Rothbard A to Z

MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLÒ

Niccolò Machiavelli was reviled throughout Europe during the sixteenth century and on into the next two centuries. He was considered to be someone unique in the history of the West, a conscious preacher of evil, a diabolic figure who had unleashed the demons in the world of politics.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 189

… the overriding, if not the only goal for the prince was to maintain and extend his power, his rule over the state. Keeping and expanding his power is the prince’s goal, his virtue, and therefore any means necessary to achieve that goal becomes justified.

… Machiavelli realized that cleaving to justice, honesty and other Christian virtues might sometimes, or even most of the time, conflict with the goal of maintaining and expanding state power. For Machiavelli, orthodox virtues would then have to go by the board. …

… Preaching evil is to counsel precisely as Machiavelli has done: be good so long as goodness doesn’t get in the way of something you want, in the case of the ruler that something being the maintenance and expansion of power.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 190

… the prince is advised always to appear to be moral and virtuous in the Christian manner, since that enhances his popularity; but to practice the opposite if necessary to maintain power. Thus Machiavelli stressed the value of appearances, of what Christians and other moralists call “hypocrisy.”

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 191

Niccolò Machiavelli … was unquestionably a new phenomenon in the western world: a conscious preacher of evil to the ruling class.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 191

There is no pretend value-freedom in Old Nick. He has simply replaced the goals of Christian virtue by another contrasting set of moral principles: that of maintaining and expanding the power of the prince. …

Niccolò Machiavelli, therefore, was both the founder of modern political science and a notable preacher of evil. In casting out Christian or natural law morality, however, he did not presume to claim to be “value-free” as do his modern followers; he knew full well that he was advocating the new morality of subordinating all other considerations to power and to the reasons of state. Machiavelli was the philosopher and apologist par excellence for the untrammelled, unchecked power of the absolute state.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 192

… Machiavelli preaches the virtue of deceit for the ruler. He insists, also, in contrast to previous humanists, that it is better for a ruler to be feared than to be loved, and that punishment is far better than clemency in dealing with his subjects. Furthermore, when a ruler finds that a whole city is rebelling against his rule, by far the best course of action is to “wipe them out” altogether.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 194

Machiavelli is still at one and the same time a preacher of evil and a founder of modern political and policy science.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 194

… Machiavelli was scarcely popular in Europe …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 197

MAJORITY RULE

The despotism of the majority can be as bad as the tyranny of one or a few …

Conceived in Liberty v. 2, p. 193; p. 691

The weakest path to an economist’s adoption of social values is to appeal to the majority. …

… the ad hoc and arbitrary value judgments of the majority are no better than those of one person …

Economic Controversies, p. 87

… a majority can use their ballot power to confiscate the income of a minority, a power limitless under progressive taxation.

Economic Controversies, p. 555

Once a State has been established, the problem of the ruling group or “caste” is how to maintain their rule. While force is their modus operandi, their basic and long-run problem is ideological. For in order to continue in office, any government (not simply a “democratic” government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature. But support in the sense of acceptance of some sort it must be; else the minority of State rulers would eventually be outweighed by the active resistance of the majority of the public. Since predation must be supported out of the surplus of production, it is necessarily true that the class constituting the State—the full-time bureaucracy (and nobility)—must be a rather small minority in the land, although it may, of course, purchase allies among important groups in the population. Therefore, the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, pp. 61–61

The libertarian insists that whether or not such practices are supported by the majority of the population is not germane to their nature: that, regardless of popular sanction, War is Mass Murder, Conscription is Slavery, and Taxation is Robbery.

For a New Liberty, p. 29

The government does not in any accurate sense “represent” the majority of the people, but even if it did, even if 90 percent of the people decided to murder or enslave the other 10 percent, this would still be murder and slavery, and would not be voluntary suicide or enslavement on the part of the oppressed minority. Crime is crime, aggression against rights is aggression, no matter how many citizens agree to the oppression. There is nothing sacrosanct about the majority; the lynch mob, too, is the majority in its own domain.

For a New Liberty, p. 60

Murder is murder, theft is theft, whether undertaken by one man against another, or by a group, or even by the majority of people within a given territorial area. The fact that a majority might support or condone an act of theft does not diminish the criminal essence of the act or its grave injustice.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 164

Every form of political rule depends on the abridgment, to one degree or another, of the right of the individual to determine the course of his own life. To agree to abide by the will of the majority, or the will of parliament, of that of a dictator, requires the surrender of one’s personal autonomy …

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 172

… all States are supported by a majority—whether a voting democracy or not; otherwise, they could not long continue to wield force against the determined resistance of the majority.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1066

… the majority is not society, is not everyone. Majority coercion over the minority is still coercion.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1066

I personally am passionately opposed to all despotism, majority or minority …

Strictly Confidential, p. 42

MALTHUS, THOMAS

… Malthus … unfortunately adopted the labor theory of value …

Classical Economics, p. 30

Malthus was more than the gloomy population theorist that made his name: he was also an ardent Smithian economist.

Classical Economics, p. 34

… Malthus lost interest in his underconsumptionist heresy after 1824, and quickly reverted to being a leader of Smithian classical economics.

Classical Economics, p. 34

… Malthus, despite various differences, considered himself a Smithian and was generally friendly to Ricardianism as well as to Ricardo personally. Malthus’s interest in the alleged “general glut” and in denouncing Say’s Law, was an ephemeral product of the post-Napoleonic War depression in England. When England’s prosperity returned after 1823, Malthus totally lost interest in the general glut question, and wrote no more about it.

Classical Economics, p. 106

… Malthus was a devoted follower of Adam Smith.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 458

One of the many problems of th[e] “Malthusian” approach is that it assumes that human beings will not be able to act on their own to limit population growth in order to preserve a newly achieved standard of living.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 459

… Malthus became known worldwide for his famous assault on human population.

In previous centuries, in so far as writers or economists dealt with the problem at all, they were almost uniformly pro-populationists. A large and growing population was considered a sign of prosperity, and a spur to progress.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, pp. 481–82

… Malthus’s fallacious and inchoate principle of population carried the day and, adopted enthusiastically by Ricardo and his followers, was to become enshrined into British classical economics. …

Certainly, the triumph of the Malthusian fallacy played an important role in the common view that the science of economics itself was and is cold, hardhearted, excessively rational, and opposed to the lives and welfare of people.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, pp. 490–91

MARRIAGE

I believe that modern American marriages are, by and large, conducted on a basis of equality … the female militants claim that marriage is a diabolical institution by which husbands enslave their wives and force them to rear children and do housework. But let us consider: in the great majority of the cases, who is it that insists on marriage, the man or the woman? Everyone knows the answer.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 164

… I am foursquare for the “closed marriage,” the marriage in which two partners live in trust and fidelity, in which they blend into a lifelong emotional intimacy to the glories of which the promiscuous and the seduction-shuckers are deaf, dumb, and blind.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 348

Since human self-ownership cannot be alienated, a man or a woman, on a free market, could not be compelled to continue in marriage if he or she no longer desired to do so. This is regardless of any previous agreement. Thus, a marriage contract, like an individual labor contract, is, on an unhampered market, terminable at the will of either one of the parties.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 164n35

MARSHALL, ALFRED

Marshall … fail[ed] to adopt the full marginal utility theory …

Economic Controversies, p. 157

… Ricardian cost and labor-pain theories [were] preserved by Marshall …

Economic Controversies, p. 171

Before World War II, the dominant paradigm, at least in Anglo-American economics, was the neo-Ricardian partial equilibrium theory of Alfred Marshall.

Economic Controversies, p. 261n1

… Alfred Marshall establish[ed] neoclassical economics as a neo-Ricardian and hence neo-Smithian discipline.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 437

… the unquestioned ruler of academic economists in Britain.

History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 389

… Alfred Marshall [the] unchallenged lion of British economics for half a century. …

… when Maynard [Keynes] eventually decided to pursue a career as an economist at Cambridge, two extremely powerful figures at that university—his father and Alfred Marshall—were more than ready to lend him a helping hand.

Keynes, the Man, p. 11

Marshall developed the strategy of maintaining a hermetically sealed Marshallian world at Cambridge (and hence in British economics generally). He created the myth that in his 1890 magnum opus, the Principles of Economics, he had constructed a higher synthesis, incorporating the valid aspects of all previously competing and clashing theories. …

Because he successfully pushed this myth, he therefore spawned the universal view that “it’s all in Marshall,” that, after all, there was no need to read anyone else. For if Marshall had harmonized all the one-sided, one-eyed economic views, there was no longer any reason except antiquarianism to bother to read them. As a result, the modal Cambridge economist read only Marshall, spinning out and elaborating on cryptic sentences or passages in the Great Book.

Keynes, the Man, pp. 28–29

… what Marshall really did was not to synthesize but to reestablish the dominance of Ricardo and Mill and their long-run equilibrium and cost-of-production theories, overlaying them with a thin veneer of trivialized marginal-utility analysis.

Keynes, the Man, pp. 29n5

… Marshall and his sect managed to assume hegemony not only of Cambridge economics but of the world …

Keynes, the Man, p. 30

… the economics he developed was essentially a return to the classical Ricardo/Mill tradition.

Keynes, the Man, p. 40

… Alfred Marshall … attempted to rehabilitate the classicists and integrate them with the Austrians, while disparaging the contributions of the latter. It was unfortunately the Marshallian and not the Austrian approach that exerted the most influence over later writers. This influence is partly responsible for the current myth among economists that the Austrian School is effectively dead and has no more to contribute and that everything of lasting worth that it had to offer was effectively stated and integrated in Alfred Marshall’s Principles.

Marshall tried to rehabilitate the cost-of-production theory of the classicists by conceding that, in the “short run,” in the immediate market place, consumers’ demand rules price. But in the long run, among the important reproducible goods, cost of production is determining. According to Marshall, both utility and money costs determine price, like blades of a scissors, but one blade is more important in the short run, and another in the long run.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 357

Marshall’s analysis suffers from a grave methodological defect—indeed, from an almost hopeless methodological confusion as regards the “short run” and the “long run.” He considers the “long run” as actually existing, as being the permanent, persistent, observable element beneath the fitful, basically unimportant flux of market value. …

Marshall’s conception of the long run is completely fallacious, and this eliminates the whole groundwork of his theoretical structure. The long run, by its very nature, never does and never can exist.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 358–59

Marshall’s treatment of subjective costs was also highly fallacious. Instead of the idea of opportunity costs, he had the notion that they were “real costs” that could be added in terms of measurable units. …

Marshall’s great error here, and it has permeated the works of his followers and of present-day writers, is to regard costs and production exclusively from the point of view of an isolated individual entrepreneur or an isolated individual industry, rather than viewing the whole economy in all its interrelations.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 361

… was hardly a partisan of laissez-faire …

… Marshall didn’t believe in laissez-faire.

Strictly Confidential, p. 212

… an eclectic tangle of confusions and inconsistencies …

Strictly Confidential, p. 315

MARX, KARL

The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx (1818–83) is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist. A seemingly banal or trite statement set alongside Marxism’s myriad of jargon-ridden concepts in philosophy, economics, history, culture et al. Yet Marx’s devotion to communism was his crucial point, far more central than the dialectic, the class struggle, the theory of surplus value, and all the rest. Communism was the goal, the great end, the desideratum, the ultimate end …

Classical Economics, p. 317

Violent, worldwide revolution, in Marx’s version made by the oppressed proletariat, would be the instrument of the advent of his millennium, communism.

Classical Economics, p. 317

Karl Marx did not sketch the features of his future communism in any detail. …

But certain features are broadly alike in all visions of communism. Private property is eliminated, individualism goes by the board, individuality is flattened, all property is owned and controlled communally, and the individual units of the new collective organism are in some vague way equal to one another.

Classical Economics, p. 318

Marx sought in communism the apotheosis of the collective species—mankind as one new super-being, in which the only meaning possessed by the individual is as a negligible particle of that collective organism.

Classical Economics, p. 319

Marx’s … utopia is shadowy.… Marx had no interest in the economic features of his utopia …

Classical Economics, pp. 320–21

… Marx cannot and does not attempt to explain how a system of total greed becomes transformed into total greedlessness. He leaves it all to the wizardry of the dialectic …

Classical Economics, p. 323

To Marx, all labor in future communism is not economic, but artistic, the free and spontaneous creativity allegedly typical of the artist. For Marx in his economic magnum opus, Capital, communist man has been transformed from an alienated man into an aesthetic man who regards everything in artistic terms. Thus, on the factory, industrial production under communism will have no authoritarian direction but rather unity will be achieved as with musicians in a symphony orchestra.

Classical Economics, p. 327

Marx took money from any source available: his father, mother, and throughout his adult life, his long-suffering friend and abject disciple, Friedrich Engels, all of whom fueled Marx’s capacity for spending money like water.

An insatiable spender of other people’s money, Marx continually complained about a shortage of financial means. While sponging on Engels, Marx perpetually complained to his friend that his largess was never enough.

Classical Economics, p. 340

Karl Marx, the self-proclaimed enemy of the exploitation of man by man, not only exploited his devoted friend Friedrich Engels financially, but also psychologically.

Classical Economics, p. 341

Marx’s personal taste for the aristocracy was lifelong.

Classical Economics, p. 341

… the great Marxists, including Marx, Engels and Lenin, were all bourgeois intellectuals rather than children of the proletariat.

