p. 569

… enforced equality rests simply on envy …

Economic Controversies, p. 571

… the ideal of human equality can only imply total uniformity and the utter stamping out of individuality.

Economic Controversies, p. 626

… only the specific equality of liberty—the older view of human equality—is compatible with the basic nature of man. Equality of condition would reduce humanity to an ant heap existence.

Economic Controversies, p. 627

… inequality [is] the condition that exists when every man is not identical to every other in all characteristics. It is evident that inequality flows inevitably out of specialization and the division of labor. Therefore, a free economy will lead not only to diversity of occupation, with one man a baker, another an actor, a third a civil engineer, etc., but specific inequalities will also emerge in monetary income and in status and scope of control within each occupation. Each person will, in the free-market economy, tend to earn a monetary income equal to the value placed upon his productive contribution in satisfying the desires and demands of the consumers.

Economic Controversies, p. 627

… inequality of income is the inevitable corollary of freedom …

Economic Controversies, p. 628

It often happens with “egalitarians” that a hole, a special escape hatch from the drab uniformity of life, is created—for themselves.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 156

With the development of civilization and individual diversity, there is less and less area of identical uniformity, and therefore less “equality.” Only robots on the assembly line or blades of grass can be considered as completely equal, as being identical with respect to all of their attributes. The fewer attributes that two organisms have in common, the less they are “equal” and the more they are unequal. Civilized human beings, therefore, are unequal in most of their personalities. This fact of inequality, in tastes, and in ability and character, is not necessarily an invidious distinction.

It simply reflects the scope of human diversity. It is evident that the common enthusiasm for equality is, in the fundamental sense, anti-human. It tends to repress the flowering of individual personality and diversity, and civilization itself; it is a drive toward savage uniformity. Since abilities and interests are naturally diverse, a drive toward making people equal in all or most respects is necessarily a leveling downward. It is a drive against development of talent, genius, variety, and reasoning power. Since it negates the very principles of human life and human growth, the creed of equality and uniformity is a creed of death and destruction.

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 6

… the goal of equality has for too long been treated uncritically and axiomatically as the ethical ideal.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 5

What, in fact, is “equality”? The term has been much invoked but little analyzed. A and B are “equal” if they are identical to each other with respect to a given attribute. Thus, if Smith and Jones are both exactly six feet in height, then they may be said to be “equal” in height. If two sticks are identical in length, then their lengths are “equal,” etc. There is one and only one way, then, in which any two people can really be “equal” in the fullest sense: they must be identical in all of their attributes. This means, of course, that equality of all men—the egalitarian ideal—can only be achieved if all men are precisely uniform, precisely identical with respect to all of their attributes. The egalitarian world would necessarily be a world of horror fiction—a world of faceless and identical creatures, devoid of all individuality, variety, or special creativity.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 6

… men are not uniform … the species, mankind, is uniquely characterized by a high degree of variety, diversity, differentiation; in short, inequality. An egalitarian society can only hope to achieve its goals by totalitarian methods of coercion …

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, pp. 7–8

… the portrayal of an egalitarian society is horror fiction because, when the implications of such a world are fully spelled out, we recognize that such a world and such attempts are profoundly antihuman; being antihuman in the deepest sense, the egalitarian goal is, therefore, evil and any attempts in the direction of such a goal must be considered evil as well.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 8

… biology stands like a rock in the face of egalitarian fantasies …

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 16

The egalitarian revolt against biological reality, as significant as it is, is only a subset of a deeper revolt: against the ontological structure of reality itself, against the “very organization of nature”; against the universe as such. At the heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no structure of reality; that all the world is a tabula rasa that can be changed at any moment in any desired direction by the mere exercise of human will—in short, that reality can be instantly transformed by the mere wish or whim of human beings.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 17

… egalitarians, however intelligent as individuals, deny the very basis of human intelligence and of human reason: the identification of the ontological structure of reality, of the laws of human nature, and the universe. In so doing, the egalitarians are acting as terribly spoiled children, denying the structure of reality on behalf of the rapid materialization of their own absurd fantasies. Not only spoiled but also highly dangerous; for the power of ideas is such that the egalitarians have a fair chance of destroying the very universe that they wish to deny and transcend, and to bring that universe crashing around all of our ears. Since their methodology and their goals deny the very structure of humanity and of the universe, the egalitarians are profoundly antihuman; and, therefore, their ideology and their activities may be set down as profoundly evil as well. Egalitarians do not have ethics on their side unless one can maintain that the destruction of civilization, and even of the human race itself, may be crowned with the laurel wreath of a high and laudable morality.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, pp. 19–20

The libertarian, then, is clearly an individualist but not an egalitarian. The only “equality” he would advocate is the equal right of every man to the property in his own person, to the property in the unused resources he “homesteads,” and to the property of others he has acquired either through voluntary exchange or gift.

