Rothbard A to Z

PACIFISM

… any such total objector to violence must then be consistent and advocate that no criminal ever be punished by the use of violent means. And this implies, let us note, not only abstaining from capital punishment but from all punishment whatsoever, and, indeed, from all methods of violent defense that might conceivably injure an aggressor.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 53

Absolute pacifists who also assert their belief in property rights … are caught in an inescapable inner contradiction: for if a man owns property and yet is denied the right to defend it against attack, then it is clear that a very important aspect of that ownership is being denied to him. To say that someone has the absolute right to a certain property but lacks the right to defend it against attack or invasion is also to say that he does not have total right to that property.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 77

To those libertarians who reject violent revolutionary action, either out of moral or strategic principle, I would say this: If you oppose violent action, then you have the profound moral obligation to favor and to press all effective forms of non-violent action. Non-violence must not mean passivity. In the present context, non-violent political action can take numerous effective forms, all of them amounting to irresistible political pressure upon the politicians in Congress and even the executive branch.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 117

… an absolute pacifist, a believer in total non-violence, living in the area, would not consider himself protected by, or receiving defense service from, the police. On the contrary, he would consider any police in his area a detriment to him.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1031

… there can be no genuinely complete pacifism unless the State and other defense agencies are eliminated. This type of anarchism, above all others, rests on an excessively idealistic view of human nature. It could only work in a community of saints.

Strictly Confidential, pp. 31–32

PARASITISM

“State power” is parasitism, exploitation, and the state apparatus in general—organized taxes, regulation, etc.

Economic Controversies, p. 677

… instead of living in accordance with the nature of man, the aggressor is a parasite who feeds unilaterally by exploiting the labor and energy of other men. Here is clearly a complete violation of any kind of universal ethic, for man clearly cannot live as a parasite; parasites must have non-parasites, producers, to feed upon. The parasite not only fails to add to the social total of goods and services, he depends completely on the production of the host body. And yet, any increase in coercive parasitism decreases ipso facto the quantity and the output of the producers, until finally, if the producers die out, the parasites will quickly follow suit.

Thus, parasitism cannot be a universal ethic, and, in fact, the growth of parasitism attacks and diminishes the production by which both host and parasite survive. Coercive exploitation or parasitism injure the processes of production for everyone in the society. Any way that it may be considered, parasitic predation and robbery violate not only the nature of the victim whose self and product are violated, but also the nature of the aggressor himself, who abandons the natural way of production—of using his mind to transform nature and exchange with other producers for the way of parasitic expropriation of the work and product of others. In the deepest sense, the aggressor injures himself as well as his unfortunate victim.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 50

The exploiter, who lives parasitically off the producer by violence, is antisocial, for he is not living according to the best nature of man: by producing and exchanging his produce for the produce of another. He is living by use of violence, one-sidedly and parasitically at the expense of the producer. This is a profoundly antisocial and antihuman relationship. It disrupts the social market and leads it—and with it, civilization and civilized living standards—to crumble into the dust.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 135

PLANNING

… you cannot plan markets. By their very nature, you can only set people free so that they can interact and exchange, and thereby develop markets themselves.

Economic Controversies, p. 434

State planning, operation, controls, high and crippling taxation, and paper money inflation must all inevitably lead to the collapse of the statist economic system.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 269

… central planning, such as is attempted under socialism, is deprived of accurate pricing, and therefore cannot calculate costs and prices.

For a New Liberty, p. 247

Plans are his decisions concerning future action, based on his ranking of ends and on his assumed knowledge of how to attain the ends. Every individual, therefore, is constantly engaged in planning.… It is erroneous, therefore, to assert that a free market society is “unplanned”; on the contrary, each individual plans for himself.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 280

Since all action is purposive rather than reflexive, there must always, before an action, have been a decision to act as well as valuations. Therefore, there is always planning.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 280n25

Those who advocate socialist “central planning” as the more efficient method of production for consumer wants must answer the question: If this central planning is really more efficient, why has it not been established by profit-seeking individuals on the free market?

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 659–60

To those ignorant of economics, it may seem that the way of the market is only anarchic confusion and chaos, while the way of the State constitutes genuine organization and “central planning.”

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

A centrally “planned” economy is a centrally prohibited economy. The concept of “social engineering” is a deceptive metaphor, since in the social realm, it is largely people who are being planned, rather than the inanimate machinery of engineering blueprints. And since every individual is by nature, if not always by law, a self-owner and self-starter—i.e., a self-energizer, this means that central orders, backed up, as they must be under socialism, by force and violence, effectively prohibit all the individuals from doing what they want most or what they believe themselves to be best fitted to do.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 960–61

There are two and only two ways that an economy can be organized. One is by freedom and voluntary choice—the way of the market. The other is by force and dictation—the way of the State. To those ignorant of economics, it may seem that only the latter constitutes real organization and planning, whereas the way of the market is only confusion and chaos. The organization of the free market, however, is actually an amazing and flexible means of satisfying the wants of all individuals, and one far more efficient than State operation or intervention.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1273

All forms of State planning of the whole economy are types of socialism …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1274

… the delicate processes of the free market are precisely equipped to handle complex adjustments and interrelations far more efficiently than can any form of statist planning.

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

PLATO

Plato pioneered the natural law approach which Aristotle developed and systematized; but the basic thrust was quite different.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 5

… tried three times unsuccessfully to set up despotic regimes in the city state of Syracuse …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, pp. 6–7

Plato’s search for a hierarchical, collectivist utopia found its classic expression in his most famous and influential work, The Republic. There, and later in The Laws, Plato sets forth the outline of his ideal city-state: one in which right oligarchic rule is maintained by philosopher-kings and their philosophic colleagues, thus supposedly ensuring rule by the best and wisest in the community. Underneath the philosophers in the coercive hierarchy are the “guardians”—the soldiers, whose role is to aggress against other cities and lands and to defend their polis from external aggression. Underneath them are to be the body of the people, the despised producers: laborers, peasants and merchants who produce the material goods on which the lordly philosophers and guardians are to live. …

The two ruling classes—the thinkers and the guardians—that really count are, in Plato’s ideal state, to be forced to live under pure communism. There is to be no private property whatsoever among the elite; all things are to be owned communally, including women and children. The elite are to be forced to live together and share common meals. Since money and private possessions, according to the aristocrat Plato, only corrupt virtue, they are to be denied to the upper classes. Marriage partners among the elite are to be selected strictly by the state, which is supposed to proceed according to the scientific breeding already known in animal husbandry.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, pp. 10–11

… Plato contributed to genuine economic science by being the first to expound and analyze the importance of the division of labor in society.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 11

Plato was perhaps the first theorist to denounce the use of gold and silver as money.… Plato called for a government fiat currency …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 12

One of the hallmarks of an ordered utopia sought by Plato is that, to remain ordered and controlled, it must be kept relatively static. And that means little or no change, innovation or economic growth.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 12

… one of Plato’s arguments for communal property is that it is conducive to social peace, since no one will be envious of, or try to grab the property of, another.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 13

Plato’s ideal [was a] combined philosopher-king …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 205

Plato [was a] totalitarian.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 508

Plato’s “Utopia” was the first model for later despotisms—compulsory education and obedience were stressed, there was “communism” of children among the elite “guardians” who also had no private property, and lying was considered a proper instrument for the State to use in its indoctrination of the people.

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 19

[Plato advocated] full State communistic control over the children.

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 45

… Plato is clearly pro-despotism …

Strictly Confidential, p. 68

POLICE

Police may use such coercive methods provided that the suspect turns out to be guilty, and provided that the police are treated as themselves criminal if the suspect is not proven guilty … in all cases, police must be treated in precisely the same way as anyone else … police, in a libertarian society, must take their chances like anyone else; if they commit an act of invasion against someone, that someone had better turn out to deserve it, otherwise they are the criminals.

As a corollary, police can never be allowed to commit an invasion that is worse than, or that is more than proportionate to, the crime under investigation.

Ethics of Liberty, pp. 82–83

The policeman who apprehends a criminal and arrests him, and the judicial and penal authorities who incarcerate him before trial and conviction—all should be subject to the universal law. In short, if they have committed an error and the defendant turns out to be innocent, then these authorities should be subjected to the same penalties as anyone else who kidnaps and incarcerates an innocent man.

For a New Liberty, p. 109

… any invasion of the property of a noncriminal by anyone should be outlawed, regardless of who committed the deed. The policeman who guessed wrong and thereby aggressed against a noncriminal should therefore be considered just as guilty as any “private” wiretapper.

For a New Liberty, p. 134

Governmental police have not only no incentive to be efficient or worry about their “customers’” needs; they also live with the ever-present temptation to wield their power of force in a brutal and coercive manner.

For a New Liberty, p. 250

In actual fact there is no absolute commodity called “police protection” any more than there is an absolute single commodity called “food” or “shelter.” … there are almost infinite degrees of all sorts of protection. For any given person or business, the police can provide everything from a policeman on the beat who patrols once a night, to two policemen patrolling constantly on each block, to cruising patrol cars, to one or even several round-the-clock personal bodyguards.

For a New Liberty, pp. 267–68

One big problem a government police force must always face is: what laws really to enforce? Police departments are theoretically faced with the absolute injunction, “enforce all laws,” but in practice a limited budget forces them to allocate their personnel and equipment to the most urgent crimes.… On the free market, what would be enforced is whatever the customers are willing to pay for.

For a New Liberty, pp. 268–69

A free market in police would reward efficient and courteous police protection to customers and penalize any falling off from this standard. No longer would there be the current disjunction between service and payment inherent in all government operations, a disjunction which means that police, like all other government agencies, acquire their revenue, not voluntarily and competitively from consumers, but from the taxpayers coercively.

For a New Liberty, p. 269

The police, standing as they do for a mythical “society,” are primarily interested in catching and punishing the criminal; restoring the stolen loot to the victim is strictly secondary. To the insurance company and its detectives, on the other hand, the prime concern is recovery of the loot, and apprehension and punishment of the criminal is secondary to the prime purpose of aiding the victim of crime. …

… it is reasonable to believe that police service in the libertarian society would be supplied by the landowners or by insurance companies. Since insurance companies would be paying benefits to victims of crime, it is highly likely that they would supply police service as a means of keeping down crime and hence their payment of benefits. It is certainly likely in any case that police service would be paid for in regular monthly premiums, with the police agency—whether insurance company or not—called on whenever needed.

For a New Liberty, p. 270

To assume that police would continually clash and battle with each other is absurd, for it ignores the devastating effect that this chaotic “anarchy” would have on the business of all the police companies. To put it bluntly, such wars and conflicts would be bad—very bad—for business. Therefore, on the free market, the police agencies would all see to it that there would be no clashes between them, and that all conflicts of opinion would be ironed out in private courts, decided by private judges or arbitrators.

For a New Liberty, p. 275

Government is no more necessary for providing vital protection service than it is necessary for providing anything else.

For a New Liberty, p. 290

It is clear in our Constitutional heritage that the “police power” in this country belongs only to the state and local governments, and in no sense to the federal government.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 305

… it might be asked, isn’t it a terrible thing to call in the State police for self-defense? Certainly not. While no libertarian enjoys calling upon the State for defense, the fact remains that the State has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of the function of police protection. In such a situation, the State police are the only ones we can call upon for defense.… To say that calling in the police for defense against crime is immoral is also to say that walking on the streets is immoral or flying on planes is immoral, or sending a letter is immoral, because these are all, unfortunately, monopolized or subsidized by government. If it is moral to use the monopoly Post Office, it is equally moral to use the services of the State police to aid in one’s defense against crime. For while the State is the major criminal organization in our society, it is by no means the only one.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, pp. 109–10

In a free market, all invasive acts by one person against another’s property, either against his person or his material goods, will be combatted by the enforcing agency or agencies.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 184

… the force used by police agencies in defending individual freedom—i.e., in defending the persons and property of the citizens—is purely an inhibitory force; it is counterintervention against true, initiatory intervention. While such counter action cannot maximize “social utility”—the utility of everyone in society involved in interpersonal actions—it does maximize the utility of noncriminals, i.e., those who have been peacefully maximizing their own utility without inflicting losses upon others. Should these defense agencies do their job perfectly and eliminate all interventions, then their existence will be perfectly compatible with the maximization of social utility.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 885

… the rich benefit less from such services as police protection, since they could more afford to pay for their own than the poor.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 924n41

An absolute pacifist, a believer in total non-violence, living in the area, would not consider himself protected by, or receiving defense service from, the police. On the contrary, he would consider any police in his area a detriment to him.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1031

A supply of defense services on the free market would mean maintaining the axiom of the free society, namely, that there be no use of physical force except in defense against those using force to invade person or property. This would imply the complete absence of a State apparatus or government; for the State, unlike all other persons and institutions in society, acquires its revenue, not by exchanges freely contracted, but by a system of unilateral coercion called “taxation.” Defense in the free society (including such defense services to person and property as police protection and judicial findings) would therefore have to be supplied by people or firms who (a) gained their revenue voluntarily rather than by coercion and (b) did not—as the State does—arrogate to themselves a compulsory monopoly of police or judicial protection. Only such libertarian provision of defense service would be consonant with a free market and a free society. Thus, defense firms would have to be as freely competitive and as noncoercive against noninvaders as are all other suppliers of goods and services on the free market. Defense services, like all other services, would be marketable and marketable only.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1048

… supplies of police and judicial service would be provided by insurance companies, because it would be to their direct advantage to reduce the amount of crime as much as possible.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1052

In the purely free-market society, a would-be criminal police or judiciary would find it very difficult to take power, since there would be no organized State apparatus to seize and use as the instrumentality of command.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1054

It is very likely that, in the purely free market, police and judicial services would be sold like insurance, with each member paying regular premiums in return for a call on the benefits of protection when needed. It is obvious that a more risky individual (such as one living in a crime area) would tend to pay a higher premium than individuals in another area.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1241–42

If the government did permit free competition in defense service, there would soon no longer be a central government over the territory. Defense agencies, police and judicial, would compete with one another in the same uncoerced manner as the producers of any other service on the market. The prices would be lower, the service more efficient. And, for the first and only time, the defense system would then be neutral in relation to the market. It would be neutral because it would be a part of the market itself!