Classical Economics, p. 361

… a utopian, and a fierce one, Marx certainly was. A hallmark of every utopia is a militant desire to put an end to history, to freeze mankind in a static state, to put an end to diversity and man’s free will, and to order everyone’s life in accordance with the utopian’s totalitarian plan.

Classical Economics, p. 364

… Marx[’s] … quest for utopia was … an explicit attack on God’s creation and a ferocious desire to destroy it.

Classical Economics, p. 364

… Marx and Engels were themselves in favor of western, particularly German, imperialism …

Classical Economics, p. 371

… all leading Marxists, beginning with Marx and Engels, were emphatically bourgeois themselves. Marx was the son of a wealthy lawyer, his wife was a member of the Prussian nobility and his brother-in-law Prussian minister of the interior. Friedrich Engels, his lifelong benefactor and collaborator, was the son of a wealthy manufacturer, and himself a manufacturer. Why were not their views and doctrines also determined by bourgeois class interests? What permitted their consciousness to rise above a system so powerful that it determines the views of everyone else?

Classical Economics, p. 379

MARXISM

None of the horrors committed by Lenin, Stalin, or other Marxist-Leninist regimes can match the monstrousness of Marx’s communist “ideal.”

Classical Economics, p. 333

… for Marxists, ideal communism is a world without private property …

Classical Economics, p. 334

Marx and his followers have never demonstrated any awareness of the vital importance of the problem of allocation of scarce resources. Their vision of communism is that all such economic problems are trivial, requiring neither entrepreneurship nor a price system nor genuine economic calculation …

Classical Economics, p. 335

… a utopian, and a fierce one, Marx certainly was. A hallmark of every utopia is a militant desire to put an end to history, to freeze mankind in a static state, to put an end to diversity and man’s free will, and to order everyone’s life in accordance with the utopian’s totalitarian plan.

Classical Economics, p. 364

… the Marxian system is not only a tissue of fallacies, but of flimsy fallacies and linkages as well.

Classical Economics, p. 371

… Marx claims to come up with “laws of history” which, according to him, are “scientific” rather than mystical. Well, if he knows the laws of history, then Marx had better come up with correct predictions of such allegedly determined laws. Yet all his predictions have proved utterly wrong. At this point, Marxists invariably fall back on changing the prediction, or pointing to some offsetting factor (seen only in hindsight) that temporarily delayed the prediction from coming true.… one of Marx’s predictions, crucial to the inevitable workings of the road to socialism, was that the working class would suffer increasing poverty and immizeration. When the working classes, in contrast, obviously continued to gain spectacularly in living standards in the western world, Marxian apologists fell back on the assertion that Marx meant only poverty “relative to” the capitalist class. It is doubtful, however, whether bloody revolution will be waged by a proletariat for having only one yacht while capitalists have a dozen each.

Classical Economics, p. 371

There is no place in his system where Marx is fuzzier or shakier than at its base: the concept of historical materialism, the key to the inevitable dialectic of history.

At the base of historical materialism and of Marx’s view of history is the concept of the “material productive forces.” These “forces” are the driving power that creates all historical events and changes. So what are these “material productive forces”? This is never made clear. The best that can be said is that material productive forces mean “technological methods.”

Classical Economics, p. 372

… at the bottom of the base is technology which in turn constitutes or determines modes of production, which in turn determines relations of production, or institutions of law or property, and which finally in turn determine ideas, religious values, art, etc.

How, then, do historical changes take place in the Marxian schema? They can only take place in technological methods, since everything else in society is determined by the state of technology at any one time. …

The first grave fallacy in this farrago is right at the beginning: Where does this technology come from? And how do technologies change or improve? Who puts them into effect? A key to the tissue of fallacies that constitute the Marxian system is that Marx never attempts to provide an answer. Indeed he cannot, since if he attributes the state of technology or technological change to the actions of man, of individual men, his whole system falls apart. For human consciousness, and individual consciousness at that, would then be determining material productive forces rather than the other way round …

… technology must therefore be dropped from heaven …

Classical Economics, p. 373

… Marx supplies, the motor of inevitable revolutions in history, is inherent class conflict, inherent struggles between economic classes.

Classical Economics, p. 376

… Marx’s definition of class and class conflict under capitalism is hopelessly muddled and totally wrong.

Classical Economics, p. 382

… Marx is committed to the two-class model: capitalists vs. proletarians. …

… Marx’s two classes are far from monoliths … it is impossible to analyze historical action by squeezing all human actors into two classes.

Classical Economics, pp. 383–84

… the iron law is crucial to Marx’s entire system. For Marx, the value and price of every good is determined by its cost, i.e., the quantity of labor hours embodied in its production. Marx believed that, on the market, capitalists pay workers … the cost, or the quantity of labor hours, needed to produce the laborers’ means of subsistence.

… the average wage is always “the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum” of the means of subsistence [Lebensmittel], which is absolutely requisite [notwendig] to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer.

Classical Economics, p. 412

There are great problems in Marx’s model. His theory implies that, since profits are only derived from the exploitation of labor, profit rates are necessarily lower in heavily capitalized than in labor-intensive industries. But everyone, including Marx, is forced to acknowledge that this manifestly does not hold true on the market. The tendency on the market, as Smith and Ricardo well knew, is for rates of profit to tend toward equality in all industries. But how so, if profit rates are necessarily and systematically higher in the labor-intensive industries?

Here is surely the most glaring single hole in the Marxian model.

Classical Economics, p. 413

… the Marxian labor theory of value was indefensible. Most modern Marxist scholars hold the labor theory of value to be an embarrassment, and sophisticated Marxists have dropped it altogether, unfortunately without also giving up the system of which it is a crucial and necessary part.

… if there is no labor theory of value, then there is no surplus value, no exploitation and no reason for the proletariat to rebel against a world in which their product is not being systematically confiscated by the capitalist class.

Classical Economics, p. 416

… Marxists can only embrace reality by abandoning the Marxian system.

Classical Economics, p. 419

The increasing impoverishment of the working class is a key to the Marxian system, because on it rests the allegedly inevitable doom of capitalism and its replacement by the proletariat. If there is no increasing impoverishment, there is no reason for the working class to react against their intensifying exploitation and burst asunder their “capitalist integument” …

… if workers’ wages are already and at all times at the means of subsistence, kept there by the iron law, how can they get any worse off? They have been at maximum poverty level, so to speak, for a long time. But if for that reason they cannot get worse off, where is the dynamic that will lead them to rise up and overthrow the system?

Classical Economics, p. 423

If the capitalists suffer over time from a falling rate of profit, and workers suffer from increasing impoverishment, who is benefiting in the distribution of the economic pie? … how can both mighty classes lose out under developing capitalism?

Classical Economics, p. 428

Karl Marx created what seems to the superficial observer to be an impressive, integrated system of thought, explaining the economy, world history, and even the workings of the universe. In reality, he created a veritable tissue of fallacies. Every single nodal point of the theory is wrong and fallacious, and its “integument”—to use a good Marxian term—is a web of fallacy as well. The Marxian system lies in absolute tatters and ruin; the “integument” of Marxian theory has “burst asunder” long before its predicted “bursting” of the capitalist system. Far from being a structure of “scientific” laws, furthermore, the jerry-built structure was constructed and shored up in desperate service to the fanatical and crazed messianic goal of destruction of the division of labor, and indeed of man’s very individuality, and to the apocalyptic creation of an allegedly inevitable collectivist world order, an atheized variant of a venerable Christian heresy.

Classical Economics, p. 433

Both Marxists and libertarians, in their very different and contrasting ways, believe that the inner contradictions of the existing system (in the former case of “capitalism,” in the latter of statism and state intervention) will lead inevitably to its long-run collapse.… Marxism and libertarianism are both therefore highly optimistic creeds, at least in the long-run.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 268

The strategic possibility of a peaceful, democratic road to Marxism turns out to be virtually nil. And the real menace of Marxism is clearly not, the kind of route it adopts to try to gain power, whether violent or democratic: the real menace is the kind of State it imposes once it gets there.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 417

Marxists and others who postulate a rigid stratification—a virtual caste structure in society—are in grave error. The same person can be at once a laborer, a landowner, and a capitalist, in the same period of time.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 415

… the Marxian-Stalinist future would not be a happy one …

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 58

MATERIAL GOODS

… all the services of factors of production, whether they be land, labor, or capital, are immaterial, even though they might result in a material product.

Classical Economics, p. 21

… all goods, including material ones, are productive and are valued precisely because they produce immaterial services.

Classical Economics, pp. 445–46

… economics does not deal with things or material objects. Economics analyzes the logical attributes and consequences of the existence of individual valuations. “Things” enter into the picture, of course, since there can be no valuation without things to be valued. But the essence and the driving force of human action, and therefore of the human market economy, are the valuations of individuals.

Economic Controversies, p. 289

There is nothing in the natural law that demonstrates that a material good must always be used for one particular purpose rather than for another.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 92

This consumers’ good may be a material object like bread or an immaterial one like friendship. Its important quality is not whether it is material or not, but whether it is valued by man as a means of satisfying his wants. This function of a consumers’ good is called its service in ministering to human wants. Thus, the material bread is valued not for itself, but for its service in satisfying wants; just as an immaterial thing, such as music or medical care, is obviously valued for such service. All these services are “consumed” to satisfy wants. “Economic” is by no means equivalent to “material.”

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

… what is significant for human action is not the physical property of a good, but the evaluation of the good by the actor.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 24

… the concept of a “good” refers to a thing the units of which the actor believes afford equal serviceability. It does not refer to the physical or chemical characteristics of the good.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 69

A man’s ends may be “egoistic” or “altruistic,” “refined” or “vulgar.” They may emphasize the enjoyment of “material goods” and comforts, or they may stress the ascetic life. Economics is not concerned with their content, and its laws apply regardless of the nature of these ends.

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

Economics, therefore, is not a science that deals particularly with “material goods” or “material welfare.” It deals in general with the action of men to satisfy their desires, and, specifically, with the process of exchange of goods as a means for each individual to “produce” satisfactions for his desires. These goods may be tangible commodities or they may be intangible personal services. The principles of supply and demand, of price determination, are exactly the same for any good …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 162

… Many exchangeable goods are intangible services rather than tangible, “material” things.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 215n14

… it is not just the physical good that is being sold, but a whole bundle of services along with it …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 935

… “immaterial” services to individuals abound in the market.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1032

MATHEMATICS

… much of reality and human action is simply not quantifiable …

Classical Economics, p. 6

… the enormous number of imprecise, changing and quantitatively unknown determinants make the application of the mathematical method in economics impossible. …

Mathematics, seemingly so precise, inevitably ends in reducing economics from the complete knowledge of general principles to arbitrary formulas which alter and distort the principles and hence corrupt the conclusions.

Classical Economics, p. 16

In the case of physical objects, such concepts as length or weight are measured by fixing an invariant physical measure, such as a foot rule, and then comparing the length of other objects in question with such a rule. In human valuation, “measurement” is quite different; it is simply the expression of prices or relative purchasing powers of different goods in terms of one money, or medium of exchange. Here there is no physical operation such as measurement of physical objects.

Classical Economics, p. 114

… mathematics, in contrast to its use in the physical sciences, cannot yield new truths in economics …

Classical Economics, p. 291

The very concept of measurement implies the necessity for an objective extensive unit to serve as a measure. …

… mathematical equation implies the existence of quantities that can be equated, which in turn implies a unit of measurement for these quantities.

Economic Controversies, p. 12

… mathematics, and quantitative methods generally, are appropriate to the physical sciences where behavior is continuous and unmotivated; but that verbal logic, in contrast, is the appropriate method where one is studying the necessarily discrete, motivated, qualitative actions of men.

Economic Controversies, p. 27

Meanings are far better expressed verbally than in meaningless formal symbols.

Economic Controversies, p. 293

The mathematical representation of the calculus rests on the assumption of continuity, that is, infinitely small steps. In human action, however, there can be no infinitely small steps. Human action and the facts on which it is based must be in observable and discrete steps and not infinitely small ones. Representation of utility in the manner of the calculus is therefore illegitimate.

Economic Controversies, p. 300

Measurement, on any sensible definition, implies the possibility of a unique assignment of numbers which can be meaningfully subjected to all the operations of arithmetic. To accomplish this, it is necessary to define a fixed unit. In order to define such a unit, the property to be measured must be extensive in space, so that the unit can be objectively agreed upon by all. Therefore, subjective states, being intensive rather than objectively extensive, cannot be measured and subjected to arithmetical operations.

Economic Controversies, p. 310

… the use of mathematics necessarily leads the economist to distort reality by making the theory convenient for mathematical symbolism and manipulation. Mathematics takes over, and the reality of human action loses out.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 380

… mathematical tools such as the calculus, which assumes smooth surfaces and infinitesimally small steps, is deeply flawed in dealing with much of the real world.

Making Economic Sense, pp. 26–27

… mathematics cannot contribute to economic knowledge.

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

… human action must treat all matters only in terms of discrete steps.… the mathematical concepts of continuity and the calculus are not applicable.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 130n27

In physics, the quantitative relationships, or laws, are constant; they are considered to be valid for any point in human history, past, present, or future. In the field of human action, there are no such quantitative constants. There are no constant relationships valid for different periods in human history. The only “natural laws” (if we may use such an old-fashioned but perfectly legitimate label for such constant regularities) in human action are qualitative rather than quantitative. They are, for example, precisely the laws educed in praxeology and economics—the fact of action, the use of means to achieve ends, time preference, diminishing marginal utility, etc.