For a New Liberty, pp. 50–51

… the individualist is not an egalitarian. Part of the reason for this is the individualist’s insight into the vast diversity and individuality within mankind, a diversity that has the chance to flower and expand as civilization and living standards progress. Individuals differ in ability and in interest …

For a New Liberty, p. 61

Scratch an egalitarian, and you will inevitably find a statist.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 102

… genuine free markets have nothing to do with “equality;” and nothing whatever to do with modern leftist notions of “fairness.”

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 142

The cornerstone of the individualist-libertarian insight, however, is that all people are different. Every individual is unique. Every man differs in his character, personality, intelligence, and range of interests. Given a free society, then, every individual will find his own level of ability and interest. Libertarians, then, are the reverse of egalitarians; we do not subscribe to the impossible Left-ideal of compulsory egalitarianism, of an ant heap world in which every person will be identical, uniform, and equal. As individualists, we know and glory in the fact that a free society will release the energies of every individual to develop his capacity and his interests to their full extent.

In that free society, then, “natural” or voluntary elites will arise in every form of human endeavor.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 149

… equality and uniformity can only be achieved in a world of small primitive communes, in which every man and woman does everything at once. The least one can say about such a world is that the vast bulk of the current population would quickly starve and die out; the most one can say is that, in addition, the true humanity—the individuation of every person and his full creative development—would be stifled in the bud, would be destroyed on the altar of the crippling and profoundly anti-human ideal of equality and uniformity.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 197

Suppose that a portion of slaves are able to run away. If we react by insisting that all slaves be treated “equally before the law,” we could be saying that all should go free. But more likely we would be saying that the runaway slaves must be dragged back because it is “unfair” for them to be free while their brothers and sisters are in chains. But surely the latter course is worse than “discrimination.” Equality might well mean equality of all in slavery. Hence the very concept of “equality” is dangerous to liberty, and should be opposed.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 614

… “equal rights” can just as well be equal tyranny as equal liberty …

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 954

… beneath the moral cloak of “fairness” rests the ugly reality of institutionalized envy.… Behind the cloak of “fairness” is the real mean-spirited “ethic” of compulsory equality of suffering.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1034

… there is a great variety among men in labor skills, in insight into future events, in ability, intelligence, etc.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 576–77

… men are not “equal” in their tastes, interests, abilities, or locations. Resources are not distributed “equally” over the earth. This inequality or diversity in abilities and distribution of resources insures inequality of income on the free market.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 656

… coerced egalitarianism will cause a reversion to barbarism … steps in that direction will result in dislocations of the market and a lowering of living standards.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1195–96

It is obvious that equality of treatment is no canon of justice whatever. If a measure is unjust, then it is just that it have as little general effect as possible. Equality of unjust treatment can never be upheld as an ideal of justice.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1219

… the free society is far better described by some such phrase as “equality of rights to defend person and property” or “equality of liberty” rather than by the vague, misleading expression “equality before the law.”

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1220

EQUILIBRIUM

In price theory proper, the short run should take precedence, because it is the real-world market price, while the long run is the remote, ultimate tendency that never occurs, and could only take place if all the data were frozen for several years. In sum, we could only live in the improbable if not impossible world of long-run general equilibrium—where all profits and losses are zero—if all values, technologies and resources were frozen for years.

Classical Economics, p. 167

… in economics or politics there is never really such an equilibrium state existing; there is but a tendency in that direction.

Economic Controversies, p. 13

… equilibrium constructions are indispensable for all ceteris paribus economic thinking, for analyzing actions, and for demonstrating the direction in which the economy is necessarily tending.… final equilibrium is also necessary for analyzing the emergence of profit-and-loss in an uncertain world …

Economic Controversies, p. 183

… the demand for money would fall to zero in a general equilibrium world of perfect certainty. Hence, a money economy, at least, could not be in general equilibrium.