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1251

… the pure libertarian must advocate a society where an individual may voluntarily support none or any police or judicial agency that he deems to be efficient and worthy of his custom.

Strictly Confidential, p. 26

POLITICAL PARTIES

… at best there are only two parties, each one close to the other in ideology and personnel, often colluding, and the actual day-to-day business of government headed by a civil service bureaucracy that cannot be displaced by the voters.

For a New Liberty, p. 293

… the present-day categories of “left” and “right” have become misleading and obsolete …

Left and Right, p. 7

… in the final analysis, the social philosophies of Liberalism and Conservatism are as alike as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Left and Right, p. 499

… each new creative Leap Forward in the welfare state is launched by liberals in the Democratic Party.… The Republicans’ function, on the other hand, has been to complain about the welfare state and then, when in power, to fasten their yoke upon the public by not only retaining the Democratic “advances” but also by expanding them.

The best that we have been able to hope for under Republican administrations is a slight slowing down of the rate of expansion of the welfare state …

Making Economic Sense, p. 78

… the conservative public always tends to put more emphasis on rhetoric than on substance …

Making Economic Sense, p. 79

… the vaunted “two-party” system, much less the Democratic and Republican parties, is not even mentioned, much less enshrined, in the Constitution.

Making Economic Sense, p. 111

The cycle works as follows: Democrats engineer a leap forward of activist government, accompanied by “progressive,” “moving America forward again” rhetoric. Then, after a decade or so, the Republicans come in armed with conservative, free-market rhetoric, but in reality only slow down the rate of statist advance. After another decade or so, people become tired of the rhetoric (though not the reality) of the free market, and the time has come for another Leap Forward. The names of the players change, but the reality and the phoniness of the game remains the same, and no one seems to wake up to the shell game that is going on.

Making Economic Sense, p. 117

… the controlling elites of the Republican Party have long had views very similar to those of the Democrats, thus depriving the American public of any genuine philosophical choice.

Making Economic Sense, p. 432

… the function of the Republican Party has been to be the “loyal … moderate,” “bipartisan,” pseudo-opposition to the collectivist and leftist program of the Democratic Party.

Making Economic Sense, p. 471

In the political lexicon of modern America, “left-wingers” often advocate freedom in the sense of opposition to autistic intervention, but look benignly on triangular intervention. “Right-wingers,” on the other hand, severely oppose triangular intervention, but tend to favor, or remain indifferent to, autistic intervention. Both groups are ambivalent toward binary intervention.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1060n4

It should be clear that the name of the political party in power is far less important than the particular regime’s financial and banking connections.

Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy, p. ix

POLITICS

… political philosophy [is] that discipline that deals with the problem of the nature of the State, what the State should and should not do …

Economic Controversies, p. 931

… politics is a matter of concrete decisions, which in contrast to everyday decisions of consumers and business firms, should be based on general principles. Give up the idea that there are such principles—that is, give up political philosophy—and you are left adrift with no rudder, and no genuine political theory.

Economic Controversies, p. 931

Politics is of course an aspect of human action, and much of it has a crucial impact on economic life. Eternal natural law truths about economic aspects of politics may be and have been arrived at …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 20

It is often true that political analysts are at their most acute in revealing the flaws in systems with which they disagree.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 205

Political judgments are necessarily value judgments, political philosophy is therefore necessarily ethical, and hence a positive ethical system must be set forth to establish the case for individual liberty.

Ethics of Liberty, p. xlvii

… political philosophy … is concerned solely with matters of right, and of the proper or improper exercise of physical violence in human relations.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 24

… political philosophy is a subdivision of the philosophy of ethics …

Ethics of Liberty, p. 25n2

Political philosophy is that subset of ethical philosophy which deals specifically with politics, that is, the proper role of violence in human life …

Ethics of Liberty, p. 258

… political philosophy—that branch of philosophy that deals with politics, the exercise of regularized violence …

For a New Liberty, p. 66

… the mass of people simply don’t have the time for politics or political shenanigans. The average person must spend most of his time on the daily business of life, being with his family; seeing his friends, etc. He can only get interested in politics or engage in it sporadically.

The only people who have time for politics are the professionals: the bureaucrats, politicians, and special interest groups dependent on political rule. They make money out of politics, and so they are intensely interested, and lobby and are active twenty-four hours a day: Therefore, these special interest groups will tend to win out over the uninterested masses.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 7

… all real-world politics is coalition politics …

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 42

Our age is all too often a battle over the politics of language, and its Political Correctness …

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 80

It is the president, any president, who now embodies the Supreme Power, and must be invested with divine attributes to match the scope of his powers. And so in death, every ex-president, regardless of party; of his status or reputation in life, must become clothed in the robes of magnificence, wisdom, and glory.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 89

In political and social movements, as in sports or war, it is fatal to spend all one’s time on the defensive.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 139

… the whole point of politics is to “divide” people, to separate people by principle and ideology and to have them slug it out, each trying to gain a majority support of the population.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 289

For the libertarian, other things being equal, the first desideratum is to punish the incumbent. If we cannot yet abolish the office of President, we can at least make a start toward redressing our grievances by ousting the existing tenant for his numerous high and low crimes and misdemeanors. If we cannot punish the President to the full extent of the natural law, we can at least retire him to the private life he so richly deserves. We can establish a new and glorious tradition of the one-term President.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 221

In the first place, other things being equal (which, granted, they rarely are), the libertarian always favors the dumping of an incumbent President and party.… it is always best to overthrow any entrenched machine or President, lest their entrenchment sink ever deeper into society.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 262

Politicalization crushes the individual; depoliticalization frees him.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 275

In politics, whenever I hear the word “unity,” to paraphrase the famous words of a German politico of the 1930’s, “I reach for my revolver.” For almost always, “unity” is a scam, a call to abandon principle and follow the leader into some form of tyranny or sellout.… genuine unity is only viable in a context of shared values and premises. Unity is only proper within a framework of Justice. Anything else is a hoax, a scam, and an implicit call for the betrayal of principle.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1128

Those who succeed in the political struggle will be those most adept at employing coercion and winning favors from wielders of coercion.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1256

… while economics is a self-subsistent, wertfrei science, “political science” is not; modern political science is an empty, pretentious, quasi-mathematical set of “model building,” and when we peel away the pretension, we find that “political science” is divisible into two parts: current history of political institutions or political thought, and political philosophy. And the very essence of political philosophy is the carving out of an ethical system—strictly, a subset of ethics dealing with political ethics.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 106

In politics, one hand washes the other.

Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy, p. 67

POLLUTION

… statements like “everyone has the right to clean air” are senseless. …

… no one has a right to clean air, but one does have a right to not have his air invaded by pollutants generated by an aggressor.

Economic Controversies, p. 404

… while visible pollutants or noxious odors are per se aggression, in the case of invisible and insensible pollutants the plaintiff must prove actual harm …

Economic Controversies, p. 405

Air pollution is a private nuisance generated from one person’s landed property onto another … where there is no easement and air pollution is evident to the senses, pollution is a tort per se because it interferes with the possession and use of another’s air.

Economic Controversies, p. 418

… there is a grave problem of the befouling of our air and water resources. But the root of the problem does not lie in capitalist greed, modern technology, or in private property and the free market; on the contrary, it lies, once again, in the fact that government has failed to apply or protect the rights of private property.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 186

The rivers are, in effect, unowned, i.e., they have been kept as “public domain” owned by government. Furthermore, by far the biggest culprits in water pollution are the municipally owned sewage disposal systems. Again: government is at the same time the largest polluter, as well as the careless “owner” of the resource.

For a New Liberty, p. 91

… the government, as owner of the public domain, “owns” the air. Furthermore, it has been the courts, owned solely by the government, which, as an act of deliberate policy, have for generations failed to protect our property rights in our bodies and orchards from the pollution generated by industry. Moreover, much of the direct pollution comes from government-owned plants.

For a New Liberty, p. 92

Government ownership, even socialism, has proved to be no solution to the problem of pollution.

For a New Liberty, p. 317

… government ownership is not true ownership, because the government officials, while able to control the resource cannot themselves reap their capital value on the market. Government officials cannot sell the rivers or sell stock in them. Hence, they have no economic incentive to preserve the purity and value of the rivers. Rivers are, then, in the economic sense, “unowned”; therefore government officials have permitted their corruption and pollution.

For a New Liberty, p. 318

… only private property rights will insure the end of pollution …

For a New Liberty, p. 318

… government has also been the single most major active polluter …

For a New Liberty, p. 319

The remedy against air pollution is therefore crystal clear … The remedy is simply for the courts to return to their function of defending person and property rights against invasion, and therefore to enjoin anyone from injecting pollutants into the air.

For a New Liberty, p. 322

The libertarian—and the only complete—solution to the problem of air pollution is to use the courts and the legal structure to combat and prevent such invasion.

For a New Liberty, p. 324

… when we peel away the confusions and the unsound philosophy of the modern ecologists, we find an important bedrock case against the existing system; but the case turns out to be not against capitalism, private property, growth, or technology per se. It is a case against the failure of government to allow and to defend the rights of private property against invasion. If property rights were to be defended fully, against private and governmental invasion alike, we would find here, as in other areas of our economy and society, that private enterprise and modern technology would come to mankind not as a curse but as its salvation.

For a New Liberty, p. 327

The central libertarian point on pollution is as follows: Nothing maybe prohibited by arbitrary statute or decree. To prove that one person has harmfully polluted the air of another, the victim or victims must go into court, like all alleged victims of invasion of person or property, and prove invasion of rights beyond a reasonable doubt.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 894

Air pollution, then, is not an example of a defect in a system of absolute property rights, but of failure on the part of the government to preserve property rights. Note that the remedy, in a free society, is not the creation of an administrative State bureau to prescribe regulations for smoke control. The remedy is judicial action to punish and proscribe pollution damage to the person and property of others.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 182

POPPER, KARL

… the Popperites are more nihilistic and therefore even less satisfactory than the original positivists, who at least are allowed to “verify” rather than merely “not falsify.”

Economic Controversies, p. 161n1

… a wishy-washy ad hoc metaphysician.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 509

POPULATION

Historically, indeed, the facts totally contradict the gloomy Malthusian forecasts. Population only tends to rise in response to greater economic growth and prosperity and the consequent rise in living standards, so that population and standards of living tend to move together, rather than in diametric opposition. This rise in population generally comes in response to falling death rates caused by the better nutrition, sanitation, and medical care attendant on higher living standards. The dramatic declines in death rates lead to accelerated population growth (roughly measured by birth rate minus death rate). After a few generations, the birth rate usually falls, as people act to preserve their higher living standards, so that population growth then levels off.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 198

Population level will, indeed, tend to adapt to maintain cherished standards of living.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 492

… high concentration of dwelling units per acre and high land coverage are essential to the diversity, growth, and vitality of the best and most generally liked areas of the big cities. …

… the cities of a century and several centuries ago were far more crowded and unpleasant than they are today by anyone’s aesthetic standards.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 179

It is high time that we call for the size and shape of the population, urban, rural, or total, to be left alone, to be the result of voluntary action by all individuals in the society. It is high time, in short, … that we forget about population and concentrate our worries on the numerous ways in which the government and its minions are seeking to place us all in a totalitarian prison-society.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 554

… population generally follows movement in standards of living; it doesn’t cause them. Population rises when the demand for labor, and living standards rise, and vice versa. A rising population is generally a sign of, and goes along with, prosperity and economic development.