Mathematical equations, then, are appropriate and useful where there are constant quantitative relations among unmotivated variables. They are singularly inappropriate in praxeology and economics.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 324

… mathematics, particularly the calculus, rests in large part on assumptions of infinitely small steps. Such assumptions may be perfectly legitimate in a field where behavior of unmotivated matter is under study. But human action disregards infinitely small steps precisely because they are infinitely small and therefore have no relevance to human beings. Hence, the action under study in economics must always occur in finite, discrete steps. It is therefore incorrect to say that such an assumption may just as well be made in the study of human action as in the study of physical particles. In human action, we may describe such assumptions as being not simply unrealistic, but antirealistic.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 324n1

The use of the mathematical concept of “function” is particularly inappropriate in a science of human action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 326

Mathematics, it must be realized, is only the servant of logic and reason, and not their master.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 327n5

… praxeology never establishes quantitative laws …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 549

… economics analyzes real human action, and such real action must always be concerned with discrete, perceptible steps, and never with “infinitely small” steps.

Man, Economy, and State, p. 721

Mathematics can at best only translate our previous knowledge into relatively unintelligible form; or, usually, it will mislead the reader …

Man, Economy, and State, p. 835

In fact, one lesson above all should be kept in mind when considering the claims of the various groups of mathematical economists: in human action there are no quantitative constants. As a necessary corollary, all praxeological-economic laws are qualitative, not quantitative.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 845

… the assertion of the mathematical economists that their task is made difficult by the existence of “many variables” in human action grossly understates the problem; for the point is that all the determinants are variables and that in contrast to the natural sciences there are no constants.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 845n59

… in human action there are no quantitative constants. Praxeological laws can be only qualitative in nature.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 855

… reliance on mathematics can at best only translate our previous knowledge into a relatively unintelligible form—or, at worst, it misleads the reader.

Strictly Confidential, p. 243

MEDIA

… the federal government, as the licensor of the airwaves, asserts the right and the power to regulate the stations minutely and continuously. Thus, over the head of each station is the club of the threat of nonrenewal, or even suspension, of its license. In consequence, the idea of freedom of speech in radio and television is no more than a mockery.

For a New Liberty, p. 120

The solution for radio and television? Simple: Treat these media precisely the same way the press and book publishers are treated. For both the libertarian and the believer in the American Constitution the government should withdraw completely from any role or interference in all media of expression. In short, the federal government should denationalize the airwaves and give or sell the individual channels to private ownership. When private stations genuinely own their channels, they will be truly free and independent …

For a New Liberty, p. 121

… intellectuals, academics, and the media are not motivated by truth alone.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 10

Big Media has become an excessively powerful and malignant force in American political life; and it is high time that its machinations are exposed to public view.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 87

There is no hope for any rational public policy in America so long as we continue to have rule-by-TV camera.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 195

… journalists and media people have generally become not objective reporters, but missionary zealots with their own ideological agenda and brainwashing the public.

Irrepressible Rothbard, pp. 387–88

Radio and television frequencies were, when first discovered, analogous to the opening up of a new Continent. They should have been allocated just as the land of the American Continent was in the main allocated: on the libertarian, homesteading principle of total private ownership to the first user. Radio and TV frequencies should be private just as land is private; only thus can the airwaves escape the blight of corporate-governmental monopoly. The homesteading principle applies equally to both cases.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, pp. 73, 76

If a TV station, whether regular or cable, emits frequencies on a certain channel at a certain place, then it should have the private “ownership” of the right to transmit signals on such frequencies. Anyone else trying to broadcast on the same channel at the same place should be dubbed an aggressor against the property right of the pre-existing TV station. …

But even though every station should have the unimpeded right to transmit signals on any given channel or frequency, it should not be able to interfere with anyone’s right to receive signals. The station does not and cannot own the signal itself, only the right to transmit the signals.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, pp. 1123–24

MENGER, CARL

… in contrast to Jevons and Walras, who believed that economic laws are hypotheses dealing with social quantities, Carl Menger and his followers held that economics investigates, not the quantities of phenomena, but the underlying essences of such real entities as value, profit, and the other economic categories. …

Menger held, in contrast to Jevons and Walras, that economic laws as expressed in mathematical equations are only arbitrary statements; on the contrary, genuine economic laws are “exact,” in Menger’s terminology meaning fixed laws that describe sequences invariable to time and place. …

… for Menger and the Austrians, economic laws are genetic and causal, proceeding from the utility and the action of the consumer to the market result.

Economic Controversies, pp. 157–58

The achievement of Carl Menger and the Austrians was not so much to found a totally new system on the framework of British classical political economy as to revive and elaborate upon the older tradition that had been shunted aside by the Classical School.

Economic Controversies, p. 160

… Austrian economics, from Menger on, indeed from Cantillon on, has concentrated not on equilibrium but on the process by which the market moves toward it. The real world, the day-to-day world of markets, is one where the market is always moving toward equilibrium but never attaining it, since the determinants of market activity: values, resources, technologies, knowledge, products, and so on, are always changing. The Austrians, therefore, concentrate on market processes rather than on the final equilibrium state.

Economic Controversies, p. 180

… Carl Menger’s historical insight into the way in which money arose on the market was not simply a historical summary but a theoretical necessity.

Economic Controversies, p. 694

… father of the Austrian School …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 167

MERCANTILISM

The essence of mercantilism was the granting or selling of monopolistic privilege and subsidy by the state to favored groups of businessmen.

Conceived in Liberty v. 1, p. 87; p. 77

Mercantilism, which reached its height in the Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was a system of statism which employed economic fallacy to build up a structure of imperial state power, as well as special subsidy and monopolistic privilege to individuals or groups favored by the state. Thus, mercantilism held that exports should be encouraged by the government and imports discouraged. Economically, this seems to be a tissue of fallacy; for what is the point of exports if not to purchase imports, and what is the point of piling up monetary bullion if the bullion is not used to purchase goods?

Economic Controversies, p. 641

Mercantilism was not only a policy of intricate government regulations; it was also a pre-Keynesian policy of inflation, of lowering interest rates artificially, and of increasing “effective demand” by heavy government spending and sponsorship of measures to increase the quantity of money.

Economic Controversies, p. 644

Far from being true friends of labor, the mercantilists were frankly interested in exploiting their labor to the utmost …

Economic Controversies, p. 646

… mercantilism—the use of economic regulation and intervention by the State to create special privileges for a favored group of merchants or businessmen.

Economic Controversies, p. 717

“Mercantilism” is the name given by late nineteenth century historians to the politico-economic system of the absolute state … it was a comprehensive system of state-building, state privilege, and what might be called “state monopoly capitalism.”

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 213

The system of mercantilism needed no high-flown “theory” to get launched. It came naturally to the ruling castes of the burgeoning nation-states. …

… Mercantilist “theory” was a set of rationales designed to uphold or expand particular vested economic interests.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 235

… “mercantilism,” the economic system of Western Europe from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, was a system of Big Government, of high taxes, large bureaucracy, and massive controls of trade and industry. But what we tend to ignore is that the point of many of these controls was to tax and restrict consumers and most merchants and manufacturers in order to grant monopolies, cartels, and subsidies to favored groups.

Making Economic Sense, p. 189

METHODOLOGY

… unlike the physical sciences, the assumptions of economics are not tentative hypotheses which, or the deductions from which, must be tested by fact; on the contrary, each step of the logical chain rests on definitely true, not “hypothetical,” general facts.

Classical Economics, p. 13

… people and inanimate objects are crucially different: stones or atoms don’t have values or make choices, whereas people inherently evaluate and choose. Still, it would be perfectly possible for economists to confine themselves to analyzing the consequences of such values and choices, provided they took no stand on public policy. But economists burn to take such stands; in fact, interest in policy is generally the main motivation for embarking on a study of economics in the first place.

Classical Economics, p. 56

Quantity is uniformly the object of investigation in the hard, physical sciences … quantity is precisely the proper concept for dealing with stones or atoms; for these entities do not possess consciousness, do not value and do not choose; therefore their movements can be and should be charted with quantitative precision. But individual human beings, on the contrary, are conscious, and do adopt values and act on them. People are not unmotivated objects always describing a quantitative path. People are qualitative, that is, they respond to qualitative differences, and they value and choose on that basis. To reduce quality to quantity, therefore, gravely distorts the actual nature of human beings and of human action, and by distorting reality, proves to be the reverse of the truly scientific.

Classical Economics, p. 58

… the economist uses mental experiments as replacements for laboratory experiments of the physical scientist … deduced economic laws are “tendency,” or “if-then” laws … they are necessarily qualitative and not quantitative, and therefore cannot admit of mathematical or statistical expression.

Classical Economics, p. 290

… true science decrees determinism for physical nature and free will for man, and for the same reason: that every thing must act in accordance with its specific nature. And since men are free to adopt ideas and to act upon them, it is never events or stimuli external to the mind that cause its ideas.

Economic Controversies, p. 8

… differences between the nature of human action and the behavior of unmotivated physical objects require different methodologies of scientific study.

Economic Controversies, p. 25

Since the relevant variables of the social world cannot actually be held constant, the economist holds them constant in his imagination. Using the tool of verbal logic, he mentally investigates the causal influence of one variable on another.… In short, economics arrives at ceteris paribus laws

Economic Controversies, p. 36

Only an individual has a mind; only an individual can feel, see, sense, and perceive; only an individual can adopt values or make choices; only an individual can act. This primordial principle of “methodological individualism” …

Economic Controversies, p. 54

Since human beings cannot be “held constant,” the praxeologist does so in “thought experiments,” by means of the famed ceteris paribus clause. It is through such reasoning that the economic theorist concludes, for example, that an increase in the supply of money, the demand for money being held constant, will be bound to lower the value (purchasing power) of the monetary unit. In short, the economic theorist postulates an equilibrium, then mentally changes one variable, say the supply of money, keeps all other relevant variables constant, and examines the effect on prices in general. Refusing to employ equilibrium concepts is necessarily destructive of all economic theory or economic law.

Ceteris paribus constructions can and do embody reality and economic truth even if the specific constructions are not “realistic” in the sense that they are not happening at that particular moment in time. These theories and laws are realistic because they are deduced from the fundamental and absolutely true axiom of human action, that people continually act by employing means to try to achieve goals.

Economic Controversies, p. 181

Human life is not a laboratory, where all variables can be kept fixed by the experimenter, who can then vary one in order to determine its effects. In human life, all factors, including human action, are variable, and nothing remains constant. But the theorist can analyze cause-and-effect relations by substituting mental abstractions for laboratory experiment. He can hold variables fixed mentally (the method of assuming “all other things equal”) and then reason out the effects of allowing one variable to change. By starting with simple “models” and introducing successive complications as the simpler ones are analyzed, the economist can at last discover the nature and operations of the market economy in the real world. Thus the economist can validly conclude from his analysis that “All other things equal (ceteris paribus), an increase in demand will raise price.”

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 348

MILITARY

… the military-industrial complex means an enormous diversion of resources, of capital, technology, and of scientists and engineers, from productive uses to the overkill waste of the military machine.

Economic Controversies, p. 663

… militarism and statism are relics and throwbacks of the past …

Economic Controversies, p. 667

The military should be considered like any other business, organization, or service; its decisions should be based on what’s best for the military, and “rights” have nothing to do with such decisions. The military’s long-standing ban on gays in the military has nothing to do with “rights” or even “homophobia”; rather it is the result of long experience as well as common sense. The military is not like any civilian organization. Not only are its men in combat situations (which it partially shares with civilian outfits like the police) but the military commander has virtual total control over his subordinate’s person and life, especially in combat situations. In such situations, open homosexuals could engage in favoritism toward loved ones, and engage in sexual exploitation and abuse of subordinates under their command. Add the discomfort of many in close and intimate situations, and you get destruction of the morale and efficiency of combat units.

… The military doesn’t naïvely assume that there are no gays in the army or navy now. On the other hand, it has no intention of going on a “witch hunt” to try to ferret out secret gays. The whole point is that, with gays necessarily in the closet, the problem of favoritism, sexual abuse, etc., is greatly minimized. Allow open gaydom in the military, however, and the problems, and the suffering of morale, will escalate.

The same strictures apply a fortiori to women in the military, especially to integrated close-contact and intimate units such as exist in combat.

Irrepressible Rothbard, pp. 27–28

I am no great fan of militarism, but if the military is to have any role at all—it’s got to be really military; tough, purposive, disciplined …

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 194

… more military means less for the private economy … the armed forces are a derivative, a dependent upon a strong and healthy civilian economy.

Science, Technology, and Government, p. 21

… government, even in the military sphere, should function only as a consumer rather than a producer, purchasing equipment and research produced by private firms.

Science, Technology, and Government, p. 22

… government has tended to create its own shortage of scientists working on military projects.

Science, Technology, and Government, p. 33

MILL, JOHN STUART

Was Mill a laissez-faire liberal? A socialist? A romantic? A classicist? A civil libertarian? A believer in state-coerced morality? The answer is yes, every time. There is endless fodder for dispute because, in his long and prolific life, Mill was all of these and none, an ever-changing kaleidoscope of alteration, transformation and contradiction.