Economic Controversies, p. 257

… general equilibrium is by definition a world of perfect knowledge and certainty …

Economic Controversies, p. 287

The very notion of a Walrasian general equilibrium is not simply totally unrealistic, it is conceptually impossible, since money and monetary exchange cannot be sustained in that kind of system.

Economic Controversies, pp. 697–98

… the economy is not and can never be in the general equilibrium state …

Economic Controversies, p. 842

Rather than the long-run equilibrium state being the fundamental reality, it never exists at all. Long-run equilibrium provides the tendency toward which the market is ever moving, but is never reached because the underlying data of supply and demand—and therefore the ultimate equilibrium point—are always changing. Hence a full step-by-step analysis of a given change in the data is precisely what is needed to explain the process of successive short-run states which tend toward but never reach equilibrium. In the real world, the “long run” is not equilibrium at all, but a series of such short-run states, which will keep changing direction as underlying data are altered.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 429

Analysis of the activities of production in a monetary market economy is a highly complex matter. An explanation of these activities, in particular the determination of prices and therefore the return to factors, the allocation of factors, and the formation of capital, can be developed only if we use the mental construction of the evenly rotating economy.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 320–21

The final equilibrium state is one which the economy is always tending to approach.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 321

… the final equilibrium position is always changing, and consequently no one such position is ever reached in practice. But even though it is never reached in practice, it has a very real importance.… We are attaching no ethical merit to the equilibrium position. It is a concept for scientific explanation of human activity.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 322

… while a final equilibrium is the goal toward which the economy is moving at any particular time, changes in the data alter this position and therefore shift the direction of movement. Therefore, there is nothing in a dynamic world that is ethically better about a final equilibrium position. As a matter of fact, since wants are unsatisfied (otherwise there would be no action), such a position of no change would be most unfortunate, since it would imply that no further want satisfaction would be possible. Furthermore, we must remember that a final equilibrium situation tends to be, though it can never actually be, the result of market activity, and not the condition of such activity.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 323

… the evenly rotating economy is unrealistic, for it cannot actually be established and we cannot even conceive consistently of its establishment. But the idea of the evenly rotating economy is indispensable in analyzing the real economy …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 329

… there are not entrepreneurial profits of losses in the ERE, because there is no change of data or uncertainty about possible change.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 354

The ERE is the condition that comes into being and continues to obtain when the present, existing market data (valuations, technology, resources) remain constant. It is a theoretical construct of the economist that enables him to point out in what directions the economy tends to be moving at any given time; it also enables the economist to isolate various elements in his analysis of the economy of the real world. To analyze the determining forces in a world of change, he must construct hypothetically a world of nonchange.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 359

… the ERE concept is especially helpful in the analysis of profits and losses as compared to interest.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 360

Continual changes in tastes and resources, however, constantly shift the final equilibrium goal and establish a new goal toward which entrepreneurial action is directed—and again the final tendency in the ERE will be the disappearance of profits. For the ERE means the disappearance uncertainty, and profit is the outgrowth of uncertainty.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 511–12

There can be no calculation problem in the ERE because no calculation there is necessary. Obviously, there is no need to calculate profits and losses when all future data are known from the beginning and where there are no profits and losses. In the ERE, the best allocation of resources proceeds automatically.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 616

Only in this never-never land does price equal marginal cost in equilibrium. Otherwise, marginal cost equals “marginal revenue” in the ERE, i.e., the revenue that a given increment of cost will yield to the firm.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 695

… any approach toward the free-market equilibrium price and output point for any product benefits the consumers and thereby benefits the producers as well. Any departure away from the free-market price and output injures the consumers.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 904–05

The profit motive and the free price system are the forces that equilibrate supply and demand, and make price responsive to underlying market forces.

Mystery of Banking, p. 20

The profit-loss motive and the free price system produce a built-in “feedback” or governor mechanism by which the market price of any good moves so as to clear the market, and to eliminate quickly any surpluses or shortages.

Mystery of Banking, p. 21

ETHICS

Economics cannot by itself establish an ethical system, although it provides a great deal of data for anyone constructing such a system …

Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 20

… supra-subjective ethical principles do exist that can be argued and can have an impact on others and on their valuations and goals.