Making Economic Sense, p. 152

The world, even the Third World, does not suffer from too many people, or from excessive population growth …

Making Economic Sense, p. 153

… without the modern, developed market, and thrown back into isolation, the overwhelming majority of individuals could not obtain enough exchangeable goods to exist at all.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 339

At any time, for any given conditions of capital and production processes, there will be an “optimum” population level that will maximize the total output of consumers’ goods per head in the economy.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 561

… whether a given increase in population at any time will lead to an increase or decrease in real output per head is an empirical question, depending on the concrete data. It cannot be answered by economic theory.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 562

It is fallacious to say that there is overpopulation in some parts of the market and not in others. The theory of “over-” or “under”-population (in relation to an arbitrary maximum of real income per person) applies properly to the market as a whole. If parts of the market are “under-” and parts “over” populated, the problem stems, not from human reproduction or human industry, but from artificial governmental barriers to migration.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1110

… it is precisely in the fixed, noncapitalistic society of status that the Malthusian problem is ever present, at its ugliest, and where Malthusian “checks” to population must come into play.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1316

… eugenics may be defined as encouraging the breeding of the “fit” and discouraging the breeding of the “unfit” …

Progressive Era, p. 314

… the Malthusian problem is always supremely evident in the caste society.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 128

… capitalism was responsible, in a sense, for the huge increase in population in the modern world. Capitalism’s upsurge in living standards has enabled capitalism to free the world from the Malthusian checks, from the grim evils of overpopulation, and has permitted a rapid multiplication of population at even higher living standards than before.

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 129

POVERTY

… the existence of free will prevents us from conducting any controlled experiments; for people’s ideas and valuations are continually subject to change, and therefore nothing can be held constant.

Economic Controversies, p. 18

Poverty can only be abolished through the operation of certain economic factors—notably the investment of savings in capital …

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 241

… the natural lot of mankind, at least since our expulsion from Eden, is mass starvation—starvation that can only be overcome by steady hard work, by productive capital investment, and by creating the conditions and social institutions guaranteeing private property free of depredation.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 192

… violent intervention in the market and a hegemonic society tend to lead to general poverty.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 340

State poor relief is clearly a subsidization of poverty, for men are now automatically entitled to money from the State because of their poverty. Hence, the marginal disutility of income forgone from leisure diminishes, and idleness and poverty tend to increase further, which in turn increases the amount of subsidy that must be extracted from the taxpayers. Thus, a system of legally subsidized poverty tends to call forth more of the very poverty that is supposedly being alleviated.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 942–43

Excess wealth has suddenly replaced poverty as the tragic flaw of capitalism.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 974

Capitalist production is the only method by which poverty can be wiped out.… only freedom allows people to produce in the best and most efficient way possible. Force and violence may “distribute,” but it cannot produce. Intervention hampers production, and socialism cannot calculate. Since production of consumer satisfactions is maximized on the free market, the free market is the only way to abolish poverty. Dictates and legislation cannot do so; in fact, they can only make matters worse.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1319

Poverty has been tamed by the enterprise and the capital investment of our ancestors, most of which was undoubtedly done for “selfish” motives. This is a fundamental illustration of the truth enunciated by Adam Smith that we generally help others most in those very activities in which we help ourselves.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1320

The more the hegemonic principle abounds, the greater will be the extent of slavery and poverty.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1366

POWER

… all power possessed will be used and abused …

America’s Great Depression, p. xxviii

Liberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power, power which seeks to suppress, control, cripple, tax, and exploit the fruits of liberty and production. Power, then, the enemy of liberty, is consequently the enemy of all the other goods and fruits of civilization that mankind holds dear. And power is almost always centered in and focused on that central repository of power and violence: the state.

Conceived in Liberty v. 1, p. 10; p. xvi

Once acquiring power, rulers will try their best to keep and extend it.

Conceived in Liberty v. 2, p. 194; p. 692

The entire existence and power of the State is wrapped up in the taxation question.

Economic Controversies, p. 552

The natural tendency of a State is to expand its power …

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 82

… man, not being omnipotent as well as not being omniscient, always finds his power limited for doing all the things that he would like to do. In short, his power is necessarily limited by natural laws, but not his freedom of will.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 33

… in a free society, no man would be permitted (or none would permit himself) to invade the property of another. This would mean that his power of action would be limited; as man’s power is always limited by his nature; it would not mean any curtailment of his freedom. For if we define freedom, again, as the absence of invasion by another man of any man’s person or property, the fatal confusion of freedom and power is at last laid to rest.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 42

… what works to increase state power does not work in reverse.

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 10

… if the government is given power, the power will be used and abused …

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 614

… there is equality in the sense that each person has equal power to make his own exchange-decisions. This is in contrast to a hegemonic relationship, where power is asymmetrical—where the dictator makes all the decisions for his subjects except the one decision to obey, as it were, at bayonet point.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 91

… man’s range or power of action, dependent on his ability and the exchange-value of his property, is something completely distinct from his freedom.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 655

“Economic power,” then, is simply the right under freedom to refuse to make an exchange. Every man has this power. Every man has the same right to refuse to make a proffered exchange.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1327

… the libertarian doctrine, which proclaims a natural right of defense against political power, is coherent and meaningful, but any proclaimed right of defense against “economic power” makes no sense at all.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1329

… an individual’s power is his ability to control his environment in order to satisfy his wants.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1330

Power over nature is the sort of power on which civilization must be built; the record of man’s history is the record of the advance or attempted advance of that power. Power over men, on the other hand, does not raise the general standard of living or promote the satisfactions of all, as does power over nature. By its very essence, only some men in society can wield power over men. Where power over man exists, some must be the powerful, and others must be objects of power. But every man can and does achieve power over nature.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1330

Power of one man over another cannot contribute to the advance of mankind; it can only bring about a society in which plunder has replaced production, hegemony has supplanted contract, violence and conflict have taken the place of the peaceful order and harmony of the market. Power of one man over another is parasitic rather than creative, for it means that the nature conquerors are subjected to the dictation of those who conquer their fellowman instead. …

The libertarian doctrine, then, advocates the maximization of man’s power over nature and the eradication of the power of man over man. Statists, in elevating the latter power, often fail to realize that in their system man’s power over nature would wither and become negligible.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1331

… power always tends to be used …

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 98

PRAXEOLOGY

… the proper method in the social sciences is not mathematical equations but the drawing forth, or deduction, of the implicit properties contained in basic “original” or axiomatic truths—in short, the method of praxeology.

Classical Economics, p. 7

The Austrian methodology (“praxeology”) sticks close in its axioms to universally realistic common insights into the essence of human action, and deduces truths only from such evidently true propositions or axioms.

Classical Economics, p. 79

Praxeology, as well as the sound aspects of the other social sciences, rests on methodological individualism, on the fact that only individuals feel, value, think, and act.

Economic Controversies, p. 72

Praxeology rests on the fundamental axiom that individual human beings act, that is, on the primordial fact that individuals engage in conscious actions toward chosen goals. This concept of action contrasts to purely reflexive, or knee-jerk, behavior, which is not directed toward goals. The praxeological method spins out by verbal deduction the logical implications of that primordial fact. In short, praxeological economics is the structure of logical implications of the fact that individuals act. This structure is built on the fundamental axiom of action … all propositions that can be deduced from this axiom must also be true.

Economic Controversies, p. 60

… praxeology consists of the logical implications of the universal formal fact that people act, that they employ means to try to attain chosen ends.

Economic Controversies, p. 71

Praxeology, economic theory, cannot itself establish ethical judgments.… praxeology is not grounded on any value judgments of the praxeologist …

Economic Controversies, p. 81

The fundamental praxeological axiom is that individual human beings act. Praxeology reveals the implications of the concept of “action.” Action results from the fact that the individual “actor” believes that there are other states of being preferable to the one in which he is at present, and from his belief that he may take certain steps which will bring him to a more satisfactory state. Given these preferences and “technological” ideas, the individual acts upon them in order to arrive at a more satisfactory state. The preferred state which the actor expects to attain is his “end”; the steps by which the actor attempts to attain his goal are the “means.” It is this praxeological concept of action that distinguishes the observed movements of men from those of inorganic matter.

Economic Controversies, p. 113

… the fundamental axioms of praxeology are known from the beginning, so that substantive conclusions may be drawn by means of logical deduction. In human historical events, however, causal factors cannot be experimentally isolated, so that the historian must explain by the use of judgment which praxeological laws apply in the particular situation.

Economic Controversies, p. 114

The word praxeology means precisely what its etymology says: the logic of (human) action. All of economic theory can be deduced from the central axiom that human beings act—that they pursue means in order to arrive at ends.

Economic Controversies, p. 171

Praxeology is economic theory resting on a few broad, self-evident axioms grounded in apprehension of reality, then logically deducing the implications of these emphatically true axioms. But if A implies B, C, etc., and A is definitely true, the deductions can be accepted as truths as well.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 324

… the Misesian discipline of praxeology explicitly states that individual men consciously pursue goals, and choose means to try to attain them.

Making Economic Sense, p. 32

Praxeology and economics deal with any given ends and with the formal implications of the fact that men have ends and employ means to attain them.

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

praxeology and economics are logical chains of reasoning based on a few universally known premises … Praxeology asserts the action axiom as true, and from this (together with a few empirical axioms—such as the existence of a variety of resources and individuals) are deduced, by the rules of logical inference, all the propositions of economics …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 75

Praxeology, however, is a logical science based on the existence of action per se; it is interested in explaining and interpreting real action in its universal sense rather than in its concrete content. Its discussion of value scales is therefore a deduction from the nature of human action and not a speculative essay on the internal workings of the mind. …

… praxeology is based on a fundamental distinction between human action and the motion of inorganic matter, namely, that human action is motivated toward the achievement of certain ends. Means and resources are used for the achievement of these ends. Far from leaving mind out of the picture, praxeology rests fundamentally on the basic axiom of action, action caused and put into effect by human minds.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 308

The major function of praxeology—of economics—is to bring to the world the knowledge of these indirect, these hidden, consequences of the different forms of human action.

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

Praxeology cannot, by itself, pass ethical judgment or make policy decisions.

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

… praxeology does not assume the existence of an “economic man” …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1229

The doctrines of praxeology are deduced from three universally acceptable axioms: the major axiom of the existence of purposive human action; and the minor postulates, or axioms, of the diversity of human skills and natural resources, and the disutility of labor. Although it is possible to construct an economic theory of a society without these two minor axioms (but not without the major one), they are included in order to limit our theorizing to laws that can apply directly to reality.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1309

I would consider the fundamental axioms of praxeology as based empirically on the nature of man rather than on “the logical structure of the human mind” as Mises does …

Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 108

PRICE

Once a good comes into use as a money, the market expands rapidly, and the economy becomes remarkably more productive and prosperous. The reason is that the price system becomes enormously simplified. A “price” is simply the terms of exchange, the ratio of the quantities of the two goods being traded.

Case Against the Fed, p. 14

… middlemen no more “exploit” their customers or suppliers than does any other group on the free market. All prices, whether selling or purchasing, are set by supply and demand in the ultimate service of consumers.

Conceived in Liberty v. 2, p. 84; p. 582

In the market economy, qualitative knowledge can be transmuted, by the free price system, into rational economic calculation of quantitative prices and costs, thus enabling entrepreneurial action on the market.

Economic Controversies, p. 188

The market does not form prices proportional to incomes; the market is characterized by uniform pricing, by a strong tendency toward the same price for the same good or service regardless of the income or personality of the buyer.

Economic Controversies, p. 495

One of the great things about the market is that every good or service tends to be at one price: regardless of the race, creed, personality, or income of the customer.

Economic Controversies, p. 547

… price is the ratio of quantities of two commodities being exchanged.

Economic Controversies, p. 767

… money-prices are indispensable for the rational allocation of all of our scarce resources—labor, land, and capital goods—to the fields and the areas where they are most desired by the consumers and where they could operate with greatest efficiency.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, pp. 201–02

What exactly is a price? The price of any given quantity of a product is the amount of money the buyer must spend on it.… the buyer with money and the seller with bread. It should be clear that the interaction of both sides brings about the ruling price in the market.

For a New Liberty, p. 218

Every price is simply the terms of an exchange on the market, an exchange with money on one side and some good or service on the other.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 230

The free price system, the free fluctuation of all prices, wages, and rents … is the heart and soul of the functioning of the market economy … each and every price, of the innumerable prices of all varieties of goods and services in the economy, reflect the individual forces of supply and demand.… all prices, including wages and rents—are a sensitive and ever responding indicator to the changes in the underlying forces of supply and demand. A free price system leads businessmen in pursuit of profit and in avoidance of loss, to produce most efficiently those products most desired by the mass of consumers. Cripple that system and the intricate price mechanism for conveying signals and information to producers is destroyed. The economy, is then at sea without a rudder, with nothing to tell the producers what they should produce and what means of producing are most efficient.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 231

Free-market prices don’t change that much in one day.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 437

If the price system is allowed to function, then the free market quickly wipes out any shortage as the price rises to “clear” supply and demand on the market.… If prices are allowed to rise, then the price increase performs two important economic functions: (1) the “rationing” function, as buyers voluntarily restrict their purchases, in accordance with each individual buyer’s needs and abilities; and (2) the incentive function, the higher price stimulating increased production and supply over a period of time. Price control prevents both of these crucial functions from being performed, smoothly and voluntarily; instead, shortages persist and intensify.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 438

… on the free market, regardless of the stringency of supply, there is never any “shortage,” that is, there is never a condition where a purchaser cannot find supplies available at the market price. On the free market, there is always enough supply available to satisfy demand. The clearing mechanism is fluctuations in price.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 765

The consumer sees the product, evaluates it, and ranks it on his value scale. These utilities to consumers interact to form a market demand. Market supply is determined by the expected demand, and the two interact to determine market price.