Classical Economics, p. 277

… Mill was unusual in possessing a graceful and lucid style that served to mask the vast muddle of his intellectual furniture.

Classical Economics, p. 278

… reestablish[ed] Ricardianism on the throne of British economics …

Classical Economics, p. 278

… Mill introduced into economics, and managed to make dominant, the unfortunate hypothetical methodology of positivism …

Classical Economics, p. 280

Mill’s most conspicuous defection from classical political economy in general, and from Ricardianism in particular, was his numerous concessions to socialism and his apostasy from laissez-faire.… while the classical economists were not hard-core free market men, they at least tended strongly in that direction; if not a principle, laissez-faire was for them at least a guide or tendency to which they could at least partially orient their position. But Mill sharply broke with all that. Steeped in a high moral tone at all times, Mill originated the unfortunate intellectual tradition of conceding that socialism and indeed communism was the “ideal” social system, and then drawing back by lamenting that it probably could not be attained in this cruel practical world. Pro-capitalists who begin by conceding the moral ground to their opponents are bound to lose the long-run war, if not the short-run battle, to socialism.

Classical Economics, p. 281

… Mill gave birth to the calamitous and still prevalent notion that distribution can be changed virtually at will through tax, subsidy or other statist schemes, while the market would still continue to function and produce undisturbed.

Classical Economics, p. 282

… the labor theory/cost-of-production theory of value was restored to a dominant place in classical economics [by Mill] …

Classical Economics, p. 282

… Mill stood squarely in the Ricardian tradition in fervent opposition to irredeemable paper money.

Classical Economics, p. 285

Rather than abandon the empire, as his father and other liberals had urged, John Stuart Mill called for its expansion.

Classical Economics, p. 287

… John Stuart Mill lent his great prestige to the notion that capitalism economically requires empire in order to invest, to get rid of, allegedly surplus savings or capital. In short, Mill was one of the ultimate founders of the Leninist theory of imperialism.

Classical Economics, p. 288

For three decades, Mill and his Principles bestrode British economics like a colossus … Mill had managed to fasten upon Great Britain: a watered-down labor or at least cost-of-production theory of value; a muddled positivist method that gave hostage to inductivist or even organicist critics; a devotion to the gold standard offset by an inflationist, banking school theory of crises and cycles and of gold production, and an adherence to the status quo of inflationist Bank of England control and manipulation of the British monetary system. In fact, in every area, John Stuart Mill reimposed the system of Ricardo and his father, but in a far more muddled and diluted manner. In public policy, too, the old Ricardian devotion to laissez-faire was replaced by a vague free market presumption to which Mill and his followers were always willing to make extensive exceptions …

Classical Economics, p. 293

John Stuart Mill’s conquest of British economics by his 1848 treatise, The Principles of Political Economy, succeeded in imposing a miasma upon British economics for at least a quarter-century. In some respects, indeed, the subjectivist (or, in its trivialized label, the “marginalist”) revolution against Mill, led abortively by Jevons in the 1870s, never really took hold in Great Britain. The Millian miasma imposed a vague and incoherent adhesion to the labor theory, or at best the cost-of-production theory, of value; to the methodology of positivism, tempered by a confused inductivism; to individualism, muddled by organicism; to a vague, tentative preference for the free market easily overridden by almost any objection, in particular the alleged ability of labor unions to win general wage increases as well as the supposed moral superiority of socialism. Politically, in short, Mill was cleverly positioned to be the patron saint of laissez-faire as well of virtually any and all attacks against it—in short, to be the philosopher of the British status quo as it existed or as it might become. At the same time, Mill became the modern liberal intellectual’s favorite straw-man champion of laissez-faire, ever ready to make the most damaging concessions to his modern liberal opponents.

Classical Economics, p. 441

It is difficult to think of anyone in the history of thought who has been more egregiously and systematically overestimated, as an economist, as a political philosopher, as an overall thinker, or as a man, than John Stuart Mill.

Classical Economics, p. 491

… to [Mill], “monopoly”—the opposite of competition—was artificial grants of exclusive privilege.

Strictly Confidential, p. 309

MINIMUM WAGE

Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially so among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers … a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker’s employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being employed at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him. It therefore compels unemployment.

For a New Liberty, p. 196

In truth, there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory unemployment, period. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means, plainly and simply, that a large number of free and voluntary wage contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of unemployment. Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.

… laws that prohibit employment at any wage that is relevant to the market (a minimum wage of 10 cents an hour would have little or no impact) must result in outlawing employment and hence causing unemployment.

… the people who will be disemployed and devastated by this prohibition will be precisely the “marginal” (lowest wage) workers, e.g., blacks and teenagers, the very workers whom the advocates of the minimum wage are claiming to foster and protect.

Making Economic Sense, p. 134

When a minimum wage law is effective, i.e., where it imposes a wage above the market value of a grade of labor (above the laborer’s discounted marginal value product), the supply of labor services exceeds the demand, and the “unsold surplus” of labor services means involuntary mass unemployment.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 897

Compulsory unemployment is achieved indirectly through minimum wage laws. On the free market, everyone’s wage tends to be set at his discounted marginal value productivity. A minimum wage law means that those whose DMVP is below the legal minimum are prevented from working. The worker was willing to take the job, and the employer to hire him. But the decree of the State prevents this hiring from taking place. Compulsory unemployment thus removes the competition of marginal workers and raises the wage rates of the other workers remaining. Thus, while the announced aim of a minimum wage law is to improve the incomes of the marginal workers, the actual effect is precisely the reverse—it is to render them unemployable at legal wage rates. The higher the minimum wage rate relative to free-market rates, the greater the resulting unemployment.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1114

MISES, LUDWIG VON

The monetary theory holds that money and credit-expansion, launched by the banking system, causes booms and busts. This doctrine was first advanced, in rudimentary form, by the Currency School of British classical economists in the early nineteenth century, and then fully developed by Ludwig von Mises and his followers in the twentieth.

America’s Great Depression, p. xxxviii

… the Mises theory of the trade cycle is not just another theory … it meshes closely with a general theory of the economic system. The Mises theory is, in fact, the economic analysis of the necessary consequences of intervention in the free market by bank credit expansion.… Since the Mises theory is the only one that stems from a general economic theory, it is the only one that can provide a correct explanation.

America’s Great Depression, p. 4

Professor Mises, while recognizing the superior economic merits of 100 percent gold money to free banking, prefers the latter because 100 percent reserves would concede to the government control over banking …

America’s Great Depression, p. 27

… the Mises theory for the first time succeeds in integrating the theory of the business cycle into the whole structural design of economic theory.

America’s Great Depression, p. 33

The most distinguished of laissez-faire economists, Ludwig von Mises, who had been in the front rank of the economic world on the Continent during the teens and twenties, had been largely forgotten in the wake of the “Keynesian Revolution” of the late 1930s.

Betrayal of the American Right, p. 61

… my mentor Ludwig von Mises.

Betrayal of the American Right, p. 183

Professor Mises, working within a Kantian philosophical framework, maintained that like the “laws of thought,” the [action] axiom is a priori to human experience and hence apodictically certain.

Economic Controversies, p. 33

Whether we consider the Action Axiom “a priori” or “empirical” depends on our ultimate philosophical position. Professor Mises, in the neo-Kantian tradition, considers this axiom a law of thought and therefore a categorical truth a priori to all experience.… I would interpret the proposition differently. I would consider the axiom a law of reality rather than a law of thought, and hence “empirical” rather than “a priori.”

Economic Controversies, p. 108

… Professor Mises is an uncompromising champion of Wertfreiheit not only in economics, but also for all the sciences.

Economic Controversies, p. 110

The only sense in which Mises considers liberalism as “scientific” is to the extent that people unite on the goal of abundance and mutual benefit.

Economic Controversies, p. 111

… the Mises-Hayek business-cycle theory [was] dominant before Keynes’s General Theory …

Economic Controversies, p. 131

… the most faithful student of the three [Marginalist] pioneers …

Economic Controversies, p. 158

… Mises helped to purge economics of continuing vestiges of faulty objective value theories …

Economic Controversies, p. 171

It is impossible to engage in economic theorizing without employing what Mises called “imaginary constructions” or “thought experiments” (Gedankenexperimenten) which function as the praxeologist’s unique substitute for the laboratory experiments of the physical sciences.

Economic Controversies, p. 181

It is now universally acknowledged that Ludwig von Mises, allegedly the loser in the famous socialist calculation debate that he launched in 1920, was really right: clearly, socialism cannot calculate, it cannot run a complex modern economic system.

Economic Controversies, p. 186

… to Mises, the problem for the Planning Board is not knowledge but calculability.

Economic Controversies, p. 187

… Mises was urgently concerned to have everyone grasp and understand the remote and unseen consequences of their actions …

Economic Controversies, p. 203

Mises integrated monetary theory, and the theory of the value of money, into micro marginal utility, as well as supply and demand theory.… Mises then built upon that monetary theory in forging his masterful theory of the business cycle.

Economic Controversies, pp. 204–05

… Mises demonstrated that, given the existence of money in the economy, every supply of money is optimal.

Economic Controversies, p. 208

… was unfailingly charming and devoted to spurring productivity among his students.

Economic Controversies, pp. 219–20

… while Ludwig von Mises was acknowledged as one of Europe’s most eminent economists in the 1920s and ’30s, the language barrier shut off any recognition of Mises in the Anglo-American world until the mid-1930s; then, just as his business cycle theory was beginning to achieve renown as an explanation for the Great Depression, Mises’s overdue recognition was lost in the hoopla of the Keynesian Revolution. A refugee deprived of his academic or social base in Europe, Mises emigrated to the United States at the mercy of his new-found environment. But while, in the climate of the day, the leftist and socialist refugees from Europe were cultivated, feted, and given prestigious academic posts, a different fate was meted out to a man who embodied a methodological and political individualism that was anathema to American academia. Indeed, the fact that a man of Mises’s eminence was not offered a single regular academic post and that he was never able to teach in a prestigious graduate department in this country is one of the most shameful blots on the none too illustrious history of American higher education. The fact that Mises himself was able to preserve his great energy, his remarkable productivity, and his unfailing gentleness and good humor in the face of this shabby treatment is simply one more tribute to the qualities of this remarkable man …

… Ludwig von Mises’s writings are the embodiment of a courageous and eminent man hewing to his discipline and to his vision, unheeding of shabby maltreatment.

Economic Controversies, p. 232

… Ludwig von Mises offers to us nothing less than the complete and developed correct paradigm of a science that has gone tragically astray over the last half-century. Mises’s work presents us with the correct and radically divergent alternative to the flaws, errors, and fallacies which a growing number of students are sensing in present-day economic orthodoxy.

Economic Controversies, p. 232

Mises’s economic system—as set forth particularly in his Human Action—grounds economics squarely upon the axiom of action: on an analysis of the primordial truth that individual men exist and act, that is, make purposive choices among alternatives. Upon this simple and evident axiom of action, Ludwig von Mises deduces the entire systematic edifice of economic theory, an edifice that is as true as the basic axiom and the fundamental laws of logic. The entire theory is the working out of methodological individualism in economics, the nature and consequences of the choices and exchanges of individuals. Mises’s uncompromising devotion to the free market, his opposition to every form of statism, stems from his analysis of the nature and consequences of individuals acting freely on the one hand, as against governmental coercive interference or planning on the other. For, basing himself on the action axiom, Mises is able to show the happy consequences of freedom and the free market in social efficiency, prosperity, and development, as against the disastrous consequences of government intervention in poverty, war, social chaos, and retrogression. This political consequence alone, of course, makes the methodology as well as the conclusions of Misesian economics anathema to modern social science.

Economic Controversies, p. 233

Perhaps the most important single contribution of von Mises to the economics of intervention is also the one most grievously neglected in the present day: his analysis of money and business cycles.

Economic Controversies, p. 235

Mises’s brilliant theory of the business cycle is the only such theory to be integrated with the economists’ general analysis of the pricing system and of capital and interest.

Economic Controversies, p. 236

Mises was hailed even by socialists for being the first to raise the whole problem of rational calculation of prices in a socialist economy …

Economic Controversies, p. 238

Mises, almost singlehandedly, has offered us the correct paradigm for economic theory, for social science, and for the economy itself, and it is high time that this paradigm be embraced, in all of its parts. …

Thanks in no small measure to the life and work of Ludwig von Mises, we can realistically hope and expect that mankind will choose the path of life, liberty, and progress and will at last turn decisively away from death and despotism.

Economic Controversies, p. 239

Mises conceives of the entrepreneur as the uncertainty-bearer, who receives profits to the degree that he can successfully forecast the future, and suffers losses to the extent that his forecasting goes awry.

Economic Controversies, p. 281

The clearest and most thorough formulation of the concept [demonstrated preferences] has been the works of Professor Mises.

Economic Controversies, p. 290

Mises [did not believe] that the State could or should be abolished; instead, he believed that the world should be preponderantly a product of contractual relations.

Economic Controversies, p. 461n18

… by far the most thoughtful and systematic of free-market economists …

Economic Controversies, p. 490n72

… Mises proved that a socialist system cannot calculate economically, because it doesn’t have a price system for capital goods, and therefore socialism will not be able to run an industrial system.