Classical Economics, p. 58

… ethics employs all the data of the various sciences to guide man toward the ends he should seek to attain …

Economic Controversies, p. 4

… ethics deals with the problem of what values and choices they should adopt …

Economic Controversies, p. 35

Ethics deals with the question of what ends, or values, people should adopt.

Economic Controversies, pp. 71–72

Ethics is the discipline, or what is called in classical philosophy the “science,” of what goals men should or should not pursue. All men have values and place positive or negative value judgments on goods, people, and events. Ethics is the discipline that provides standards for a moral critique of these value judgments.

Economic Controversies, p. 81

… an objective science of ethics exists …

Economic Controversies, p. 81

… ethics is a rational and demonstrable discipline … its principles are arrived at apart from economics or any other particular science except itself.

Economic Controversies, p. 242

… economics per se cannot establish ethical judgments.… economics by itself cannot establish an ethical position.

Economic Controversies, p. 312

Man is the only species which can—and indeed must—carve out an ethic for himself.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 4

… if an ethical goal violates the nature of man and/or the universe and, therefore, cannot work in practice, then it is a bad ideal and should be dismissed as a goal. If the goal itself violates the nature of man, then it is also a poor idea to work in the direction of that goal.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 5

… an objective ethic can be established through reason …

Ethics of Liberty, p. 16

In order to advocate public policy, therefore, a system of social or political ethics must be constructed.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 26

… the ultimate function of scholarly disciplines is to aid in carving out an ethics for mankind and then to help put such ethics into practice.

Left and Right, p. 560

… no man can live with no personal ethic at all …

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 184

Ethics is a science, a discipline like other disciplines; and as in any other branch of knowledge it is vain folly to begin exploration of the science afresh and on one’s own while disregarding all the other explorers and thinkers who have gone before.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 225

Psychology and ethics deal with the content of human ends … what ends should men value?

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 73

Praxeology—economics—provides no ultimate ethical judgments: it simply furnishes the indispensable data necessary to make such judgments.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1297

Economics or praxeology cannot establish the validity of ethical ideals …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1308

Ethics is the one rational discipline that demands the establishment of a rational set of value judgments; political ethics is that subset applying to matters of State.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, pp. 106–07

… there exists an absolute ethics for man, discoverable by reason, in accordance with the natural law of human nature.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 113

Some ethical doctrines or ideological positions are objectively and rationally good and some are bad.

Strictly Confidential, p. 58

EVIL

In our century, we have been inundated by a flood of evil, in the form of collectivism, socialism, egalitarianism, and nihilism. It has always been crystal clear to me that we have a compelling moral obligation, for the sake of ourselves, our loved ones, our posterity, our friends, our neighbors, and our country; to do battle against that evil.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 255

Why do we fight against, yes even hate, the evil? Only because we love the good, and our stress on the “negative” is only the other side of the coin, the logical consequence, of our devotion to the good, to the positive values and principles that we cherish.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 257

It is always more exhilarating—and more educational—to confront the naked and unadorned face of evil than to joust with it hidden behind the camouflage of concession and demagogy.

Left and Right, p. 175

… the libertarian believes, along with everyone else, that man is a mixture of good and evil. What we are trying to do is to eliminate institutions which are inherently evil and thereby provide a legalized, legitimated channel for evil to proceed unchecked in society.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 225

… within the context of libertarian theory, evil must be confined to the initiation of violence.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 384

Mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct, and the State is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime—theft, oppression, mass murder—on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.

… The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point of time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for good and minimize the channels for the bad.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 536

Sins, errors, evils, etc., are not just floating abstractions; they are committed by real persons in the real world … not just abstract error but conscious evil is being perpetrated for the sake of ill-gotten money and power.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 971

EXCHANGE

The market is a network, a lattice-work of two people or institutions exchanging two different commodities. Individuals specialize in producing different goods or services, and then exchanging these goods on terms they agree upon.… Both parties make the exchange because they expect to benefit; and so the free market consists of a network of exchanges that are mutually beneficial at every step of the way.

Case Against the Fed, pp. 12–13

… people exchange one thing for another because they value the thing they acquire more than what they give up … exchange always benefits both parties.