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, p. 8

All resources, indeed all goods and services, are scarce, and they are all subject to competition for their use. That’s why there is a system of private property and free market exchange. If all resources are privatized, they will be allocated to the most important uses by means of a free-price system, as the bidders able to satisfy the consumer demands in the most efficient ways are able to out-compete less able bidders for these resources.

Making Economic Sense, pp. 91–92

… pricing on the market is not an act of will by sellers. Businessmen do not determine their selling prices on the basis of whether they feel greedy or “responsible” that morning. The entire apparatus of economic theory, built up over centuries, is devoted to demonstrating a great truth: that prices are set only by the demand of purchasers (how much of a good or service purchasers will buy at any given price), and by the supply or stock of the good.

Making Economic Sense, p. 390

The price of one good in terms of another is the amount of the other good divided by the amount of the first good in exchange.… The price is the rate of exchange between two commodities expressed in terms of one of the commodities.

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

… the minimum selling price of the seller must be lower than the maximum buying price of the buyer for that good.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 108

… the price of the good in isolated exchange will be established somewhere between the maximum buying price and the minimum selling price …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 109

… the price in the exchange will be high enough to exclude the “less capable” or “less urgent” buyer—the one whose value scale does not permit him to offer as high a price as the other, “more capable,” buyer. We do not know exactly what the price will be, but we do know that it will be set by bargaining somewhere at or below the maximum buying price of the most capable buyer and above the maximum buying price of the next most capable buyer.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 110

… regardless of the form of the market, the result of the market process is always to tend toward the establishment of the equilibrium price via the mutual bidding of buyers and sellers.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 119

… price is determined solely by utility.… the fundamental determinants of price are the value scales of all individuals (buyers and sellers) in the market …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 141

The money price of a good in an exchange, therefore, is the quantity of units of gold, divided by the quantity of units of the good, yielding a numerical ratio.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 234

… there will always be a tendency on the market for one money price to be established for each good.

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

The money price is determined by actions decided according to individual value scales.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 238

The money price on the market will tend to be set at the equilibrium price …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 247

… the sellers who are included in the sale at the equilibrium price are those whose value scales make them the most capable, the most eager, sellers. Similarly, it will be the most capable, or most eager, buyers who will purchase the good at the equilibrium price.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 257

… value scales of the various buyers and sellers determine the individual supply-demand schedules and hence all money prices …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 269

… the price of any good on the market will tend to be uniform throughout the market. The price is determined by supply and demand schedules, which are themselves determined by the value scales of the individuals in the market.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 320

… the determinants of price are only the subjective utilities of individuals in valuing given conditions and alternatives. There are no “objective” or “real” costs that determine, or are coordinate in determining, price.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 343

… prices of consumers’ goods, through market processes, determine the prices of productive factors …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 564

… whatever price the free market (unhampered by violence or the threat of violence) establishes will be the “best” price.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 661

… every seller, as we have repeatedly stated, will attempt to sell his produce for the highest possible price; similarly, every buyer will attempt to purchase goods at the lowest possible price. It is precisely the voluntary interaction of these buyers and sellers that establishes the entire supply and demand structure for consumers’ and producers’ goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 663

Any good is always scarce and therefore must always command a price in accordance with the demand for it and the supply available. The only “free goods” on the market are not goods at all, but abundant conditions of human welfare that are not the subject of human action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1205

… the only possible objective criterion for the just price is the market price. For the market price is, at every moment, determined by the voluntary, mutually agreed-upon actions of all the participants in the market. It is the objective resultant of every individual’s subjective valuations and voluntary actions, and is therefore the only existent objective criterion for “quantitative justice” in pricing.

… The market price is the just price, given the pattern of consumer preferences. Furthermore, this just price is the concrete, actual market price, not equilibrium price, which can never be established in the real world, nor the “competitive price,” which is an imaginary figment.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1214–15

A price is simply the ratio of the two quantities exchanged in any transaction.

Mystery of Banking, p. 8

… all products are scarce in relation to their possible use, which is the reason they command a price on the market at all. Price, on the free market, performs a necessary rationing function, in which the available pounds or bushels or other units of a good are allocated freely and voluntarily to those who are most willing to purchase the product.

Mystery of Banking, p. 23

Through the free price systems, consumers signal laborers, capitalists, and businessmen on which occupations are most urgently needed, and the intricate, automatic workings of the price system convey these messages to everyone, thereby creating an efficient, smoothly working economy. There is one and only one alternative to voluntary directions under a free price system: and that is government dictation. And this dictation is not only bad because it violates the tradition of individual freedom and free enterprise on which American greatness is built; it is also bad because it is inevitably inefficient and self-destructive.

Science, Technology, and Government, p. 17

… the very concept of “shortage” makes little sense except in relation to price …

Science, Technology, and Government, p. 30

… a price is simply an exchange-ratio …

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 23

PRICE CONTROL

When goods become scarce (as under nonimportation agreements) the free market price rises to account for the greater scarcity. Putting the matter into such pseudo-moralistic terms as “taking unfair advantage” of the scarcity, completely ignores the “rationing” function of the price system. If prices do not rise to reflect increased scarcity, then the goods will soon disappear and not be available at all to those clamoring to buy. Consumers as well as producers are gravely injured by this form of price control.

Conceived in Liberty v. 3, p. 305; p. 1069

It is a praxeological law that if the government (or any other agency exercising the power of violence) intervenes in the market to establish a valuation of any commodity below what would be the market valuation, a shortage of the commodity develops.

Economic Controversies, p. 115

Economic theory tells us the myriad evils that stem from any attempt at price controls of goods and services. Maximum price controls lead to artificially created shortages of the product; minimum controls lead to artificial unsold surpluses. There is a ready cure for these economic ills; they are caused not by processes deep within the free market economy, but by arbitrary government intervention into the market. Remove the controls, let market processes have full sway, and shortages and surpluses will disappear.

Economic Controversies, p. 741

… if two or more moneys are legally fixed in relative value by the government, then the money overvalued by the government will drive the undervalued money out of circulation.… Gresham’s law is the product not of the free market but of government monetary control. Its fixing of relative money value is a special case of the general consequence of any price control, i.e., shortage of a good in which maximum prices are imposed, and a “surplus” where a minimum price is enforced.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, pp. 75–76

… on the market, a “shortage” can only be the consequence of an artificially low price of a good.

History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 359

Pumping in more money while imposing direct price controls and hoping there by to stem inflation is very much like trying to cure a fever by holding down the mercury column in the thermometer.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 174

Price and wage controls do not work … they tackle only the symptoms and not the causes of inflation … controls do not halt inflation but only bring about shortages, distortions, disruptions, and black markets.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 229

… any direct control … of prices strikes at the heart of the effective working of our economy, and will act to reduce the economic system to chaos.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 231

Actually, the “black market” is simply the market, the free market, trying desperately to emerge in the midst of the crippling network of controls.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 232

As shortages pile up from the price controls, we can expect the next totalitarian advance: rationing.… Compulsory rationing will perpetuate the shortage.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 233

… no single act is more destructive of a free economy than price-wage controls …

… Price controls take some time for their flaws and distortions to develop: for the longer they last, the more do their controlled prices diverge from the prices that would be obtaining on the free market.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 350

There is one and only one possible cause of the phenomenon of a shortage, and that is government price control below the market.… a shortage can only be caused by price control.

Economists define a “shortage” as a condition where consumers are not able to find the product. Regardless of how scarce the supply of a product may be, there is never any need for a shortage, for a disappearance of the product from the shelves. For on the free market, if a product becomes more scarce, the price rises until the market is “cleared,” i.e., until there is sufficient supply available for, those who wish to purchase the product at the market price. And so, if the free price system is permitted to operate, increased scarcity will cause a higher price, but not an outright disappearance, or “shortage,” of the product. …

Shortages are solely the product of price controls, of not permitting the free market mechanism to function. The bigger the discrepancy between the government controlled price and the free market price, the bigger the shortage.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 437

… wage-price controls have always failed and have only caused widespread hardship and shortages.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 525

From price controls comes shortage and then despotic rationing …

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 738

… in every culture, price controls have never worked. They have always been a disaster.

Making Economic Sense, p. 124

Imposing controls to stop a price increase is like trying to cure a fever by pushing down the mercury on a thermometer. They work on the symptoms instead of the causes. As a result, controls do not stop price increases; they create consumer shortages, misallocations, and drive the price increases underground into black markets. The consumers wind up far worse off than before.

Making Economic Sense, pp. 391–92

Under price control, the State prohibits any pair of individuals from making an exchange below or above a certain fixed rate …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 878

… the indirect consequence of a price control is to cause unexpected shortages of the product. Ex post, many of the interveners themselves will feel that they have lost rather than gained in utility.

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

… while the effect of a maximum price is to create an artificial shortage, a minimum price creates an artificial unsold surplus …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 894

If the government were really worried about the short supply of certain products, it would go out of its way not to impose maximum price controls upon them.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 894

A general price minimum is equivalent to a maximum control on the PPM. This sets up an unsatisfied, excess, demand for money over the stock of money available—specifically, in the form of unsold stocks of goods in every field.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 896

The announced aim of a maximum price control is to benefit the consumer by giving him his supply at a lower price; yet the objective effect is to prevent many consumers from having the good at all. The announced aim of a minimum price control is to insure higher prices to the sellers; yet the effect will be to prevent many sellers from selling any of their surplus. Furthermore, the price controls inevitably distort the production and allocation of resources and factors in the economy, thereby injuring again the bulk of consumers. And we must not overlook the army of bureaucrats who must be financed by the binary intervention of taxation and who must administer and enforce the myriad of regulations. This army, in itself, withdraws a mass of workers from productive labor and saddles them onto the remaining producers—thereby benefiting the bureaucrats, but injuring the rest of the people.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 900

The principles of maximum and minimum price control apply to all prices, whatever they may be: consumer goods, capital goods, land or labor services, or the “price” of money in terms of other goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1080

Usury laws are another form of price control tinkering with the market. These laws place legal maxima on interest rates, outlawing any lending transactions at a higher rate. The amount and proportion of saving and the market rate of interest are basically determined by the time-preference rates of individuals. An effective usury law acts like other maxima—to induce a shortage of the service. For time preferences—and therefore the “natural” interest rate—remain the same. The fact that this interest rate is now illegal means that the marginal savers—those whose time preferences were highest—now stop saving, and the quantity of saving and investing in the economy declines. This results in lower productivity and lower standards of living in the future. …

Usury laws are designed, at least ostensibly, to help the borrower, particularly the most risky borrower, who is “forced” to pay high interest rates to compensate for the added risk. Yet it is precisely these borrowers who are most hurt by usury laws.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1084

… money overvalued artificially by government will drive out of circulation artificially overvalued money.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 19

Government imposes price controls largely in order to divert public attention from governmental inflation to the alleged evils of the free market.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 59

PRIVATIZATION

… every single one of the services supplied by government has been, in the past, successfully furnished by private enterprise.

Economic Controversies, p. 426

… a law or edict limiting or freezing the government itself is not an act of intervention into the economy or society. Quite the contrary.

Economic Controversies, pp. 439–40

… the most important desideratum, the crucial route for attaining a system of private property and free market, must be to privatize government operations.

Economic Controversies, pp. 440–41

… desocialization must involve the abolition, not the privatization, of such operations as (in addition to concentration camps and secret police facilities) all regulatory commissions, central banks, income tax bureaus, and, of course, all the bureaus administering those functions that are going to be privatized.

Economic Controversies, p. 441

… genuine privatization requires complete private property …

Economic Controversies, p. 443

Desocialization, and a move to a free society, necessarily involves the action of that government’s surrendering its property to its private subjects, and freeing those individuals from the government’s network of controls. In a deep sense, getting rid of the socialist state requires that state to perform one final, swift, glorious act of self-immolation, after which it vanishes from the scene.

Economic Controversies, p. 446

It is not advocating statism to call for the government’s repeal of its own interventions.

Economic Controversies, p. 767

… those government operations which supply or monopolize genuine goods and services should be privatized—e.g., carrying the mail, supplying streets and roads, putting out fires. But other government activities, which are counterproductive and destructive to the market—e.g., the IRS, government regulatory commissions, concentration camps for dissenters—should not be privatized but abolished.