Economic Controversies, p. 678

Mises arrived implicitly at a falling demand curve for money in relation to the purchasing power of the currency unit. The purchasing power of the money unit, which Mises also termed the “objective exchange-value” of money, was then determined, as in the usual supply-and-demand analysis, by the intersection of the money stock and the demand for cash balance schedule. We can see this visually by putting the purchasing power of the money unit on the y-axis and the quantity of money on the x-axis of the conventional two-dimensional diagram corresponding to the price of any good and its quantity. …

While, for purposes of convenience, Mises’s analysis may be expressed in the usual supply-and-demand diagram with the purchasing power of the money unit serving as the price of money, relying solely on such a simplified diagram falsifies the theory.

Economic Controversies, p. 686

… Mises showed that an increased supply of money impinges differently upon different spheres of the market and thereby ineluctably changes relative prices.

Economic Controversies, p. 688

… Mises developed the Ricardian analysis into what was to be called the purchasing-power-parity theory of exchange rates …

Economic Controversies, p. 691

When he set out to apply the theory of marginal utility to the price of money, Mises confronted the problem that was later to be called “the Austrian circle.” …

Mises, however, succeeded in solving this problem in 1912 in developing his so-called regression theorem.

Economic Controversies, pp. 692–93

Not only does the Mises regression theorem fully explain the current demand for money and integrate the theory of money with the theory of marginal utility, but it also shows that money must have originated in this fashion—on the market—with individuals on the market gradually beginning to use some previously valuable commodity as a medium of exchange.… Mises demonstrated that Carl Menger’s historical insight into the way in which money arose on the market was not simply a historical summary but a theoretical necessity.

Economic Controversies, p. 694

In Human Action, Mises advanced the Austrian theory of money by delivering a shattering blow to the very concept of Walrasian general equilibrium. …

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. Another corollary contribution of Mises in this analysis was to demonstrate that, far from being only one of many “motives” for holding cash balances, uncertainty is crucial to the holding of any cash at all.

Economic Controversies, pp. 697–98

… Mises has demonstrated that money can only originate … as a commodity on the free market—and that it cannot originate by government fiat.

Economic Controversies, p. 710n1

Ludwig von Mises first raised the question of socialist economic calculation in 1920 by asserting that socialism could not calculate economically because of the absence of a price system for the factors of production.

Economic Controversies, p. 815

Mises in effect said: All right, suppose that the socialists have been able to create a mighty army of citizens all eager to do the bidding of their masters, the socialist planners. What exactly would those planners tell this army to do? How would they know what products to order their eager slaves to produce, at what stage of production, how much of the product at each stage, what techniques or raw materials to use in that production and how much of each, and where specifically to locate all this production? How would they know their costs, or what process of production is or is not efficient?

Mises demonstrated that, in any economy more complex than the Crusoe or primitive family level, the socialist planning board would simply not know what to do, or how to answer any of these vital questions. Developing the momentous concept of calculation, Mises pointed out that the planning board could not answer these questions …

Economic Controversies, pp. 828–29

Mises records that his position on socialist calculation emerged out of his first great work, The Theory of Money and Credit (1912). …

For Mises, then, his work on socialist calculation was part and parcel of his expanded integration of direct and monetary exchange, of “micro” and “macro,” that he had begun but not yet completed in The Theory of Money and Credit.

Economic Controversies, pp. 844–45

… to Mises the central problem is not “knowledge.” He explicitly points out that even if the socialist planners knew perfectly, and eagerly wished to satisfy, the value priorities of the consumers, and even if the planners enjoyed a perfect knowledge of all resources and all technologies, they still would not be able to calculate, for lack of a price system of the means of production. The problem is not knowledge, then, but calculability.

Economic Controversies, p. 846

… the founder of praxeological economics and champion of laissez-faire.

Economic Controversies, p. 926

The correct and fully developed theory of the business cycle was finally discovered and set forth by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises …

Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, p. 29

Ludwig von Mises, alone armed with a correct theory of the business cycle, was one of the very few economists to predict the Great Depression, and hence the economic world was forced to listen to him with respect.

Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, p. 43

It is not that Misesian theory was refuted successfully; it was just forgotten in the rush to climb on the suddenly fashionable Keynesian bandwagon.

Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, p. 44

… my immense debt to Ludwig von Mises for providing a mighty edifice of economic theory, as well as for his teaching, his friendship, and for the inspiring example of his life.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. xv

Ludwig von Mises exposed the total inability of a planned, moneyless economy to operate above the most primitive level.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 201

Indeed, for someone who thought that he had absorbed all of Mises’s work many years ago, it is a constant source of surprise how rereading Mises continues to provide a source of fresh insights and of new ways of looking at seemingly trite situations.… Ludwig von Mises remains more truly alive than most of our conventionally wise contemporaries.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, pp. 302–02

… he was, of all the economists in the twentieth century, at one and the same time the most uncompromising and passionate adherent of laissez-faire …

Ethics of Liberty, p. 206

No economist has done more than Ludwig von Mises to elucidate the universality of time-preference in human affairs—the praxeological law that everyone prefers to attain a given satisfaction sooner than later.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 209

… Mises, along with most economists, was indeed a utilitarian in ethics, although a Kantian in epistemology …

Ethics of Liberty, p. 210

… Mises, not only as a praxeologist but also as a utilitarian liberal, could have no word of criticism against these statist measures once the majority of the public have taken their praxeological consequences into account and choose them anyway on behalf of goals other than wealth and prosperity.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 213

… neither praxeological economics nor Mises’s utilitarian liberalism is sufficient to make the case for laissez-faire and the free-market economy. To make such a case, one must go beyond economics and utilitarianism to establish an objective ethics that affirms the overriding value of liberty and morally condemns all forms of statism …

Ethics of Liberty, p. 214

Mises begins as did the Ricardians: government and its central bank stimulate bank credit expansion by purchasing assets and thereby increasing bank reserves. The banks proceed to expand credit and hence the nation’s money supply in the form of checking deposits (private bank notes having virtually disappeared). As with the Ricardians, Mises sees that this expansion of bank money drives up prices and causes inflation.

But, as Mises pointed out, the Ricardians understated the unfortunate consequences of bank credit inflation. For something even more sinister is at work. Bank credit expansion not only raises prices, it also artificially lowers the rate of interest, and thereby sends misleading signals to businessmen, causing them to make unsound and uneconomic investments.

For a New Liberty, p. 233

… as Ludwig von Mises and other economists have shown, in an industrial economy statism simply does not work.

For a New Liberty, p. 395

The right of secession, if fearlessly upheld, implies also the right of one or more villages to secede even from its own ethnic nation, or, even, as Ludwig von Mises affirmed in his Nation, State, and Economy, the right of secession by each individual.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 231

… the preeminent theorist of our time.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 4

In his early years at the university, he was a left-liberal and interventionist, although he quickly rejected Marxism.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 5

In the course of his writings, Mises became convinced that … bank credit should not be “elastic” …

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 9

[The Theory of Money and Credit] was a remarkable achievement, because for the first time, the micro/macro split that had begun in English classical economics with Ricardo was now healed. At long last, economics was whole, an integral science based on a logical, step-by-step analysis of individual human action. Money was fully integrated into an analysis of individual action and of the market economy.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 10

Returning to the Ricardian-Currency School tradition, [Mises] demonstrated that they were correct in wishing to abolish inflationary fractional-reserve credit.… inflation. Mises therefore favored the Currency School approach of 100% specie reserves to demand liabilities.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 14

During the 1920s, Mises formulated his business cycle theory out of three pre-existing elements: the Currency School boom-bust model of the business cycle; the Swedish “Austrian” Knut Wicksell’s differentiation between the “natural” and the bank interest rates; and Böhm-Bawerkian capital and interest theory. Mises’s remarkable integration of these previously totally separate analyses showed that inflationary or created bank credit, by pumping in more money into the economy and by lowering interest rates on business loans below the free market, time preference level, inevitably caused an excess of malinvestments in capital goods industries remote from the consumer. The longer the boom of inflationary bank credit continues, the greater the scope of malinvestments in capital goods, and the greater the need for liquidation of these unsound investments.… Mises demonstrated that the recession, far from being a strange, unexplainable aberration to be combatted, is really a necessary process by which the market economy liquidates the unsound investments of the boom, and returns to the right consumption/investment proportions to satisfy consumers in the most efficient way.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, pp. 15–16

Agree with him or not, Ludwig von Mises was clearly a major innovative economist …

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 18

… his seminal journal article in 1920 on the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism was the most important theoretical critique ever leveled at socialism.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 19

… he was an unreconstructed laissez-faire liberal … he was personally intransigent and unwilling ever to compromise his principles.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 20

Mises succeeded in stopping Bolshevism in Austria …

… It was because of Mises and Rosenberg that Austria did not go the whole way of the disastrous runaway inflation that would ravage Germany in 1923. Yet Mises and Rosenberg only succeeded in slowing down and delaying the effects of inflation rather than eliminating it.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, pp. 24–25

Mises was often accused of being intransigent and uncompromising.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 26

Mises’s book Socialism had an enormous influence during the 1920s and 1930s, not only in raising profound questions of socialists, but also in converting countless young socialist intellectuals to the cause of freedom and free markets.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 30

Mises arrived at a general law that, whenever the government intervened in the economy to solve a problem, it invariably ended, not only in not solving the original problem, but also creating one or two others, each of which then seemed to cry out for further government intervention. In this way, he showed government interventionism, or a “mixed economy,” to be unstable. Each intervention only creates new problems, which then face the government with a choice: either repeal the original intervention, or go on to new ones. In this way, government intervention is an unstable system, leading logically either back to laissez-faire or on to full socialism. But Mises knew from his study into socialism that a socialist system was “impossible” for the modern world: that is, it was lacking the price system necessary to economic calculation, and therefore for running a modern industrial economy. But if interventionism is unstable, and socialism is impossible, then the only logical economic policy for a modern industrial system was laissez-faire liberalism.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 31

In his critique of logical positivism, Mises saw that a philosophy that treated people as if they were stones and atoms, whose behavior could be predicted and determined according to quantitative laws, was particularly likely to lead to the viewpoint of social engineers, who deal with people as if they were inanimate physical objects.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 35

… it remains an ineradicable blot on the record of American academia that Mises was never able to find a paid, full-time post in any American university.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 47

… one of the great minds of the twentieth century …

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 47

Mises was infinitely patient and kind …

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 50

Human Action is it: Mises’s greatest achievement and one of the finest products of the human mind in our century. It is economics made whole, based on the methodology of praxeology that Mises himself had developed, and grounded in the ineluctable and fundamental axiom that human beings exist, and that they act in the world, using means to try to achieve their most valued goals. Mises constructs the entire edifice of correct economic theory as the logical implications of the primordial fact of individual human action. It was a remarkable achievement, and provided a way out for the discipline of economics …

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 51

Human Action was indeed about everything. The book was a revelation to those of us drenched in modern economics; it solved all problems and inconsistencies that I had sensed in economic theory, and it provided an entirely new and superb structure of correct economic methodology and theory. Furthermore, it provided eager libertarians with a policy of uncompromising laissez-faire; in contrast to all other free-market economists of that day or later, there were no escape hatches, no giving the case away with “of course, the government must break up monopolies,” or “of course, the government must provide and regulate the money supply.”

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 52

In all matters, from theoretical to political, Mises was the soul of rigor and consistency. Never would Mises compromise his principles, never would he bow the knee to a quest for respectability or social or political favor. As a scholar, as an economist, and as a person, Ludwig von Mises was a joy and an inspiration, an exemplar for us all.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 52

Theory and History, his philosophical masterpiece … Theory and History was, understandably, Mises’s favorite next to Human Action.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 53

Ludwig von Mises, one of the giants of our century …

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 55

Friedrich A. Hayek received the Nobel Prize in Economics, not for his later philosophical meanderings and lucubrations, but precisely and explicitly for the work he did, in the 1920s and 1930s, as an ardent Misesian, in elaborating Mises’s theory of business cycles. Ironic because if anyone deserved the Nobel Prize more than Hayek, it was clearly his mentor, Ludwig von Mises.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 55

Who was Mises the Man? Since his death, some of his most beloved students of the 1920s, particularly F.A. Hayek, have disseminated the view that Mises was “difficult,” “stern,” “severe,” not personally close to his students, and even “personally obnoxious.” These strictures were either given to interviewers, or inserted as barbs in the midst of an effusion of praise for Mises. But is this the sort of teacher who all of his life had gathered around him enthusiastic admirers and followers? Certainly, I can testify that all his American followers were steeped, not only in admiration for the greatness and rigor of his intellect and creative powers, and for his indomitable courage, but also in love with the sweetness of his soul.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 57

Ludwig von Mises, at the dawn of the Socialist Century, warned, in a famous article, that socialism simply could not work: that it could not run an industrial economy, and could not even satisfy the goals of the central planners themselves, much less of the mass of consumers in whose name they speak. For decades Mises was derided, and discredited …

Making Economic Sense, p. 414

Mises was right …

… you can’t have economic freedom and private property without intellectual and political freedom … you can’t have perestroika without glasnost.

Making Economic Sense, pp. 414–15

One time I asked Professor von Mises, the great expert on the economics of socialism, at what point on this spectrum of statism would he designate a country as “socialist” or not. At that time, I wasn’t sure that any definite criterion existed to make that sort of clear-cut judgment.