Classical Economics, p. 20

… differences in subjective value are the foundation of all exchanges.

Classical Economics, p. 119

… there is no point in any exchange unless the value, for each man, of each to the two exchanged goods is unequal.

Classical Economics, p. 397

The fact that two commodities exchange for each other in some proportion does not mean that they are therefore “equal” in value and can be “represented by an equation.” … two things exchange for each other only because they are unequal in value to the two participants in the exchange. A gives up to x to B in exchange for y, because A prefers y to x, and B, on the contrary, prefers x to y. An equal sign falsifies the essential picture.

Classical Economics, p. 410

… men engage in exchange precisely because each man values what he gains more than what he gives up … both parties to any exchange must gain in value.

Classical Economics, p. 462

… there is an inequality of value, and a mutual gain, in every exchange.

Classical Economics, p. 464

Both parties gain from every exchange, else they would not engage in the transaction.

Classical Economics, p. 468

Man participates in an exchange because he sees that he will benefit more from the good or service received, than the good or service he has to give up.… men engage in exchange because and only because they subjectively prefer what they will receive in exchange to what they give up.

Economic Controversies, p. 192

… for each particular exchange, each individual only participates in it because he acts consciously, and his reason tells him that he will be better off from making this exchange than from not making it. He will benefit from what he receives compared to what he gives up, and he will do better than from any other alternative exchange.

Economic Controversies, pp. 193–94

If an exchange takes place, this implies not an equality of values, but rather a reverse inequality of values in the two parties making the exchange.… double inequality of subjective valuations sets the necessary precondition for any exchange.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 17

… trade is not, as many people believe, a type of warfare in which one party benefits at the expense of another.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 73

… any exchange on the market is for the mutual benefit of both parties, since each is better off than he was before. A voluntary sale is a just one.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 86

… every exchange involves an expected mutual benefit by each party to that transaction …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 89

In reality, trade and conquest are not akin, but are diametric opposites. Each party to every exchange benefits, whether the exchange is between nationals of the same country or of different countries. Political boundaries have nothing to do with the economic gain from trade and markets. In exchange, one man’s gain is only accomplished by contributing to the gain of someone else; just as both “nation” (i.e., people living in certain countries or any other geographical area) mutually benefit from trade between them.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 247

Exchange arises because the utility and value of the two goods exchanged is different—indeed the reverse—for the two people engaging in the exchange.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 410

Economics has revealed a great truth about the natural law of human interaction: that not only is production essential to man’s prosperity and survival, but so also is exchange. …

If anyone wishes to grasp how much we owe to the processes of exchange, let him consider what would happen in the modern world if every man were suddenly prohibited from exchanging anything with anyone else. Each person would be forced to produce all of his own goods and services himself. The utter chaos, the total starvation of the great bulk of the human race, and the reversion to primitive subsistence by the remaining handful of people, can readily be imagined.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 35

The process of exchange enables man to ascend from primitive isolation to civilization: it enormously widens his opportunities and the market for his wares; it enables him to invest in machines and other “high-order capital goods”; it forms a pattern of exchanges—the free market—which enables him to calculate economically the benefits and the costs of highly complex methods and aggregates of production.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 36

The developed-market economy, as complex as the system appears to be on the surface, is nothing more than a vast network of voluntary and mutually agreed-upon two-person exchanges …

For a New Liberty, p. 49

All action is an attempt to exchange a less satisfactory state of affairs for a more satisfactory one.… all action involves exchange—an exchange of one state of affairs, X, for Y, which the actor anticipates will be a more satisfactory one …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 19–20

It is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of exchange in a developed economic system. Interpersonal exchanges have an enormous influence on productive activities. Their existence means that goods and units of goods have not only direct use-value for the producer, but also exchange-value. In other words, goods may now be exchanged for other goods of greater usefulness to the actor. A man will exchange a unit of a good so long as the goods that it can command in exchange have greater value to him than the value it had in direct use, i.e., so long as its exchange-value is greater than its direct use-value.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 88–89