Economic Controversies, p. 889

I’m in favor of privatizing everything …

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 29

… the most practical method of de-statizing is simply to grant the moral right of ownership on the person or group who seizes the property from the State. Of this group, the most morally deserving are the ones who are already using the property but who have no moral complicity in the State’s act of aggression. These people then become the “homesteaders” of the stolen property and hence the rightful owners.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 27

Privatization is a great and important good in itself. Another name for it is “desocialization.” Privatization is the reversal of the deadly socialist process that had been proceeding unchecked for almost a century. It has the great virtue of taking resources from the coercive sector, the sector of politicians and bureaucrats—in short, the nonproducers—and turning them over to the voluntary sector of creators and producers. The more resources remain in the private, productive sector, the less a dead weight of parasitism will burden the producers and cripple the standard of living of consumers.

Making Economic Sense, p. 144

Free-market advocates are clear about what should be done about government services and operations: they should be privatized.

Making Economic Sense, p. 146

… privatize the public sector, and the noteworthy squalor would rapidly disappear.

Making Economic Sense, p. 212

… activities such as fraud, embezzlement, or counterfeiting should not be privatized; they should be abolished.

Making Economic Sense, p. 290

… all state firms and operations should be privatized immediately—the sooner the better. …

The proper way to privatize is … a radical one: allowing their present users to “homestead” these assets, for example, by granting prorata negotiable shares of ownership to workers in the various firms.

Making Economic Sense, p. 425

PROBABILITY

The frequency theory implies that to say the probability of a die showing “three” is “one-sixth” means that, if a die is thrown a great many times, the number of occasions on which “three” is obtained will approach one out of every six throws. But this means, that numerical and mathematical probability theory cannot really apply to each single case, but only to the proportion of randomly-selected homogeneous events as tossing a coin or throwing a die. This fact is much more true of the unique, non-random events of ordinary human (and entrepreneurial) action … mathematical probability theory can never be applicable to economics, or to any other study of human action.

Economic Controversies, p. 27

… the concept of “probability distribution” can only be used for events that are homogeneous, random [path-independent], and infinitely replicable. But the events in the world of human action are almost exactly opposite: they are almost all heterogeneous, not random [path-dependent] and hardly replicable at all. Furthermore, even in the highly unlikely event that these conditions did apply, class probabilities could not at all be used to explain or predict events, which is what we face in human life.

Economic Controversies, p. 173n15

In the real world of human action, virtually all historical events are unique and heterogeneous, though often similar, to all other historical events. Since each event is unique and nonreproducible, it is impermissible to apply objective probability theory; expectations and forecasting become a matter of subjective estimates of future events, estimates that cannot be reduced to an objective or “scientific” formula. Calling two events by the same name does not make them homogeneous.

Economic Controversies, p. 258

Numerical probability can be assigned only to situations where there is a class of entities, such that nothing is known about the members except they are members of this class, and where successive trials reveal an asymptotic tendency toward a stable proportion, or frequency of occurrence, of a certain event in that class. There can be no numerical probability applied to specific individual events.

Yet, in human action, precisely the opposite is true. Here, there are no classes of homogeneous members. Each event is a unique event and is different from other unique events. These unique events are not repeatable. Therefore, there is no sense in applying numerical probability theory to such events.

Economic Controversies, pp. 308–09

… the probability fraction can be meaningfully used only when it embodies an empirically derived law of entities which are homogeneous, random, and indefinitely repeatable.

This means, of course, that probability theory can only be applied to events which, in human life, are confined to those like the lottery or the roulette wheel.

Keynes, the Man, p. 176

… a crucial fact of human history is that all historical events are interconnected, that cause and effect patterns permeate human events, that very little is homogeneous, and that nothing is random.

Making Economic Sense, p. 27

The efforts of many popular writers to apply mathematical “probability theory” to the uncertainty of future historical events are completely vain.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 60n36

“Class probability” is the only scientific use of the term “probability,” and is the only form of probability subject to numerical expression.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 553

PRODUCTION

Man cannot create matter; he can only transform it into different shapes and molds, in order to satisfy his wants more fully. Production is this very transformation process. In the sense of such transformation, all labor is productive …

Classical Economics, p. 21

Production is a structure of stages, a latticework that moves from the most “roundabout” processes of production—the stages of production most remote from the consumers—down to nearer processes, and finally down to the production and sale of goods and services to the ultimate consumers.

Economic Controversies, p. 450

… production takes place in many stages, and involves an ever-greater structure of capital … we would not be able to replace depreciating capital were it not for the growing structure of capital invested by our ancestors, improving our living standards.

Economic Controversies, p. 596

… there are only two ways for men to acquire wealth. The first method is by producing a good or a service and voluntarily exchanging that good for the product of somebody else. This is the method of exchange, the method of the free market; it’s creative and expands production; it is not a zero-sum game because production expands and both parties to the exchange benefit.… The second method is seizing another person’s property without his consent, i.e., by robbery, exploitation, looting. When you seize someone’s property without his consent, then you are benefiting at his expense, at the expense of the producer; here is truly a zero-sum “game”—not much of a “game,” by the way, from the point of view of the victim.

Economic Controversies, p. 675

… men are not floating wraiths; they are beings who can only survive by grappling with and transforming material objects.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 47

… man must use various indirect means as cooperating factors of production to arrive at the direct means. This necessary process involved in all action is called production; it is the use by man of available elements of his environment as indirect means—as co-operating factors—to arrive eventually at a consumers’ good that he can use directly to arrive at his end.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 8–9

… any process (or structure) of production may be analyzed as occurring in different stages.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 10

The length of the process of production is the entire length of time from the point at which an actor must begin his labor to the point at which the consumers’ good is yielded.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 52

The period of production will be equal to the time difference between the act of saving and the act of future consumption, as in all other cases of investment.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 70n42

… the essence of specialized production is anticipation of the future state of the market by the producers. In deciding whether or not to produce a certain quantity of stock by a future date, the producer must use his judgment in estimating the market price at which he will be able to sell his stock.… Each producer tries to use his resources—his labor and useful goods—in such a way as to obtain, in the production of stock, the maximum psychic revenue and hence a psychic profit. He is ever liable to error, and errors in anticipating the market will bring him a psychic loss. The essence of production for the market, therefore, is entrepreneurship. The key consideration is that the demand schedules, and consequently the future prices, are not and can never be definitely and automatically known to the producers. They must estimate the future state of demand as best they can.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 158

When man “produces,” he does not create matter. He uses given materials and transforms and rearranges them into goods that he desires. In short, he moves matter further toward consumption.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 172

… at any stage in the production of any product, a man employs land and labor factors, exchanging money for their services as well as for the needed capital goods, and then sells the product for money to help in the next lower stage of production.

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

… in order to produce a capital good, the would-be producer must obtain the necessary land, labor, and capital goods. Each such individual producer (or group of individuals in partnership) obtains the required factors and then directs the combination of factors into producing a capital good. This process is repeated among numerous individuals, until the lowest stage of production is reached and a consumers’ good is produced. The producer of the capital good must obtain the needed factors (land, labor, and capital) by purchasing them for money, and, when the (lower order)capital good is completed, he sells it for money. This capital good is, in turn, used for the production of a still lower order capital good, and the latter is sold for money. This process continues until the final producer of the consumers’ good sells it for money to the ultimate consumer.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 207

… a dominant characteristic of the production process is that each individual must produce in anticipation of the sale of his product. Any investment in production is made in anticipation of later sale to lower-order producers and, finally, to consumers.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 208

… the production process takes time, and the more complex the production process the more time must be taken.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 337

Time, therefore, is a critical element in production, and its analysis must pervade any theory of production.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 344

The interest rate must be equal for each stage of the production process.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 370

The all-pervading influence of time is stressed in the period-of-production concept and in the determination of the interest rate and of the investment-consumption ratio by individual time preference schedules.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 402

There is no automatic continuity of investment and production. Production is continued because the owners are continually making decisions to proceed; if they did not think it profitable to do so, they could and do at any point alter, curtail, or totally cease operations and investments. And production takes time from initial investment to final product.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 427

The whole purpose of the production system is to lead to final consumption. All the intermediate purchases are based on the expectation of final purchase by the consumer and would not take place otherwise. Every activity may have its immediate “results,” but they are not results that would command any monetary income from anyone if the owners of the factors themselves were joint owners of all they produced until the final consumption stage.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 505

To expand production, the important consideration is not so much technological improvement as greater capital investment.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 626

… consumption always rules production.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 631

Producers are guided by the goal of maximizing monetary income …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 642

… all production is for use; otherwise it would not take place. In the market economy, this almost always means goods for the use of others—the consumers. Profit can be earned only through servicing consumers with produced goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 649–50

How much any given person will produce of any given good or service is determined by his expectations of greatest monetary income, other psychic considerations being equal.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 697–98

The fundamental business of production is service to the consumers for monetary gain …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 725

Production makes no sense whatever except as a means to consumption. Investment in capital goods means nothing except as a necessary way station to increased consumption.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 966

The “problem of production” will never be solved until we are all in the Garden of Eden.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1154

If an economy is to exist at all, there must be production in order to satisfy the desires of the consuming individuals.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1273

PRODUCTIVITY

… the demand for and prices of factors of production are determined by their productivity in producing consumer goods desired and demanded by the public.

Classical Economics, pp. 283–84

In the private sector a firm’s productivity is gauged by how much the consumers voluntarily spend on its product.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 136

Wage rates in every country are determined by the productivity of the workers in the country.

Making Economic Sense, p. 18

There are two ways in which longer processes of production through the use of capital may increase productivity: (1) they may provide a greater production of the same good per unit of time; or (2) they may allow the actor to consume goods that are not available at all with shorter processes of production.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 48

… conditions for exchange, and therefore increased productivity for the participants, will occur where each party has a superiority in productivity in regard to one of the goods exchanged …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 97

… the productivity of production processes has no basic relation to the rate of return on business investment.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 424

The increased productivity of the longer production processes leads to a greater physical supply of capital goods, and, most important, of consumers’ goods, with a consequent fall in the prices of consumers’ goods. As a result, even if the money prices of labor and land fall, those of consumers’ goods will always fall farther, so that real factor incomes will rise.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 525

An advancing capital structure increases the marginal productivity of labor, because the labor supply has increased less than the supply of capital goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 578

We can discuss productivity only in marginal terms.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 579

The (monetary) value productivity of a course of action depends on the extent to which it serves consumer needs.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 625

… the government’s productive contribution to the economy is precisely zero … strictly, the government’s productivity is not simply zero, but negative, for it has imposed a loss in productivity upon society.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 940

PROFIT AND LOSS

The firm is guided by its expectations of monetary income from customers in payment for its products.… businessmen are guided by the quest for monetary profits and the wish to avoid monetary losses …

… it is consumer demand that provides profits or losses to business firms and either vindicates or not prior production decisions by investors.

Economic Controversies, pp. 450–51

… profits are not a regular price, but a residual, which may and do shift wildly from being large, small, zero, or negative.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 234

Profits on the market are a measure of the efficiency and rapidity by which business firms meet the changing needs of the consumers.… We should all rejoice when a corporation or other business firm makes high profits, for that is an indicator of great usefulness to the consumers; we should reserve our scorn for the firms that make losses and thereby display their inept management and lack of entrepreneurial ability.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 442

Profit, indeed, is the aim of every market exchange, indeed of every human action; but it is psychic profit, that is, the advance of a person higher up on his value scale, the satisfaction of an otherwise unfulfilled want or goal. …

… The entire range of consumption expenditures is made, clearly not to make money, but to earn psychic profit from the expenditure; a person goes to a concert, or buys food, etc., not to gain a monetary but a psychic profit. And since consumption expenditure is the ultimate aim of production and the making of monetary income, this demonstrates that non-monetary or psychic profit is the ultimate aim of even money-making activities.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, pp. 702–03

The psychic revenue from any exchange is the value of the goods received in the exchange. This is equal to the marginal utility to the purchaser of adding the goods to his stock.… Psychic costs include all that the actor gives up by making the exchange. This is equal to the next best use that he could have made of the resources that he has used.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 104

… the aim of every actor is the highest position of psychic revenue and thus the making of a psychic profit …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 135

Every man strives in action to achieve a psychic revenue greater than his psychic cost, and thereby a psychic profit.… Error is revealed when his choice proves to be mistaken, and he realizes that he would have done better to have pursued the other, forgone course of action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 263

The aim of the actor is always to achieve a psychic profit from an action by having his marginal revenue exceed his marginal cost. Only after the decision has been made, the action taken, and the consequences assessed, can the actor know if his decision was correct, i.e., if his psychic revenue really did exceed his cost. It is possible that his cost may prove to have been greater than his revenue and that therefore he lost on the exchange.

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

It is clear that there is no sense whatever in talking of a going rate of profit. There is no such rate beyond the ephemeral and momentary. For any realized profit tends to disappear because of the entrepreneurial actions it generates.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 511

The economy should not be characterized as a “profit economy,” but as a “profit and loss economy.”