And so I was pleasantly surprised at the clarity and decisiveness of Mises’s answer. “A stock market,” he answered promptly.

Making Economic Sense, p. 426

In the long run, however, it will be all too obvious that Mises has left us a grand intellectual and scientific system for the ages …

Making Economic Sense, p. 450

… Mises [was a] gracious, brilliant and wonderful man; this man of unblemished integrity; this courageous and lifelong fighter for human freedom; this all-encompassing scholar; this noble inspiration to us all. And above all [a] gentle and charming friend …

Making Economic Sense, p. 452

Readers of Mises’s majestic, formidable and uncompromising works must have been often surprised to meet him in person. Perhaps they had formed the image of Ludwig Mises as cold, severe, austere, the logical scholar repelled by lesser mortals, bitter at the follies around him and at the long trail of wrongs and insults that he had suffered.

They couldn’t have been more wrong; for what they met was a mind of genius blended harmoniously with a personality of great sweetness and benevolence. Not once has any of us heard a harsh or bitter word escape from Mises’s lips. Unfailingly gentle and courteous, Ludwig Mises was always there to encourage even the slightest signs of productivity or intelligence in his friends and students; always there for warmth as well as for the mastery of logic and reason that his works have long proclaimed him.

Making Economic Sense, p. 453

Ludwig Mises’s steadfastness and courage in the face of treatment that would have shattered lesser men, was a never-ending wonder to us all. Once the literal toast of both the economics profession and of the world’s leaders, Mises was to find, at the very height of his powers, his world shattered and betrayed. For as the world rushed headlong into the fallacies and evils of Keynesianism and statism, Mises’s great insights and contributions were neglected and scorned, and the large majority of his eminent and formerly devoted students decided to bend with the new breeze.

… Ludwig Mises never once complained or wavered. He simply hewed to his great purpose, to carve out and elaborate the mighty structure of economics and social science that he alone had had the genius to see as a coherent whole; and to stand four-square for the individualism and the freedom that he realized was required if the human race was to survive and prosper. He was indeed a constant star that could not be deflected one iota from the body of truth which he was the first to see and to present to those who would only listen.

Making Economic Sense, p. 454

A man of high courage, a scholar with unusual integrity, Ludwig von Mises never knew any other way than pursuing truth to its ultimate conclusions, however unpopular or unpalatable. And, as a result, Ludwig von Mises was the greatest and most uncompromising champion of human freedom in the twentieth century.

It is no wonder, then, that the timorous and the venal habitually shy away from the very name of Ludwig von Mises. For Mises scorned all obstacles and temptations in the pursuit of truth and freedom.

Making Economic Sense, p. 459

Yes, of course, Mises was “dogmatic,” i.e., he was totally devoted to truth and to freedom and free enterprise. Yes, indeed, Mises, even though the kindliest and most inspiring of men, “alienated people” all the time, that is, he systematically alienated collectivists, socialists, statists, and trimmers and opportunists of all stripes.

Making Economic Sense, p. 462

Professor Paul Samuelson has written rhapsodically of the joy of being under thirty at the time of publication of Keynes’s General Theory. I can say the same for the publication of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action in 1949. For here at last was economics whole once more, once again an edifice.

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

My overriding intellectual debt, of course, is to Ludwig von Mises.

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

Mises, who has had the last as well as the first word in this debate, has demonstrated irrefutably that a socialist economic system cannot calculate, since it lacks a market, and hence lacks prices for producers’ and especially for capital goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 614–15

… as Mises points out, there is no need to be concerned with the “monopolist” …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 672

… Mises’s demonstration of the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism has never been successfully refuted.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 958

Mises’s regression theorem shows that no money can be established on the market except as it can be exchanged for a previously existing money (which in turn must have ultimately related back to a commodity in barter).

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1021

Professor Ludwig von Mises has keenly pointed out the paradoxical position of so many “progressives” who insist that consumers are too ignorant or incompetent to buy products intelligently, while at the same time touting the virtues of democracy, where the same people vote for politicians whom they do not know and for policies that they hardly understand.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1070

Mises states, quite rightly, that anyone who advocates governmental dictation over one area of individual consumption must logically come to advocate complete totalitarian dictation over all choices.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1303

… Ludwig von Mises was one of those believing that free banking in practice would approximate a 100 percent gold or silver money.

Mystery of Banking, p. 278

Mises [denies] the existence of a rational, objective ethics …

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 107

… the preeminent economist and praxeologist of our time …

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 107

[I can never] express how much of an enormous intellectual debt I owe to Mises …

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 108

Mises categorically denies that anyone can ever act irrationally, either in the means he undertakes or in the ends for which he strives. I think this is flatly wrong, especially since Mises wishes to retain the concept of rational and apply it to all of man’s actions. I cannot see how we can retain the term rational while denying anyone the use of its opposite: “irrational.” If Mises maintains that no one can ever act irrationally, then he is simply using “rational” as a synonym for “purposive,” and this means that he is using the term rational in a sense that no one else uses and is therefore illegitimate. Instead of denying that anyone could act irrationally, Mises should simply not use rational or irrational at all, and leave the term to psychology and ethics.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 108

… Mises, while a praxeological or epistemological absolutist, is, unfortunately, an ethical relativist. To Mises, there is no such a thing as absolute ethics; man, by the use of his mind, cannot discover a true, “scientific” ethics by insight into what is best for man’s nature. Ultimate ends, values, ethics, are simply subjective, personal, and purely arbitrary. If they are arbitrary, Mises never explains where they come from, how any individual arrives at them. I can’t see how he could arrive at any answer except the subjective, relative emotions of each individual.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 110

For to Mises, all ethics is “arbitrary” … The man who understands economics and then chooses liberty is, or should be, considered by Mises to be just as “arbitrary” as the man who chooses egalitarianism, after accepting, say, the economic consequences of lessened productivity. And since either decision, according to Mises, is ultimately arbitrary, he cannot finally refute the interventionists in this way.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 111

MONETARY POLICY

The ideal of a stable price level is relatively innocuous during a price rise when it can aid sound money advocates in trying to check the boom; but it is highly mischievous when prices are tending to sag, and the stabilizationists call for inflation.

America’s Great Depression, p. 175

… one great desideratum in framing a monetary policy is to find one that is truly compatible with the free market in its widest and fullest sense. This is not only an ethical but also an economic tenet; for, at the very least, the economist who sees the free market working splendidly in all other fields should hesitate for a long time before dismissing it in the sphere of money.

Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 20

… government should be separated from the monetary system, just as the free market requires that government not intervene in any other sphere of the economy.

Economic Controversies, p. 235

The laissez-faire policy of the classical, prewar gold standard meant that prices would be allowed to find their own level in accordance with supply and demand, and without interference by central bank manipulation. In practice, this meant a secularly falling price level, as the supply of goods rose over time in accordance with the long-run rise in productivity. And in practice, price stabilization really meant price raising: either keeping prices up when they were falling, or “reflating” prices by raising them through inflationary action by the central banks. Price stabilization therefore meant the replacement of the classical, laissez-faire gold standard by “managed money,” by inflationary credit expansion stimulated by the central banks.

History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 447

… once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed. Since the only use of money is for exchange and reckoning, more dollars or pounds or marks in circulation cannot confer a social benefit. …

The natural tendency of government, once in charge of money, is to inflate and to destroy the value of the currency.

Making Economic Sense, p. 274

… the exchange-value of money cannot be quantitatively separated from the exchange-value of goods. Since the general exchange-value, or PPM, of money cannot be quantitatively defined and isolated in any historical situation, and its changes cannot be defined or measured, it is obvious that it cannot be kept stable. If we do not know what something is, we cannot very well act to keep it constant.

… the ideal of a stabilized value of money is impossible to attain or even define.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 849

… the stabilizationist program of fixing the value of money or price level without distorting relative prices is necessarily doomed to failure. It is an impossible program. …

At the heart of the stabilizationist ideal is a misunderstanding of the nature of money. Money is considered either a mere numeraire or a grandiose measure of values. Forgotten is the truth that money is desired and demanded as a useful commodity …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 851

The central bank can increase the reserves of a country’s banks in three ways: (a) by simply lending them reserves; (b) by purchasing their assets, thereby adding directly to the banks’ deposit accounts with the central bank; or (c) by purchasing the I.O.U.’s of the public, which will then deposit the drafts on the central bank in the various banks that serve the public directly, thereby enabling them to use the credits on the central bank to add to their own reserves.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1016

Money, in short, is not a “fixed yardstick.” It is a commodity serving as a medium for exchanges. Flexibility in its value in response to consumer demands is just as important and just as beneficial as any other free pricing on the market.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, pp. 32–33

… freedom can run a monetary system as superbly as it runs the rest of the economy.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 48

MONEY

Money forges the connecting link between all economic activities.

America’s Great Depression, p. 6

Money arises on the free market, as individuals on the market try to facilitate the vital process of exchange.

Case Against the Fed, p. 12

Once any particular commodity starts to be used as a medium, this very process has a spiralling, or snowballing, effect. If, for example, several people in a society begin to use butter as a medium, people will realize that in that particular region butter is becoming especially marketable, or acceptable in exchange, and so they will demand more butter in exchange for use as a medium. And so, as its use as a medium becomes more widely known, this use feeds upon itself, until rapidly the commodity comes into general employment in the society as a medium of exchange. A commodity that is in general use as a medium is defined as a money.

Case Against the Fed, pp. 13–14

Money, after all, can neither be eaten nor used up in production. The money-commodity, functioning as money, can only be used in exchange, in facilitating the transfer of goods and services, and in making economic calculation possible. But once a money has been established in the market, no increases in its supply are needed, and they perform no genuine social function.

Case Against the Fed, p. 19

… money, in any market economy advanced beyond the stage of primitive barter, is the nerve center of the economic system. If, therefore, the state is able to gain unquestioned control over the unit of all accounts, the state will then be in a position to dominate the entire economic system, and the whole society.

Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 21

On the pristine free market, money does not and cannot mean names of paper tickets. Money means a certain commodity …

Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 24

… logically money can only originate in a nonmonetary commodity, chosen gradually by the market to be an ever more general medium of exchange. Money cannot originate as a new fiat name, either by government edict or by some form of social compact.

Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 31

… money is one of the greatest and most significant features of the modern market economy, and indeed of civilization itself. The more general the money, the greater the scope for division of labor and for the interregional exchange of goods and services that stem from the market economy. A monetary medium is therefore critical to the free market, and the wider the use of this money, the more extensive the market and the better it can function.

Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 60

… the demand for money, like the demand for any product, is variable and uncertain.

Classical Economics, p. 180

Money exchanges with all other goods on terms set by the market. These terms, established by the interplay of market supply and demand, constitute the array of money prices in society. If the supply of money in society should increase, the purchasing power of each unit of money relative to goods will fall (that is, prices will rise); if the supply of money should decline, then the purchasing power of each unit will rise (prices will fall).

Conceived in Liberty v. 2, p. 125; p. 623

To function as a money, an entity must have emerged on the free market out of barter, as a particularly marketable commodity selected on the market as a medium for virtually all exchanges. Nothing can be originally adopted as money by government fiat, or by some sort of social contract; it must originate as a strictly market phenomenon.

Economic Controversies, p. 207

… the reason one holds cash balances is the uncertainty of the future …

Economic Controversies, p. 257

… people demand money to hold in their cash balances, not for eventual direct use in consumption, but precisely in order to exchange those balances for other goods that will be used directly. Thus, money is not useful in itself but because it has a prior exchange value, because it has been and therefore presumably will be exchangeable in terms of other goods. In short, money is demanded because it has a pre-existing purchasing power; its demand not only is not independent of its existing price on the market but is precisely due to its already having a price in terms of other goods and services.

Economic Controversies, pp. 692–93

No money could have originated either by a social compact to consider some previously valueless thing as a “money” or by sudden governmental fiat.… money had to originate as a directly useful commodity …

Economic Controversies, p. 694

Money is the medium of exchange …

Economic Controversies, p. 706

Money is the nerve center of any economy above the most primitive level. An economy consists of a vast and intricate network of two-person exchanges, and money constitutes one side of every exchange. Money is the medium by which producers of goods and services (sold for money) proceed to become consumers of goods and services (bought for money). If any one person or organization manages to obtain control over the supply of money—over its quality, its quantity, or its use—he or it has thereby taken a long step toward gaining complete control of the entire economic system. Similarly, it is difficult to see how complete economic control could be achieved without domination of the supply of money.

Economic Controversies, p. 709

Once a commodity begins to be used as a medium, the process accelerates as this makes the good all the more valuable, until it finally comes to be used as a general medium for exchanges—as a money.

Economic Controversies, p. 709

… money is the general medium of exchange, the thing that all other goods and services are traded for, the final payment for such goods on the market.

Economic Controversies, p. 728

… so long as demand deposits are accepted as equivalent to standard money, they will function as part of the money supply.

It is important to recognize that demand deposits are not automatically part of the money supply by virtue of their very existence; they continue as equivalent to money only so long as the subjective estimates of the sellers of goods on the market think that they are so equivalent and accept them as such in exchange.

Economic Controversies, p. 729

For any commodity to become used as money, it must have originated as a commodity valued for some nonmonetary purpose … Money has to originate as a valuable nonmonetary commodity.