The existence and possibilities of exchange open up for producers the avenue of producing for a “market” rather than for themselves. Instead of attempting to maximize his product in isolation by producing goods solely for his own use, each person can now produce goods in anticipation of their exchange-value, and exchange these goods for others that are more valuable to him. It is evident that since this opens a new avenue for the utility of goods, it becomes possible for each person to increase his productivity. Through praxeology, therefore, we know that only gains can come to every participant in exchange and that each must benefit by the transaction; otherwise he would not engage in it. Empirically we know that the exchange economy has made possible an enormous increase in productivity and satisfactions for all the participants.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 89

The mutual benefits yielded by exchange provide a major incentive … to would-be aggressors (initiators of violent action against others) to restrain their aggression and cooperate peacefully with their fellows. Individuals then decide that the advantages of engaging in specialization and exchange outweigh the advantages that war might bring.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 101

… for each exchange there is a double inequality of values, rather than an equality, and hence there are no “equal values” to be “measured” in any way.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 103

… exchange benefits each participant …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 187

Every action and exchange is favorable from the point of the person performing the action or exchange, otherwise he would not have engaged in it.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 822–23

The assumption that an exchange presumes some sort of equality has been a delusion of economic theory since Aristotle … There is certainly no equality of values between two goods exchanged.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 833

… free exchange means exchange of titles of ownership to property …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1047

… since every single transaction benefits both parties and rewards rationality, it is not surprising that the sum of all market transactions is a beautiful and rational instrument.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 68

There is thus never any equality of values in an exchange; on the contrary, there is a reverse double inequality of values on the part of the two participants.

Strictly Confidential, p. 241

The basis of all trade is benefit to both parties. There is no need for the traders to like each other for each to gain by the trade.

Strictly Confidential, p. 326

Exchange is the prime basis of our economic life. Without exchanges, there would be no real economy and, practically, no society. Clearly, a voluntary exchange occurs because both parties expect to benefit. An exchange is an agreement between A and B to transfer the goods or services of one man for the goods and services of the other. Obviously, both benefit because each values what he receives in exchange more than what he gives up.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 4

Every man has a different set of skills and aptitudes, and every plot of ground has its own unique features, its own distinctive resources.… Specialization permits each man to develop his best skill, and allows each region to develop its own particular resources. If no one could exchange, if every man were forced to be completely self-sufficient, it is obvious that most of us would starve to death, and the rest would barely remain alive. Exchange is the lifeblood, not only of our economy, but of civilization itself.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 5

EXCHANGE RATES

… the government’s artificial fixing of an exchange rate between two or more moneys creates a shortage of the artificially under-valued money and a surplus of the over-valued money. Gresham’s Law is therefore a law of government intervention rather than one of the free market.

Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 36

… fluctuating fiat moneys are disintegrative of the very function of money itself.

Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 60

The overriding causes of such price or exchange movements—not just in some remote “long run” but at all times except temporary deviations—are monetary changes in the supply of and demand for money. Changes in “real” factors can only have an important impact on exchange rates and general prices by altering the composition and the height of the demand for money on the market.

Classical Economics, p. 166

… in monetary theory, the impact of partial “real” factors on the price level, exchange rates, and on the balance of payments, are all ephemera determined by the general factors: the supply of and demand for money. These monetary influences are not “long-run” in the sense of far off and remote, but are underlying and dominant every day in the real world. The monetary influence corresponding to the long run of general equilibrium would be a condition where all price levels and all real wage levels in a gold standard world would be identical, or strictly proportionate to the relative currency weights of gold. In a freely fluctuating, fiat money world, this would be the situation where all price levels would be strictly proportionate to the currency ratios at the international market exchange rates. But dominant influences of the supply and demand for money on price levels and exchange rates occur in the real world all the time, and always predominate over the ephemera of “real” specific price and expenditure changes. Hence real-world analysis, which must always predominate, comprises short-run price analysis and slightly longer-run (but still far from final equilibrium) monetary reasoning.

Classical Economics, p. 167

… the market exchange rate between two independent moneys will tend to equal the ratio of their purchasing powers.

Economic Controversies, p. 691

It is politically naïve in the extreme to place the supply of fiat money in the hands of government and then to hope and expect it to refrain from controlling exchange rates or going on to impose more detailed exchange controls.