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 512

Every entrepreneur, therefore, invests in a process because he expects to make a profit, i.e., because he believes that the market has underpriced and undercapitalized the factors in relation to their future rents. If his belief is justified, he makes a profit. If his belief is unjustified, and the market, for example, has really overpriced the factors, he will suffer losses.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 512

… profits are an index that maladjustments are being met and combatted by the profit-making entrepreneurs. These maladjustments are the inevitable concomitants of the real world of change. A man earns profits only if he has, by superior foresight and judgment, uncovered a maladjustment—specifically an undervaluation of certain factors by the market. By stepping into this situation and gaining the profit, he calls everyone’s attention to that maladjustment and sets forces into motion that eventually eliminate it. If we must condemn anyone, it should not be the profit-making entrepreneur, but the one that has suffered losses. For losses are a sign that he has added further to a maladjustment, through allocating factors where they were overvalued as compared to the consumers’ desire for their product. On the other hand, the profit-maker is allocating factors where they had been undervalued as compared to the consumers’ desires. The greater a man’s profit has been, the more praiseworthy his role, for then the greater is the maladjustment that he alone has uncovered and is combatting. The greater a man’s losses, the more blameworthy he is, for the greater has been his contribution to maladjustment.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 515

… an entrepreneur will seek to produce at the point of maximum profit …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 598

… the free market always tends to conduct affairs so that entrepreneurs make the greatest profit through serving the consumer best and most efficiently.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 609

… factor-owners and entrepreneurs will produce in those industries and firms in which they can maximize their monetary income or profit …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 645

Profits and losses are purely the results of entrepreneurial activity, and that activity is the consequence of the uncertainty of the future.

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

Profit-and-loss signals are the prompters of the entrepreneurs and capitalists who direct and ever redirect the productive resources of society in the best possible ways and combinations to satisfy the changing desires of consumers under changing conditions.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 926

The profit-and-loss test serves as the critical guide for directing the flow of productive resources.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 948

The profit drive by entrepreneurs is the motive power that adjusts, estimates, and coordinates the economic system so as to maximize producer income in the service of maximizing consumer satisfactions. It is the process by which malinvestments are kept to a minimum, and good forecasts encouraged, so as to arrange advance production to be in close harmony with consumer desires …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1173–74

PROHIBITION

One of the major arguments, for example, for the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s was that the imbibing of alcohol increased the likelihood of (unspecified) people committing various crimes; therefore, prohibition was held to be a “defensive” act in defense of person and property. In fact, of course, it was brutally invasive of the rights of person and property, of the right to buy, sell, and use alcoholic beverages.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 78

Prohibition was an act so despotic and so invasive of the personal freedom of the public that that law could not be enforced, regardless of the sums of taxpayers’ money spent on government snoopers and prohibition enforcement agents.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 129

Prohibition was repealed precisely because law enforcement broke down in the face of massive civil disobedience, not because the law was piously heeded and then people turned to legal channels of repeal.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 168

Product control clearly and evidently injures all parties concerned in the exchange: the consumers who lose utility because they cannot purchase the product and satisfy their most urgent wants; and the producers who are prevented from earning a remuneration in this field and must therefore settle for lower earnings elsewhere. Losses by producers are particularly borne by laborers and landowners specific to the industry, who must accept permanently lower income. …

In many cases of product prohibition, of course, inevitable pressure develops, as in price control, for the reestablishment of the market illegally, i.e., a “black market.” A black market is always in difficulties because of its illegality. The product will be scarce and costly, to cover the risks to producers involved in violating the law and the costs of bribing government officials; and the more strict the prohibition and penalties, the scarcer the product will be and the higher the price. Furthermore, the illegality greatly hinders the process of distributing information about the existence of the market to consumers (e.g., by way of advertising). As a result, the organization of the market will be far less efficient, the service to the consumer of poorer quality, and prices for this reason alone will be higher than under a legal market.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 901

PROPERTY

… no possession, no use of resources, means rapid and universal starvation.

Classical Economics, p. 331

Property also is an appendage to liberty …

Conceived in Liberty v. 2, p. 189; p. 687

In the state of nature, each man as a natural fact has complete ownership or property over his own person. These persons confront unused natural resources or “land,” and they are able to maintain and advance themselves by “mixing their labor with the land.” Through this mixing, the hitherto unowned and unused natural resources become the property of the individual mixer. The individual thereby acquires a property right not only in his own person but also in the land that he has brought into use and transformed by his labor. The individual, then, may keep this property, exchange it for the property of others, or bequeath it to his heirs. He has the “natural right” to the property and to defend it against invasion by others.

Conceived in Liberty v. 2, pp. 190–91; pp. 688–89

… the individual has no natural right to any quantum of property; rather, his natural right is the equal liberty to acquire and keep property.

Conceived in Liberty v. 4, p. 179; p. 1293

Any free-market economy must necessarily rest on devotion to the sanctity of private property. It is obvious that rampant theft or fraud can only gravely cripple property rights and the free, prosperous economy that emerges from them. For a free society to survive and flourish, property rights must be defended.

Economic Controversies, p. 209

… not only is it illegitimate for the economist to advocate a free market without also adumbrating a theory of justice in property titles; he cannot even define a free market without doing so. For even to define and expound upon the free-market model, the economist is describing a system in which property titles are being exchanged, and therefore he must also define and expound upon how these titles are arrived at in the first place; he must have a theory of original property and of how property comes into being.

Economic Controversies, p. 244

… people are not floating wraiths; they are not self-subsistent entities; they can only survive and flourish by grappling with the earth around them. They must, for example, stand on land areas; they must also, in order to survive, transform the resources given by nature into “consumer goods,” into objects more suitable for their use and consumption. Food must be grown and eaten; minerals must be mined and then transformed into capital and finally into useful consumer goods, and so on. Man, in other words, must own not only his own person, but also material objects for his control and use.

Economic Controversies, pp. 354–55

All producers are therefore entitled to the ownership of their product.

Economic Controversies, p. 356

From our two basic axioms: the right of every man to self-ownership; and the right of every man to own previously unused natural resources that he first appropriates or transforms by his labor—the entire system of justification for property rights can be deduced. For if anyone justly owns the land himself and the property which he finds and creates, then he of course has the right to exchange that property for the similarly acquired just property of someone else. This establishes the right of free exchange of property, as well as the right to give one’s property away to someone who agrees to receive it.

Economic Controversies, p. 359

… no one has the right to legally prevent or retaliate against “harms” to his property unless it is an act of physical invasion. Everyone has the right to have the physical integrity of his property inviolate; no one has the right to protect the value of his property, for that value is purely the reflection of what people are willing to pay for it.

Economic Controversies, p. 375

In the law of torts, “harm” is generally treated as physical invasion of person or property and usually requires payment of damages for “emotional” harm if and only if that harm is a consequence of physical invasion. Thus, within the standard law of trespass—an invasion of person or property—“battery” is the actual invasion of someone else’s body, while “assault” is the creation by one person in another of a fear, or apprehension, of battery.

Economic Controversies, p. 376

… only a physical invasion of person or property constitutes an illicit act or tort …

Economic Controversies, p. 377

There are two fundamental principles upon which the libertarian theory of just property rests: (a) Everyone has absolute property right over his or her own body; and (b) everyone has an absolute property right over previously unowned natural resources (land) which he first occupies and brings into use (in the Lockean phrase, “Mixing his labor with the land”).

Economic Controversies, p. 392

The restoration of the Old Republic requires an economic system built solidly on the inviolable rights of private property, on the right of every person to keep what he earns, and to exchange the products of his labor.

Making Economic Sense, p. 294

… private property provides an incentive for toil and diligence …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 10

… private property is more highly productive and will therefore lead to progress. Goods owned in common by a large number of people will receive little attention, since people will mainly consult their own self-interest and will neglect all duty they can fob off on to others. In contrast, people will devote the greatest interest and care to their own property.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 13

… private property is clearly implanted in man’s nature …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 14

… individual self-ownership is based on the capacity of man as a rational being.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 57

… property is brought out of the commons, or out of non-property, into one’s private ownership, in the same way that a man brings non-used property into use: that is, by “mixing his self-owned labor,” his personal energy, with a previously unused and unowned natural resource, thereby bringing that resource into productive use and hence into his private property. Private property of a material resource is established by first use. These two axioms: self-ownership of each person, and the first use, or “homesteading,” of natural resources, establishes the “naturalness,” the morality, and the property rights underlying the entire free market economy. For if a man justly owns material property he has settled in and worked on, he has the deduced right to exchange those property titles for the property someone else has settled in and worked on with his labor. For if someone owns property, he has a right to exchange it for someone else’s property, or to give that property away to a willing recipient. This chain of deduction establishes the right of free exchange and free contract, and the right of bequest, and hence the entire property rights structure of the market economy.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, pp. 316–17

In human nature, the right of self-preservation implies the right to property, and any individual property in man’s products from the soil requires property in the land itself. But the right to property would be nothing without the freedom of using it, and so liberty is derived from the right to property. People flourish as social animals, and through trade and exchange of property they maximize the happiness of all. Furthermore, since the faculties of human beings are by nature diverse and unequal, an inequality of condition arises naturally from an equal right to liberty of every man.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 370

… ownership rights are acquired in two ways and two ways only: (a) by finding and transforming resources (“producing”), and (b) by exchanging one’s produce for someone else’s product—including the medium of exchange, or “money” commodity. And it is clear that method (b) reduces logically to (a), for the only way a person can obtain something in exchange is by giving up his own product. In short, there is only one route to ownership of goods: production-and-exchange.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 37

… all ownership on the free market reduces ultimately back to: (a) ownership by each man of his own person and his own labor; (b) ownership by each man of land which he finds unused and transforms by his own labor; and (c) the exchange of the products of this mixture of (a) and (b) with the similarly-produced output of other persons on the market.

… all ownership reduces ultimately back to each man’s naturally given ownership over himself, and of the land resources that man transforms and brings into production. The free market is a society of voluntary and consequently mutually beneficial exchanges of ownership titles between specialized producers.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 40

Surely, if every man has the right to own his own body and if he must use and transform material natural objects in order to survive, then he has the right to own the product that he has made, by his energy and effort, into a veritable extension of his own personality.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 48

… in the deepest sense, all property is “private.” For all property belongs to, is controlled by, some individual persons or groups of persons.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 55

… all resources, all goods, in a state of no-ownership belong properly to the first person who finds and transforms them into a useful good (the “homestead” principle).

Ethics of Liberty, p. 56

… where we are not sure about a title but it cannot be clearly identified as criminally derived, then the title properly and legitimately reverts to its current possessor.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 57

… if a current title to property is criminal in origin, and the victim or his heir can be found, then the title should immediately revert to the latter.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 57

… the disappearance of the victim means that the stolen property comes properly into a state of no-ownership. But we have seen that any good in a state of no-ownership, with no legitimate owner of its title, reverts as legitimate property to the first person to come along and use it, to appropriate this now unowned resource for human use.… even though the property was originally stolen, that if the victim or his heirs cannot be found, and if the current possessor was not the actual criminal who stole the property, then title to that property belongs properly, justly, and ethically to its current possessor.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 58

… for any property currently claimed and used: (a) if we know clearly that there was no criminal origin to its current title, then obviously the current title is legitimate, just and valid; (b) if we don’t know whether the current title had any criminal origins, but can’t find out either way, then the hypothetically “unowned” property reverts instantaneously and justly to its current possessor; (c) if we do know that the title is originally criminal, but can’t find the victim or his heirs, then (c1) if the current titleholder was not the criminal aggressor against the property, then it reverts to him justly as the first owner of a hypothetically unowned property. But (c2) if the current titleholder is himself the criminal or one of the criminals who stole the property, then clearly he is properly to be deprived of it, and it then reverts to the first man who takes it out of its unowned state and appropriates it for his use. And finally, (d) if the current title is the result of crime, and the victim or his heirs can be found, then the title properly reverts immediately to the latter, without compensation to the criminal or to the other holders of the unjust title.

Ethics of Liberty, pp. 58–59

… every man has an absolute right to the control and ownership of his own body, and to unused land resources that he finds and transforms. He also has the right to give away such tangible property (though he cannot alienate control over his own person and will) and to exchange it for the similarly derived properties of others. Hence, all legitimate property-right derives from every man’s property in his own person, as well as the “homesteading” principle of unowned property rightly belonging to the first possessor.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 60

The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to “own” his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference. Since each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation.

For a New Liberty, pp. 33–34

Consider, too, the consequences of denying each man the right to own his own person. There are then only two alternatives: either (1) a certain class of people, A, have the right to own another class, B; or (2) everyone has the right to own his own equal quotal share of everyone else.

For a New Liberty, p. 34

… people are not floating wraiths; they are not self-subsistent entities; they can only survive and flourish by grappling with the earth around them. They must, for example, stand on land areas; they must also, in order to survive and maintain themselves, transform the resources given by nature into “consumer goods,” into objects more suitable for their use and consumption. Food must be grown and eaten; minerals must be mined and then transformed into capital and then useful consumer goods, etc. Man, in other words, must own not only his own person, but also material objects for his control and use.