Economic Controversies, p. 759

… no money can originate in any society except as a medium of exchange, and as a medium that arose on the free market as a useful nonmonetary commodity, e.g., gold or silver.

Economic Controversies, p. 890

… any group, coming into the possession of the absolute power to “print money,” will tend to … print it!

Economic Controversies, p. 909

… the growth of money greatly facilitated production and exchange.… money eliminates the grave problem of “double coincidence of wants,” where each trader will have to desire the other man’s goods directly. Now each person can sell goods for money. Furthermore, money serves as a store of values to be used for purchases in the future.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, pp. 14–15

… the value of money depends not only on existing demand and supply conditions, but also on present expectations of the future state of the market.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 100

Money first arises on the market as individuals begin to choose one or several useful commodities to act as a money: the best money-commodities are those that are in high demand; that have a high value per unit-weight; that are durable, so they can be stored a long time, mobile, so they can be moved readily from one place to another, and easily recognizable; and that can be readily divisible into small parts without losing their value.

For a New Liberty, p. 220

… people adopt certain units as money because they are confident that most other people will be using them as money. In short, the arrival of a thing or a name as money occurs only after a lengthy process of custom and habituation to its use. …

… nothing ever becomes money out of the blue … it can only emerge as money as a unit of weight of a useful market produced commodity: almost always either gold or silver.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 993

I would like to submit that it is precisely the area of money—an area nationalized throughout the world—where we cannot trust government at all, and even less so than in other areas of the economy.… government is inherently inflationary … putting the Fed or any other government institution in charge of the supply of money is equivalent to letting the proverbial fox guard the chicken coop.

… government, like many of the rest of us, is chronically short of funds—that is, it would like to spend more than it can take in in taxes without stirring up too much political unrest. To pay for the remainder, it can borrow from the public, or better yet, it can create new money and use it to finance its ever-larger deficits. The point is that economically, if not legally, the federal government—now the Federal Reserve—enjoys the monopoly of legalized counterfeiting, of creating new money out of thin air, or out of paper and ink. I submit that any institution, no matter how noble its possible motives, will use any power that it has, especially the power to counterfeit. By creating new money, the government can finance its deficits, and subsidize favored political and economic groups by supplying cheaper credit than they would otherwise enjoy. Since the government, as monopoly issuer of fiat money, has the power and the ability to counterfeit, it will tend to keep using such power.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, pp. 1011–12

The Regression Theorem also shows that money, in any society, can only become established by a market process emerging from barter. Money cannot be established by a social contract, by government imposition, or by artificial schemes proposed by economists. Money can only emerge, “organically” so to speak, out of the market.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, pp. 13–14

Money is the most important single feature of the economy …

Making Economic Sense, p. 493

Money is a crucial command post of any economy, and therefore of a society.

Making Economic Sense, p. 271

… any desire for money is a desire for a means to other ends.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 76

A commodity that comes into general use as a medium of exchange is defined as being a money.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 192

With the great variety in human skills and natural resources resulting in enormous advantages from the division of labor, the existence of money permits the splitting of production into minute branches, each man selling his product for money and using money to buy the products that he desires.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 194

… nearly all exchanges are made against money, and money impresses its stamp upon the entire economic system.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 195

On the unhampered market of a money economy, producers of commodities and services sell their goods for the money commodity, then use the money acquired to buy other desired goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 200

… the establishment of money leads to an enormous increase in the supply of exchangeable goods …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 214

Every man must allocate his money resources in three and only three ways: in consumption spending, in investment expenditure, and in addition to his cash balance.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 219

In the money economy, the problem of exchange-value is simplified, since it will be exchange for money that will be especially important. The utility on his value scale of the highest direct use value will be compared to the utility of the sum of money the good could procure in exchange.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 223

… with money being used for all exchanges, money prices serve as a common denominator of all exchange ratios.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 235

Money … has an almost infinite array of “goods-prices” that establish the “goods-price of money.” The entire array, considered together, yields us the general “goods price of money.”

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 237

It is obvious that money is not only a useful good, but one of the most useful in a money economy. It is used as a medium in practically every exchange.… money obeys the law of marginal utility, just as any other commodity does.… The first unit of money will be allocated to its most important and valued use to an individual; the second unit will be allocated to its second most valued use, etc. Any unit of money that must be given up will be surrendered at the sacrifice of the least highly valued use previously being served or which would have been served. Therefore, it is true of money, as of any other commodity, that as its stock increases, its marginal utility declines; and that as its stock declines, its marginal utility to the person increases. Its marginal utility of addition is equal to the rank of the most highly valued end the monetary unit can attain; and its marginal utility is equal in value to the most highly valued end that would have to be sacrificed if the unit were surrendered.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 263–64

… all money is always in someone’s cash balance. It is never “moving” in some mysterious “circulation.”

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 265

The marginal utility of money differs from person to person, just as does the marginal utility of any other good.… There is no measuring or comparability in the field of values or ranks.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 267

Money must develop out of a commodity with a previously existing purchasing power, such as gold and silver had. It cannot be created out of thin air by any sudden “social compact” or edict of government.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 275

… the establishment of money tremendously broadens the range of choice open to everybody.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 279

… the money commodity is demanded and held only because it is more marketable than other commodities, i.e., because the holder is more sure of being able to exchange it.… Money is demanded and held only because it gives greater assurance of finding a market and because of the uncertainties of the person’s demands in the near future.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 328

Money, the general medium of exchange, is precisely nonspecific.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 350

… money is the general medium of exchange …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 351

The establishment of money as a general medium of exchange has greatly simplified the present-future market … Money is clearly the present good par excellence. For, aside from the consumption value of the monetary metal itself, the money commodity is the one completely marketable good in the entire society. It is the open sesame to exchange for consumption goods at any time that its owner desires. It is therefore a present good.… money is the dominant present good in the market. Furthermore, since money is the medium for all exchanges, it is also the medium for exchanges on the time market.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 375

Because money is the general medium of exchange, for the time market as well as for other markets, money is the present good, and the future goods are present expectations of the future acquisition of money.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 376

Money is a commodity that serves as a general medium of exchange; its exchanges therefore permeate the economic system. Like all commodities, it has a market demand and a market supply … the prime purpose of the money commodity is to be exchanged, now or in the future, for directly consumable or productive commodities.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 756

… the subjective utility of money is dependent on the objective exchange-value of money …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 764

The sole use of money is to be exchanged for goods …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 765

… the only use for money is in exchange.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 767

Money, in short, would either be useless or very nearly so in the world of certainty.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 767

… the money relation is neutral to time preference and the pure rate of interest.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 775

… there is nothing at all antisocial about either “hoarding” or “dishoarding.” “Hoarding” is simply an increase in the demand for money, and the result of this change in valuations is that people get what they desire, i.e., an increase in the real value of their cash balances and of the monetary unit.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 776

Any increase or decrease in the supply of uncovered money-substitutes increases or decreases to the same extent the total supply of money.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 806

The marginal utility of money does diminish, but it is impossible to compare one person’s utilities with another, let alone believe that everyone’s valuations are identical. Utilities are not quantities, but subjective orders of preference.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1231

… money does not and cannot originate by order of the State or by some sort of social contract agreed upon by all citizens; it must always originate in the processes of the free market.

Mystery of Banking, p. 3

Once a commodity begins to be used as a medium of exchange, when the word gets out it generates even further use of the commodity as a medium. In short, when the word gets around that commodity X is being used as a medium in a certain village, more people living in or trading with that village will purchase that commodity, since they know that it is being used there as a medium of exchange. In this way, a commodity used as a medium feeds upon itself, and its use spirals upward, until before long the commodity is in general use throughout the society or country as a medium of exchange. But when a commodity is used as a medium for most or all exchanges, that commodity is defined as being a money.

Mystery of Banking, p. 5

… money is a commodity—period.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 138

… demand deposits are only money so long as the bank is considered safe; let the bank be thought in imminent danger of failure, and a bank run develop, and then its demand deposits will no longer be readily accepted at par, and will no longer function as part of the money supply.

Strictly Confidential, p. 260

If we favor the free market in other directions, if we wish to eliminate government invasions of person and property, we have no more important task than to explore the ways and means of a free market in money.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 3

In every society, the most marketable goods will be gradually selected as the media for exchange. As they are more and more selected as media, the demand for them increases because of this use, and so they become even more marketable. The result is a reinforcing spiral: more marketability causes wider use as a medium which causes more marketability, etc. Eventually, one or two commodities are used as general media—in almost all exchanges—and these are called money.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, pp. 7–8

… money is a commodity. Learning this simple lesson is one of the world’s most important tasks. So often have people talked about money as something much more or less than this. Money is not an abstract unit of account, divorceable from a concrete good; it is not a useless token only good for exchanging; it is not a “claim on society”; it is not a guarantee of a fixed price level. It is simply a commodity. It differs from other commodities in being demanded mainly as a medium of exchange. But aside from this, it is a commodity—and, like all commodities, it has an existing stock, it faces demands by people to buy and hold it, etc. Like all commodities, its “price”—in terms of other goods—is determined by the interaction of its total supply, or stock, and the total demand by people to buy and hold it.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, pp. 9–10

The emergence of money was a great boon to the human race. Without money—without a general medium of exchange—there could be no real specialization, no advancement of the economy above a bare, primitive level. With money, the problems of indivisibility and “coincidence of wants” that plagued the barter society all vanish.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 10

Many textbooks say that money has several functions: a medium of exchange, unit of account, or “measure of values,” a “store of value,” etc. But it should be clear that all of these functions are simply corollaries of the one great function: the medium of exchange. Because gold is a general medium, it is most marketable, it can be stored to serve as a medium in the future as well as the present, and all prices are expressed in its terms. Because gold is a commodity medium for all exchanges, it can serve as a unit of account for present, and expected future, prices. It is important to realize that money cannot be an abstract unit of account or claim, except insofar as it serves as a medium of exchange.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, pp. 11–12

Money is just as useful when lying “idle” in somebody’s cash balance, even in a miser’s “hoard.” For that money is being held now in wait for possible future exchange—it supplies to its owner, right now, the usefulness of permitting exchanges at any time—present or future—the owner might desire.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 28

… all money has originated, and must originate, in a useful commodity chosen by the free market as a medium of exchange.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 47

… money is the lifeblood of the economy; it is the medium for all transactions. If government dictates over money, it has already captured a vital command post for control over the economy, and has secured a stepping-stone for full socialism.… a free market in money, contrary to common assumption, would not be chaotic; that, in fact, it would be a model of order and efficiency.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 86

… government meddling with money has not only brought untold tyranny into the world; it has also brought chaos and not order. It has fragmented the peaceful, productive world market and shattered it into a thousand pieces, with trade and investment hobbled and hampered by myriad restrictions, controls, artificial rates, currency breakdowns, etc. It has helped bring about wars by transforming a world of peaceful intercourse into a jungle of warring currency blocs. In short, we find that coercion, in money as in other matters, brings, not order, but conflict and chaos.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, pp. 86–87

MONEY SUPPLY

… an increase in the supply of money cannot relieve the natural scarcity of consumer or capital goods; all it does is to make the dollar or the franc cheaper, that is, lower its purchasing power in terms of all other goods and services. Once a good has been established as money on the market, then, it exerts its full power as a mechanism of exchange or an instrument of calculation. All that an increase in the quantity of dollars can do is to dilute the effectiveness, the purchasing-power, of each dollar. Hence, the great truth of monetary theory emerges: once a commodity is in sufficient supply to be adopted as money, no further increase in the supply of money is needed. Any quantity of money in society is “optimal.” Once a money is established, an increase in its supply confers no social benefit.

Case Against the Fed, pp. 19–20

… the supply of money essentially does not matter. Money performs its function by being a medium of exchange; any change in its supply, therefore, will simply adjust itself in the purchasing power of the money unit, that is, in the amount of other goods that money will be able to buy. An increase in the supply of money means merely that more units of money are doing the social work of exchange and therefore that the purchasing power of each unit will decline. Because of this adjustment, money, in contrast to all other useful commodities employed in production or consumption, does not confer a social benefit when its supply increases. …

There is therefore never any need for a larger supply of money … An increased supply of money can only benefit one set of people at the expense of another set …

Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 53

… any level of the money supply is optimal …

Classical Economics, p. 194

… there is never any social value to increasing the money supply …

Classical Economics, p. 243

… once a commodity is chosen as money by the market, any amount of its supply is optimal. In short, no social benefit is ever conferred by an increase in the supply of money in society. This contrast to other useful goods is due to the fact that money is used only for exchange of other goods; it does not, like other goods, perform its service by being used up in production or consumption.… an increase in the money supply only dilutes the effectiveness of each unit of money (for instance, the gold ounce); a fall in the supply raises the power of each unit to do its work. Whatever happens to the supply of money, prices will thus adjust themselves so as to carry on the work of exchange as efficiently as possible. No one size of the money stock, then, is better than any other.

Conceived in Liberty v. 2, p. 125; p. 623

… if the supply of a medium of exchange increases; and if the demand for that medium remains the same; then, the purchasing power of that medium will decline. This is a praxeological law.