Economic Controversies, p. 751

… no system will break down faster or more thoroughly than fixed exchange rates without an international money.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 389

… fixed exchange rates inevitably create Gresham’s Law situations …

Making Economic Sense, p. 301

The best and least inflated form of money is a worldwide gold currency. But absent gold redeemability, and given our existing fiat national currencies, by far the best course is to allow exchange rates to float freely in the foreign exchange markets, where they at least clear the market and insure no shortage or oversupply of currencies.

Making Economic Sense, p. 304

… the only thing worse than fluctuating exchange rates is fixed exchange rates based on fiat money and international coordination.

Making Economic Sense, p. 310

Fluctuating fiat moneys, as the world has discovered once again, since 1971, are unsatisfactory. They cripple the advantages of international money and virtually return the world to barter. …

… there is one thing much worse than fluctuating fiat moneys: and that is fiat money where governments try to fix the exchange rates. For, as in the case of any price control, governments will invariably fix their rates either above or below the free market rate. Whichever route they take, government fixing will create undesirable consequences, will cause unnecessary monetary crises, and, in the long run, cannot be sustained and will end up in ignominious failure.

Making Economic Sense, p. 312

Two different kinds of money will exchange in a ratio corresponding to the ratio of the purchasing power of each in terms of all the other economic goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 829

… the exchange rate between any two moneys will tend to be at the purchasing power parity. Any deviation from the parity will tend to eliminate itself and reestablish the parity rate.… the rate of exchange will always tend to be set at the purchasing power parity.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 830

In a free market, each fiat money will tend to exchange for another according to the fluctuation in their respective purchasing-power parities.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1082

Since gold or silver exchanges by weight, the various national currency units, all defined as particular weights of a precious metal, will be automatically fixed in terms of each other.… the exchange rates between the various currencies are automatically fixed by their respective quantities of gold.

Mystery of Banking, p. 9

… for any two moneys, the exchange rate is set in accordance with the proportionate purchasing-power parities … these in turn are determined by the respective supplies and demands for the various currencies.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 79

When a currency is overvalued by decree, people rush to exchange it for the undervalued currency at the bargain rates; this causes a surplus of overvalued, and a shortage of the undervalued, currency.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 83

EXPECTATIONS

… expectations are purely subjective, and cannot be captured by the mechanistic use of charts and regressions.

America’s Great Depression, p. xx

… the factors of production—the various higher-order producers’ goods—are valued solely because of their anticipated usefulness in helping to produce future consumers’ goods or to produce lower-order producers’ goods that will help to bring about consumers’ goods. The valuation of factors of production is derived from actors’ evaluation of their products (lower stages), all of which eventually derive their valuation from the end result—the consumers’ good.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 12

… acting man considers and values the factors of production available in the present in accordance with their anticipated services in the future production of consumers’ goods …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 15

Action involves the anticipation of wants that will be felt in the future, an estimate of their relative urgency, and the setting about to satisfy them.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 68

The “businessman” makes his outlays with the expectation of being able to sell the product at a certain price on a certain future date.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 211

Ex ante, then, he will always take the most advantageous course of action, and will always have a psychic profit, with revenue exceeding cost. Ex post, he may have profited or lost from a course of action. Revenue may or may not have exceeded cost, depending on how good an entrepreneur he has been in making his original action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 277

Each person acts in the present instant, on the basis of present value scales, to obtain anticipated end results in the future. Each person acts, therefore, to arrive at a certain satisfactory state in the future. Each has a temporal horizon of future dates toward which his actions are directed. He uses present given means, according to his technological ideas, to attain his ends in the future.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 319–20

How much productive energy and savings will go into producing stock of one particular good and how much into producing another, in other words, the relative stocks of each product, will depend in turn on entrepreneurial expectations of where the greatest monetary profit will be found. These expectations are based on the anticipated direction of consumer demand.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 360

The demand curve to a firm is the set of a firm’s expectations, at any time, of how many units of its product consumers will buy …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 724

… the free market has a smooth, efficient mechanism to bring anticipated, ex ante utility into the realization and fruition of ex post. The free market always maximizes ex ante social utility; it always tends to maximize ex post social utility as well. The field of political action, on the other hand, i.e., the field where most intervention takes place, has no such mechanism; indeed, the political process inherently tends to delay and thwart the realization of expected gains. …

… the free market always benefits every participant, and it maximizes social utility ex ante; it also tends to do so ex post, for it contains an efficient mechanism for speedily converting anticipations into realizations.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 891