For a New Liberty, pp. 36–37

The homesteading principle means that the way that unowned property gets into private ownership is by the principle that this property justly belongs to the person who finds, occupies, and transforms it by his labor.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 27

… each individual has the absolute right of property in his or her own body.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 124

Exchange cannot be adequately analyzed until property rights are fully defined …

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

Ownership by one or more owners implies exclusive control and use of the goods owned, and the goods owned are known as property.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 91–92

… only scarce means are property.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 92

On the free, unhampered market, a man can acquire property in scarce goods as follows: (1) In the first place, each man has ownership over his own self, over his will and actions, and the manner in which he will exert his own labor. (2) He acquires scarce nature-given factors either by appropriating hitherto unused factors for his own use or by receiving them as a gift from someone else, who in the last analysis must have appropriated them as hitherto unused factors. (3) He acquires capital goods or consumers’ goods either by mixing his own labor with nature-given factors to produce them or by receiving them as a gift from someone else.… (4) He may exchange any type of factor (labor service, nature-given factor, capital good, consumers’ good) for any type of factor.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 92

Scarce goods in use in production must always be under someone’s control, and therefore must always be property. On the free market, the goods will be owned by those who either produced them, first put them to use, or received them in gifts. Similarly, under a system of violence and hegemonic bonds, someone or some people must superintend and direct the operations of these goods. Whoever performs these functions in effect owns these goods as property, regardless of the legal definition of ownership. This applies to persons and their services as well as to material goods. On the free market, each person is a complete owner of himself, whereas under a system of full hegemonic bonds, he is subject to the ownership of others, with the exception of the one decision not to revolt against the authority of the owner. Thus, violent or hegemonic regimes do not and cannot abolish property, which derives from the fundamentals of human action, but can only transfer it from one person or set of people (the producers or natural self-owners) to another set.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 94

… all goods must be property; otherwise they would not be objects of human action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 140

… much intangible property cannot, by its very nature, be exchanged.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 163

… the origin of all property is ultimately traceable to the appropriation of an unused nature-given factor by a man and his “mixing” his labor with this natural factor to produce a capital good or a consumers’ good.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 169

… if property in land or other nature-given factors is to be denied man, he cannot obtain property in the fruits of his labor.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 171

One of the prime conditions of ownership is the right to buy, sell, and dispose of property as the owner or owners see fit.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 175

… a person’s presently owned property could have been ultimately obtained in only one of the following ways: through personal production, voluntary exchange for a personal product, the finding and first using of unappropriated land, or theft from a producer. On a free market, only the first three can obtain …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 623–24

The only given on the free market is the property right of every man in his own person and in the resources which he finds, produces, or creates, or which he obtains in voluntary exchange for his products or as a gift from their producers.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 912

… the principles of a free society do imply a very definite theory of property rights, namely, self-ownership and the ownership of natural resources found and transformed by one’s labor. Therefore, no State or similar agency contrary to the market is needed to define or allocate property rights. This can and will be done by the use of reason and through market processes themselves; any other allocation or definition would be completely arbitrary and contrary to the principles of the free society.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1049

Ownership is the ultimate control and direction of a resource. The owner of a property is its ultimate director, regardless of legal fictions to the contrary.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1277

In the purely free society, resources so abundant as to serve as general conditions of human welfare would remain unowned. Scarce resources, on the other hand, would be owned on the following principles: self-ownership of each person by himself; self-ownership of a person’s created or transformed property; first ownership of previously unowned land by its first user or transformer.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1277

Every owner necessarily regulates his own property.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1334

A man has the right to his own product, to the product of his energy, which immediately becomes his property.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1348

PROTECTIONISM

When States are not at war, agreements are often necessary to keep frictions at a minimum. One doctrine that has gained curiously wide acceptance is the alleged “sanctity of treaties.” This concept is treated as the counterpart of the “sanctity of contract.” But a treaty and a genuine contract have nothing in common. A contract transfers, in a precise manner, titles to private property. Since a government does not, in any proper sense, “own” its territorial area, any agreements that it concludes do not confer titles to property.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 85

Protectionism not only injures the American consumer directly, by using coercion to prevent him from buying the cheaper textiles or cameras or automobiles that he would like to buy. It also injures the consumer indirectly and even more intensively, by freezing labor, land, and capital resources in the increasingly inefficient industries, and thereby preventing them from moving into those industries that are more efficient and have a competitive advantage in selling at home and abroad.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 245

Tariffs or import quotas to keep inefficient firms or industries in operation hurt everyone, in every country, who is not in that industry. They injure all American consumers by keeping up prices, keeping down quality and competition, and distorting production.

Making Economic Sense, p. 19

… all government action means coercion, so that calling upon the U.S. government to intervene means urging it to use force and violence to restrain peaceful trade.

Making Economic Sense, p. 355

… protectionism is out to mulct all of us for the benefit of a specially privileged, subsidized few—and an inefficient few at that: people who cannot make it in a free and unhampered market.

Making Economic Sense, p. 356

… the absurdity of worrying about the balance of payments is made evident by focusing on interstate trade. For nobody worries about the balance of payments between New York and New Jersey, or, for that matter, between Manhattan and Brooklyn …

Making Economic Sense, p. 357

… protectionism is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense, destructive of all economic prosperity.… Coerced restraints on trade—such as protectionism—cripple, hobble, and destroy trade, the source of life and prosperity. Protectionism is simply a plea that consumers, as well as general prosperity, be hurt so as to confer permanent special privilege upon groups of less efficient producers, at the expense of more competent firms and of consumers. But it is a peculiarly destructive kind of bailout, because it permanently shackles trade under the cloak of patriotism.

Making Economic Sense, pp. 358–59

As far as consumers are concerned, the more “dumping” that takes place, the better.

Making Economic Sense, p. 362

… historical investigation has not turned up a single case where predatory pricing, when tried, was successful …

Making Economic Sense, p. 363

… protectionist arguments, many plausible at first glance, are really a tissue of egregious fallacies. They betray a complete ignorance of the most basic economic analysis.… the impetus for protectionism comes not from preposterous theories, but from the quest for coerced special privilege and restraint of trade at the expense of efficient competitors and consumers. In the host of special interests using the political process to repress and loot the rest of us, the protectionists are among the most venerable. It is high time that we get them, once and for all, off our backs, and treat them with the righteous indignation they so richly deserve.

Making Economic Sense, pp. 366–67

Whereas genuine free traders look at free markets and trade, domestic or international, from the point of view of the consumer (that is, all of us), the mercantilist, of the sixteenth century or today, looks at trade from the point of view of the power elite, big business in league with the government.… the mercantilists want to privilege the government business elite at the expense of all consumers …

Making Economic Sense, p. 372

… as a rule of thumb, it is best to oppose all treaties … we must be wary of any treaty …

Making Economic Sense, p. 374

PROTEST

… boycott is an attempt to persuade other people to have nothing to do with some particular person or firm—either socially or in agreeing not to purchase the firm’s product. Morally a boycott may be used for absurd, reprehensible, laudatory, or neutral goals. It may be used, for example, to attempt to persuade people not to buy non-union grapes or not to buy union grapes. From our point of view, the important thing about the boycott is that it is purely voluntary, an act of attempted persuasion, and therefore that it is a perfectly legal and licit instrument of action.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 131

… mass picketing that blocked entrance or egress from a building would be criminal and invasive of the rights of property—as would be sit-ins and sit-down strikes that forcibly occupied the property of others. Also invasive would be the type of picketing in which demonstrators threatened people who crossed the picket line—a clear case of intimidation by threat of violence.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 132

Another action that should be completely free of restriction is the boycott. In a boycott, one or more people use their right of speech to urge, for whatever reasons—important or trivial—that other people cease to buy someone else’s product.

For a New Liberty, p. 117

It is clear that picketing is illegitimate when it is used—as it often is—to block access to a private building or factory, or when the pickets threaten violence against those who cross the picket line. It is also clear that sit-ins are an illegitimate invasion of private property.

For a New Liberty, p. 118

The best way of forcing our politicians to repeal a law is to render that law absolutely non-enforceable, in short, by mass breakage of that law.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 129

PUBLIC DEBT

One time-honored method of evading and postponing the point of coercion is to borrow the needed money—a method seemingly voluntary, but resting on the pledge of future coercion (taxes) to provide repayment.

Conceived in Liberty v. 4, p. 54; p. 1168

… government debt raises interest rates and diverts capital from productive to unproductive sectors.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 373

… the “true evil” of government debt is that it presents advantages to the public creditors but channels their savings into “sterile” and unproductive uses and maintains a high interest rate in competition with productive uses …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 398

… the purchase of a government bond is simply making an investment in the future loot from the robbery of taxation.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 184

… outright repudiation of the public debt … is infinitely more libertarian and infinitely less criminal than looting taxpayers to redeem that debt …

Left and Right, p. 361

The point of the “real” public debt gambit is that, as the government prints more money and creates inflation, the value of its public debt in real terms goes down. No doubt, but this is hardly something to cheer about.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1000

… a flourishing government bond market means a market starved for private capital and credit; it means that increasingly, private savings are being siphoned away from productive investments and into the rathole of wasteful and counter-productive government expenditures.

It is doubtful, therefore, whether we really want a smoothly running and efficient government bond market. On the contrary, a government bond market in difficulty is a market where less of our savings is poured down a rathole, and more is channeled into productive investment that will raise our living standards.

Making Economic Sense, p. 175

Government borrowing from the banking system is really a form of inflation: it creates new money-substitutes that go first to the government and then diffuse, with each step of spending, into the community.… This is a process entirely different from borrowing from the public, which is not inflationary, for the latter transfers saved funds from private to governmental hands rather than creates new funds. Its economic effect is to divert savings from the channels most desired by the consumers and to shift them to the uses desired by government officials. Hence, from the point of view of the consumers, borrowing from the public wastes savings. The consequences of this waste are a lowering of the capital structure of the society and a lowering of the general standard of living in the present and the future. Diversion and waste of savings from investment causes interest rates to be higher than they otherwise would, since now private uses must compete with government demands. Public borrowing strikes at individual savings more effectively even than taxation, for it specifically lures away savings rather than taxing income in general.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1025–26

Lending to government, therefore, may be voluntary, but the process is hardly voluntary when considered as a whole. It is rather a voluntary participation in future confiscation to be committed by the government.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1027

The ingenious slogan that the public debt does not matter because “we owe it to ourselves” is clearly absurd. The crucial question is: Who is the “we” and who are the “ourselves”?

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1027

Social utility can therefore not be enhanced by debt-reduction, except by the method of repudiation—the one way that the public debt can be lowered without a concomitant increase in fiscal coercion. Repudiation would also have the further merit (from the standpoint of the free market) of casting a pall on all future government credit, so that the government could no longer so easily divert savings to government use.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1028

PUBLIC OPINION

The mass of men are ignorant of economic truths.

America’s Great Depression, p. 44

Blather about the “public interest” and the “common good” may be all very well, until the time comes to interpret in practice what these cloudy concepts are supposed to mean and in particular who is supposed to interpret their meaning.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 183

… if the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang. Hence the necessity of the State’s employment of ideologists; and hence the necessity of the State’s age-old alliance with the Court Intellectuals who weave the apologia for State rule.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 169

… in the long run every government, no matter how dictatorial, rests on the support of the majority of its subjects.

For a New Liberty, p. 66

… no matter how bloody or despotic any State may be, it rests for its existence in the long-run (and not-so-long run) on the consent of the majority of its subjects, on the “voluntary servitude” (as La Boétie first phrased it) of the bulk of its victims. This mass acceptance need not be active enthusiasm; it can be passive resignation; but the important thing is that it rests on the willingness of the masses to obey the orders and commands of the State apparatus—to accept the dictates of the oligarchy, to pay its taxes, to fight in its wars.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 557

… a policy of governmental secrecy threatens to render ineffectual the very basis of democracy: an informed public opinion.

Science, Technology, and Government, p. 35

PUBLIC PROPERTY

Society cannot own anything. There is no entity called society; there are only interacting individuals. Ownership of property means control over use and the reaping of rewards from that use. When the State owns, or virtually owns, property, in no sense is society the owner. The government officials are the true owners, whatever the legal fiction adopted. Public ownership is only a fiction; actually, when the government owns anything, the mass of the public are in no sense owners.

Economic Controversies, p. 584

… the State cannot possess any just property.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 183

No State has any legitimate property; all of its territory is the result of some kind of aggression and violent conquest.

For a New Liberty, p. 335

… according to libertarian theory, there should be no government property, since it is all derived from coercion …

Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 374

Government property is always and everywhere fair game for the libertarian; for the libertarian must rejoice every time any piece of governmental, and therefore stolen, property is returned by any means necessary to the private sector. (In libertarian theory, it is not possible to steal from someone who is already a thief and who is only losing property that he has stolen. On the contrary, the person who takes stolen property from a thief is virtuously returning it to innocent private hands.)