Economic Controversies, p. 114

… every supply of money is optimal.… even though the value, or purchasing power, of money is, like all other goods or services, determined by its supply and demand, there is one crucial difference between money and all other goods. All other goods and services, whether consumer or producer goods or resources, help to alleviate natural scarcity; therefore, other things being equal, any increase in these goods is a net social benefit, easing natural scarcity. But that is not true for money, since the only function of money is to facilitate exchange, to furnish a general medium of exchange and hence a unit of economic calculation. But money performs such a function optimally and fully, regardless of the supply available. An increase in the quantity of money cannot alleviate scarcity and cannot provide a social benefit: it could only dilute the purchasing power of each money unit. An increase in supply can only dilute the exchange effectiveness of each dollar or franc or whatever is the monetary unit.

Economic Controversies, p. 208

… there is never any social or economic benefit to be conferred by an increase in the supply of money …

Economic Controversies, p. 235

An increase in the supply of money never confers any general benefit upon society.… Other things being equal, an increase in the supply of consumers’ goods benefits society since one or more consumers will be better off. The same is true of an increase in the supply of producers’ goods, which will be eventually transformed into an increased supply of consumers’ goods; for production itself is the process of transforming natural resources into new forms and locations desired by consumers for direct use. But money is very different: money is not used directly in consumption or production but is exchanged for such directly usable goods. Yet, once any commodity or object is established as a money, it performs the maximum exchange work of which it is capable. An increase in the supply of money causes no increase whatever in the exchange service of money; all that happens is that the purchasing power of each unit of money is diluted by the increased supply of units. Hence there is never a social need for increasing the supply of money …

Economic Controversies, p. 698

… no free market can endure when control over the vital supply of money is thus granted permanently to government.

Economic Controversies, p. 711

… control over a nation’s money is a prerequisite for dictation over the rest of the economy.

Economic Controversies, p. 712

… demand deposits must be included in the concept of the money supply so long as the market treats them as equivalent; that is, so long as individuals think that they are redeemable in cash.

Economic Controversies, p. 730

… once a money is established, whatever supply of money exists does the full amount of the “monetary work” needed in the economy.

Economic Controversies, p. 750

… if any person or organization ever obtains the monopoly right to create money, that person or organization will tend to use this right to the hilt. The reason is simple: Anyone or any group empowered to manufacture money virtually out of thin air will tend to exercise that right, and with considerable enthusiasm. For the power to create money is a heady and profitable privilege indeed.

Economic Controversies, p. 756

Only by changing the definition of the dollar from fiat paper tickets issued by the government to a unit of weight of some market commodity, can the function of issuing money be permanently and totally shifted from government to private hands.

Economic Controversies, p. 761

… if more money is good, why shouldn’t a perpetual and greater increase of money be even better? Why indeed? Why not an increasing supply of money leading to infinity?

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 327

… an increase in the supply of money does not confer any benefit whatever on society. On the contrary, it is a means of exploitation of the bulk of society by the State, State-manipulated banks and their favorites. The reason is that, in contrast to potatoes or steel, an increase of which means that more goods can be consumed and more people benefited, money does its full social work regardless of its quantity on the market. More money will only dilute the purchasing power, the value in exchange, of each dollar; less money will add to the value of each dollar.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, pp. 212–13

From the beginning of market adoption of gold and silver as money, the State has been moving in to seize control of the money-supply function, the function of determining and creating the supply of money in the society. It should be obvious why the State should want to do so: this would mean seizing control over the money supply from the market and turning it over to a group of people in charge of the State apparatus. Why they should want to do so is clear: here would be an alternative to taxation which the victims of a tax always consider onerous.

For a New Liberty, p. 221

Government control of the money supply is inherently inflationary …

For a New Liberty, p. 222

… once there is enough of a supply of a commodity to be established on the market as money, there is no need ever to increase the supply of money. This means that any supply of money whatever is “optimal”; and every change in the supply of money stimulated by government can only be pernicious.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 11

… like all valuable property, all money must, at any point in time, be owned by someone. At any point in time, the sum of the cash holdings of all individuals is equal to the total stock of money in the community.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 204

Goods are useful and scarce, and any increment in goods is a social benefit. But money is useful not directly, but only in exchanges.… there is no such thing as “too little” or “too much” money … An increase in the supply of money confers no social benefit whatever; it simply benefits some at the expense of others … Similarly, a decrease in the money stock involves no social loss. For money is used only for its purchasing power in exchange, and an increase in the money stock simply dilutes the purchasing power of each monetary unit. Conversely, a fall in the money stock increases the purchasing power of each unit.

… One of the most important economic laws, therefore, is: Every supply of money is always utilized to its maximum extent, and hence no social utility can be conferred by increasing the supply of money.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 765–66

… there is no social utility in an increased supply, nor any social disutility in a decreased supply, of money.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 814

… the total money stock in the society at any given time is the aggregate, the sum total, of all existing cash balances, or money stock, owned by each individual or group.

Mystery of Banking, p. 12

… an increase of consumer goods, or of productive resources, clearly confers a net social benefit. For consumer goods are consumed, used up, in the process of consumption, while capital and natural resources are used up in the process of production. Overall, then, the more consumer goods or capital goods or natural resources the better.

But money is uniquely different. For money is never used up, in consumption or production, despite the fact that it is indispensable to the production and exchange of goods. Money is simply transferred from one person’s assets to another. Unlike consumer or capital goods, we cannot say that the more money in circulation the better.… any supply of money will be equally optimal with any other. In short, it doesn’t matter what the money supply may be.

Mystery of Banking, pp. 44–45

… no one—whether government official or economist—need concern himself with the money supply or worry about its optimal amount. …

… The “problem” of the proper supply of money is not a problem at all.

Mystery of Banking, p. 47

The determinants of the money supply under central banking, then, are reserve requirements and total reserves. The Central Bank can determine the amount of the money supply at any time by manipulating and controlling either the reserve requirements and/or the total of commercial bank reserves.

Mystery of Banking, pp. 136–37

The crucial distinction, and the crucial way to decide what is part of the money supply, must focus on whether a certain claim is withdrawable instantly on demand. …

The test, then, should be whether or not a given bank claim is redeemable genuinely and in fact, on demand at par in cash. If so, it should be included in the money supply.

Mystery of Banking, p. 254

While an increase in the money supply, like an increase in the supply of any good, lowers its price, the change does not—unlike other goods—confer a social benefit. The public at large is not made richer. Whereas new consumer or capital goods add to standards of living, new money only raises prices—i.e., dilutes its own purchasing power.… an increase in money does not confer a social benefit …

… it doesn’t matter what the supply of money is. Any supply will do as well as any other supply.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, pp. 24–25

… determining the supply of money, like all other goods, is best left to the free market. Aside from the general moral and economic advantages of freedom over coercion, no dictated quantity of money will do the work better …

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 26

Once there is enough supply of a metal to permit the market to choose it as money, no increase in supply can improve its monetary function. An increase in money supply will then merely dilute the effectiveness of each ounce of money without helping the economy.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 48

MONOPOLY

Defense of one’s property and commerce against a privileged monopoly is required by libertarian principle.

Conceived in Liberty v. 3, p. 263; p. 1027

… the major source of monopoly in the economy is the activity of government …

Economic Controversies, p. 897

… monopoly privilege can only be created by the State and not as a result of free-market operations.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 39

… freely-competitive “monopoly” firms exist by virtue of being more efficient, providing better service at lower rates, than their existing or potential competitors.

Making Economic Sense, p. 197

… monopoly is a grant of special privilege by the State, reserving a certain area of production to one particular individual or group. Entry into the field is prohibited to others and this prohibition is enforced by the gendarmes of the State.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 669

The monopoly price resulting from a grant of monopoly privilege leads away from the free-market price; it lowers output and raises prices beyond what would be established if consumers and producers could trade freely.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 905

… the government may prohibit production and sale except by a certain firm or firms.… It is obvious that the grant benefits the monopolist or quasi monopolist because his competitors are barred by violence from entering the field; it is also evident that the would-be competitors are injured and are forced to accept lower remuneration in less efficient and value-productive fields. The consumers are likewise injured, for they are prevented from purchasing their products from competitors whom they would freely prefer. And this injury takes place apart from any effect of the grant on prices.

Although a monopolistic grant may openly and directly confer a privilege and exclude rivals, in the present day it is far more likely to be hidden or indirect, cloaked as a type of penalty on competitors, and represented as favorable to the “general welfare.” The effects of monopolistic grants are the same, however, whether they are direct or indirect.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1089

The theory of monopoly price is illusory when applied to the free market, but it applies fully to the case of monopoly and quasi-monopoly grants.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1090

… the term “monopoly” properly applies only to governmental grants of privilege, direct and indirect. …

… it is clearly not only pointless but deeply ironic to call upon the government to “pursue a positive antimonopoly policy.” Evidently, all that is necessary to abolish monopoly is that the government abolish its own creations.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1143

… a monopoly price and a monopoly by any usable definition arise only through the coercive grant of exclusive privilege by the government, and this includes all attempts to “enforce competition.”

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1299–1300

… the only really important monopolies are those created and fostered by governments.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, pp. 80–81

MORALITY

… since men’s actions, given freedom to express their choices, are determined by their inner convictions and values, compulsory moral rules only serve to manufacture hypocrites and not to advance genuine morality. Coercion only forces people to change their actions; it does not persuade people to change their underlying values and convictions. And since those already convinced of the moral rules would abide by them without coercion, the only real impact of compulsory morality is to engender hypocrites, those whose actions no longer reflect their inner convictions.

Conceived in Liberty v. 1, p. 177; p. 167

… only private property furnishes people with the opportunity to act morally …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 14

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that there is a host of moral rights and duties which are properly beyond the province of the law.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 153

… the general law of morality for man is a special case of the system of natural law governing all entities of the world, each with its own nature and its own ends.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 7

… it is a man’s right to do whatever he wishes with his person; it is his right not to be molested or interfered with by violence from exercising that right. But what may be the moral or immoral ways of exercising that right is a question of personal ethics rather than of political philosophy …

Ethics of Liberty, p. 24

… it is not the business of law—properly the rules and instrumentalities by which person and property are violently defended—to make people moral by use of legal violence. It is not the proper business of law to make people be truthful or to keep their promises. It is the business of legal violence to defend persons and their property from violent attack, from molestation or appropriation of their property without their consent.

Ethics of Liberty, pp. 79–80

… it is not and cannot be the function of law (i.e., legal violence) in a libertarian system to enforce morality …

Ethics of Liberty, p. 133

… it is surely grotesque to entrust the function of guardian of the public morality to the most extensive criminal (and hence the most immoral) group in society—the State.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 174

… the moral and the legal are, for the libertarian, two very different categories.

For a New Liberty, p. 117

… it is not the business of the law—the use of retaliatory violence—to enforce anyone’s conception of morality. It is not the business of the law—even if this were practically possible, which is, of course, most unlikely—to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright. This is for each individual to decide for himself. It is only the business of legal violence to defend people against the use of violence, to defend them from violent invasions of their person or property.

For a New Liberty, p. 127

The concept of “morality” makes no sense unless the moral act is freely chosen.… Coercion deprives a man of the freedom to choose and, therefore, of the possibility of choosing morally.

For a New Liberty, pp. 128–29

… to take morality seriously is to be truly revolutionary …

Left and Right, p. 132

Man has no moral duty to seek martyrdom.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 150

… I, at least, believe firmly in the existence of an objective moral order, one discoverable by man’s reason.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 163

… the moral law of the free society can be summed up in the phrase: “mind your own business!” At first sight, this seems a rather narrow ethic for mankind.… One would hope that the free society of the future would be free, not only of aggressive violence, but also of self-righteous and arrogant nagging and harassment. “Mind your own business” implies that each person attend well to his own affairs, and allow every other man the same privilege. It is a morality of basic civility, of courtesy, of civilized life, of respect for the dignity of every individual. It does not encompass all of morality, but by God it is a necessary ingredient to a truly rational and civilized social ethic.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 208

What we want is not to impose any “views” on anyone, but to combat and repress aggression against person and property.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 416

Placing the State in charge of moral principles is equivalent to putting the proverbial fox in charge of the chicken coop.

… moral choices make no sense in the absence of freedom to choose, a freedom which is precisely the glory of the species man.

… every person has the right to be free to choose his moral principles …

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 448

To the libertarian, who must always separate legal from general moral theory, the crucial question is always: shall such and such an action be criminal, shall it be licit in the free society? There are numerous actions, for example, which a libertarian may or may not consider “immoral” (e.g., drinking alcohol or yelling at one’s neighbor) but does not consider criminal. The libertarian always concentrates on what is a crime, and for him, the conclusion depends on his general theory that crime (and therefore illegality) must be confined to acts of aggression upon the person or property of others.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 774

Libertarians don’t believe in ever taking moral lessons from the State; we believe that the only proper moral teachers are individuals and voluntary groups such as private schools, families, and churches.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 885

… moral truths, like economic laws, are not quantitative but qualitative.

Making Economic Sense, p. 38

… there is no sense to any concept of morality, regardless of the particular moral action one favors, if a man is not free to do the immoral as well as the moral thing. If a man is not free to choose, if he is compelled by force to do the moral thing, then, on the contrary, he is being deprived of the opportunity of being moral. …

Dictatorship over consumers’ choices, then, can only atrophy morality rather than promote it.… morality can spread only through peaceful persuasion.… the use of force can only erode and impair morality.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1305

… the use of coercion is itself the highest form of immorality …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1306