Therefore, the libertarian must cheer any attempt to return stolen, governmental property to the private sector …

… the basic libertarian insight is that the taxpayers do not rule, that, on the contrary, they are mulcted and robbed for the benefit of the State and its cohorts, and therefore the idea that the “public” or the “taxpayers” really own anything is a fundamental lie palmed off on us by the apologists for the State. It is not we but the government rulers that own “public” property, and hence the vital importance of getting all this property from the “public” to the private or “people’s” sector as rapidly as possible. “Homesteading” is often the easiest and most rapid way of accomplishing this goal.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 14

The libertarian sees the State as a giant gang of organized criminals, who live off the theft called “taxation” and use the proceeds to kill, enslave, and generally push people around. Therefore, any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible. Any person or group who liberates such property, who confiscates or appropriates it from the State, is performing a virtuous act and a signal service to the cause of liberty.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 27

… no nation-state has legitimate title to any territory.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1020

… the very concept of “collective goods” is a highly dubious one.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1030

Any increase of governmental ownership or control, therefore, is “socialistic,” or “collectivistic,” because it is a coercive intervention bringing the economy one step closer to complete socialism.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1274

Government ownership means simply that the ruling officialdom owns the property. The top officials are the ones who direct the use of the property, and they therefore do the owning.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1277

Whatever the form of government, the rulers are the true owners of the property.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1278

PUNISHMENT

… property rights imply above all restoring stolen property to original owners.

Economic Controversies, p. 444

… the criminal, or invader, loses his own right to the extent that he has deprived another man of his. If a man deprives another man of some of his self-ownership or its extension in physical property, to that extent does he lose his own rights. From this principle immediately derives the proportionality theory of punishment—best summed up in the old adage: “let the punishment fit the crime.”

Ethics of Liberty, pp. 80–81

… the criminal loses his rights to the extent that he deprives another of his rights: the theory of “proportionality.” …

… it should be clear that the proportionate principle is a maximum, rather than a mandatory, punishment for the criminal. …

… capital punishment would have to be confined strictly to the crime of murder. For a criminal would only lose his right to life if he had first deprived some victim of that same right. …

But, in libertarian law, there would be no compulsion on the plaintiff, or his heirs, to exact this maximum penalty. If the plaintiff or his heir, for example, did not believe in capital punishment, for whatever reason, he could voluntarily forgive the victim of part or all of his penalty.

Ethics of Liberty, pp. 85–86

The first point is that the emphasis in punishment must be not on paying one’s debt to “society,” whatever that may mean, but in paying one’s “debt” to the victim.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 86

The ideal situation, then, puts the criminal frankly into a state of enslavement to his victim, the criminal continuing in that condition of just slavery until he has redressed the grievance of the man he has wronged.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 86

… the criminal must pay double the extent of theft: once, for restitution of the amount stolen, and once again for loss of what he had deprived another.

… proportionate punishment to be levied we would also have to add more than double so as to compensate the victim in some way for the uncertain and fearful aspects of his particular ordeal.

Ethics of Liberty, pp. 88–89

… the deterrence principle implies a gross violation of the intuitive sense that justice connotes some form of fitting and proportionate punishment to the guilty party and to him alone.

… the “humanitarian” rehabilitation principle not only leads to arbitrary and gross injustice, it also places enormous and arbitrary power to decide men’s fates in the hands of the dispensers of punishment.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 94

Retribution remains as our only just and viable theory of punishment and equal treatment for equal crime is fundamental to such retributive punishment.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 96

… in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would never be, as it is now, on “society’s” jailing the criminal; the emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to make restitution to the victim of his crime.

For a New Liberty, p. 55

The libertarian believes that a criminal loses his rights to the extent that he has aggressed upon the rights of another, and therefore that it is permissible to incarcerate the convicted criminal and subject him to involuntary servitude to that degree.… punishment will be exacted to redound to the benefit of that victim. Thus, a crucial focus of punishment will be to force the criminal to repay, make restitution to, the victim.

For a New Liberty, pp. 107–08

… the “liberal” concept of indeterminate sentence—of sentencing someone not for his objective crime but on the State’s judgment of his psyche or spirit of cooperation—constitutes tyranny and dehumanization in its worst form. It is a tyranny, furthermore, which encourages the prisoner into deceptive behavior to try to fool the State psychiatrist—whom he perceives quite correctly as his enemy—into thinking that he is “cured” so that he can get out of this incarceration. To call this process “therapy” or “rehabilitation” is surely cruel mockery of these terms. It is far more principled, as well as more truly humane, to treat every prisoner in accordance with objective criminal law.

For a New Liberty, p. 114

Looting is certainly unjustifiable, but by what right does the State move in and shoot looters? Shooting amounts to capital punishment, and by any moral standards, death as a punishment for looting is so excessive and barbaric a punishment that it amounts to criminal murder of the looter-victim. A criminal only forfeits the rights which he takes away from another person; and therefore capital punishment for any crime less than murder is itself a criminal murder.

Left and Right, p. 495

… a libertarian legal order moves only against people after they have proceeded to commit a crime, and not before.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 15

You do not machine-run someone for stealing an apple; this is punishment so far beyond the proportion that “fits the crime” as to be itself far more criminal than the original infraction.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 25

The libertarian, of course, has at the center of his being the call for freedom for everyone, with, however, one vital exception: the criminal. In the libertarian creed, the criminal deserves not freedom but punishment, a punishment, to be sure, that does not go beyond the extent to which he has deprived some innocent victim of the latter’s liberty.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 179

… a libertarian society does not mean the total absence of coercion but only the absence of coercion against noncriminals. Those who invade the rights of others by violence deserve their proper check and punishment by the force of law.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, pp. 214–15

… the libertarian creed states that an aggressor loses his rights to the extent that he has deprived victims of theirs. Hence, it is perfectly proper to exact capital punishment on murderers, who have deprived victims of their right to life, or to exact a lesser punishment which is in some way proportionate to other crimes. It is true that the focus of punishment in a libertarian world would be different than it is now, for the focus would be on forcing the criminal to recompense the victim rather than on exacting such recompense to a meaningless “society” as a whole. But force against the criminal, isolating him from potential victims, forcing him to work to repay the victim, etc., would still remain, and therefore a prison system might remain as well. Certainly there is nothing in the libertarian creed to rule out the existence of prisons, and much to imply that they will still be here. And, again, since criminals lose their rights proportionally to their crimes, they will be subject to rule by prison authorities as they are now.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 244

It is true that prisons are now government owned and that this would change in the purely libertarian society.… a libertarian world would not be devoid of prisons, but would have more efficient ones run on a competitive private basis. Until the day when the government divests itself of the compulsory monopoly of the post, roads, and police, therefore, we must continue to make use of their services, and the same applies to prisons as well.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 244

… the prime focus of punishment must certainly be restitution to the victim, forcing the criminal to restore his ill-gotten loot to the person he injured. This, indeed, was the prime focus of punishment in ancient times, and it is only with the rise of the modern State that the focus of punishment became payment of a so-called “debt” to “society,” while the hapless victim is forced to pay taxes for the support of his persecutor in jail. …

My contention, however, is that simple restitution is not enough. …

… Hold, instead, that any criminal loses his own rights to the extent that he has aggressed against another; in other words, that the victim (or his heirs) can exact a punishment up to whatever may be considered equivalent or proportionate to the extent of the original crime. The attempt to do this is summed up in the famous legal maxim: “let the punishment fit the crime.”

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 267

The idea that the death penalty never deters murder is almost self-evident hogwash. The abolition of the death penalty, was philosophic left-sentimentality, as well as juridical nonsense. Philosophically, a person who murders another forfeits his own right to life, on the principle that he who deprives others of rights deserves to lose his in proportion. Juridically, to say that the Constitutional prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibits the death penalty flies in the face of the common use of that penalty at the time the Constitution was written, and after it was established. No Founding Father issued a protest of alleged unconstitutionality. The Supreme Court argument that the death penalty is now “unusual” is purely a product of the success of left-wing jurists in recent years in stalling and blocking the use of capital punishment. Allow the death penalty to flow freely in cases of murder and the punishment would soon no longer be “unusual.”

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 458

… punishing the guilty, important though it be, is far less important for a libertarian than another principle: protecting the innocent. The innocent may not be injured or murdered in order to apprehend the guilty.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 902

There must be no preventive punishment, no preemptive first strike of any kind. Any such action is itself criminal aggression against the rights of others.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1182

The first consideration in the punishment of the aggressor against property in the free market is the forced return of the equivalent property.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 180

Every legal system needs some sort of socially-agreed-upon cutoff point, a point at which judicial procedure stops and punishment against the convicted criminal begins.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1053

PURCHASING POWER

For overall prices or the “price level,” the relevant supply and demand is the supply of and demand for money …

Classical Economics, p. 167

… the value of money, as of all other commodities, is determined by the interaction of its supply and its demand. Its value, its purchasing power on the market—moves directly with its demand and inversely with its supply.

Classical Economics, p. 38

… the key to what makes prices high or low is the relationship between the supply of goods available and the supply of money which can be used to purchase them. Suppose, for example, that by some magic process, the quantity of money available in the country doubles overnight. The supply of goods remains the same, for nothing has really happened to lower or raise them. But then we will all enter the market with twice as many dollars burning a hole in our pocket as compared to yesterday. And if consumer tastes remain about the same, this means that twice as much money will be bidding for the same amount of goods, and all their prices will approximately double …

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 230

… the money price of any good discloses what its “purchasing power” on the market will be.… The purchasing power of a stock of any good is equal to the amount of money it can “buy” on the market and is therefore directly determined by the money price that it can obtain. As a matter of fact, the purchasing power of a unit of any quantity of a good is equal to its money price. …

… The purchasing power of the monetary unit consists of an array of all the particular goods-prices in the society in terms of the unit.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 237–38

The purchasing power of money in terms of all other commodities is continually changing, and there is no way to measure such changes.

… there is no precise method of measuring or even identifying the purchasing power of money and its changes.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 300–01

… this power of the monetary unit to purchase quantities of various goods is called the purchasing power of the monetary unit. This purchasing power of money consists of the array of all the given money prices on the market at any particular time, considered in terms of the prices of goods per unit of money.… today’s purchasing power of the monetary unit is determined by today’s marginal utilities of money and of goods, expressed in demand schedules, while today’s marginal utility of money is directly dependent on yesterday’s purchasing power of money.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 315

The purchasing power of the monetary unit will also be equalized throughout the world.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 620

The purchasing power of money is therefore determined by two factors: the total demand schedule for money to hold and the stock of money in existence.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 762

… an increase in the stock of money leads to a fall in the PPM, and a decrease in the stock of money leads to a rise in the PPM. However, there is no simple and uneventful rise and fall in the PPM. For a change in the stock of money is not automatically simultaneous. New money enters the system at some specific point and then becomes diffused in this way throughout the economy. The individuals who receive the new money first are the greatest gainers from the increased money; those who receive it last are the greatest losers …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 813–14

… overall prices are determined by similar supply-and-demand forces that determine the prices of individual products.

Mystery of Banking, p. 29

… the price or the purchasing power of the dollar is the inverse of whatever we can construct as the price level, or the level of overall prices.

… the PPM, or the purchasing power of the dollar, is an array of alternatives inverse to the above prices.

Mystery of Banking, p. 30

Purchasing power of the dollar is therefore the inverse of the price level.

Mystery of Banking, p. 31

… the price or purchasing power of the dollar varies directly with the demand for money and inversely with the supply. Or, to turn it around, the price level varies directly with the supply of money and inversely with the demand.

Mystery of Banking, p. 35

… prices, overall, can change for only two reasons: If the supply of money increases, prices will rise; if the supply falls, prices will fall. If the demand for money increases, prices will fall (PPM rises); if the demand for money declines, prices will rise (PPM falls). The purchasing power of the dollar varies inversely with the supply of dollars, and directly with the demand. Overall prices are determined by the same supply-and-demand forces we are all familiar with in individual prices.

Mystery of Banking, p. 41

… the “price of money” is an array of the infinite number of exchange-ratios for all the various goods on the market.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 23

What determines the price of money? The same forces that determine all prices on the market—that venerable but eternally true law: “supply and demand.” … An increase in the supply of money will tend to lower its “price;” an increase in the demand for money will raise it.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 23

… with people valuing cash balances more highly, the demand for money increases, and prices fall. As a result, the same total sum of cash balances now confers a higher “real” balance, i.e., it is higher in proportion to the prices of goods—to the work that money has to perform. In short, the effective cash balances of the public have increased. Conversely, a fall in the demand for cash will cause increased spending and higher prices. The public’s desire for lower effective cash balances will be satisfied by the necessity for given total cash to perform more work.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 30

Freedom of prices necessarily implies freedom of movement for the purchasing power of the money-unit; it would be impossible to use force and interfere with movements in the value of money without simultaneously crippling freedom of prices for all goods.

What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 33

The “price” of money is its purchasing power in terms of all goods in the economy, and this is determined by its supply, and by every individual’s demand for money. Any attempt by government to fix the price will interfere with the satisfaction of people’s demands for money.

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