Rothbard A to Z
RACISM
RACISM
… irrational discrimination in employment tends to be minimal in the free market, for the simple reason that the employer also suffers from such discriminatory practice. In the free market, every worker tends to earn the value of his product, his “marginal productivity.” Similarly, everyone tends to fill the job he can best accomplish, to work at his most productive efforts. Employers who persist in paying below a person’s marginal product will hurt themselves by losing their best workers and hence losing profits for themselves.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 160
“Affirmative action” decrees are an obvious way of compelling discrimination against males or other groups in employment, admissions, or wherever this implicit quota system is applied.
For a New Liberty, p. 132
“Discrimination,” in the sense of choosing favorably or unfavorably in accordance with whatever criteria a person may employ, is an integral part of freedom of choice, and hence of a free society. But of course in the free market any such discrimination is costly, and will have to be paid for by the property owner concerned.
For a New Liberty, p. 255
… anytime someone practices such “discrimination” in the free market, he must bear the costs, either of losing profits or of losing services as a consumer.
For a New Liberty, p. 256
… anti-discrimination laws of any sort are evil, aggress against the genuine rights of person and property, and are uneconomic since they cripple efficient business decisions.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 27
… “anti-discrimination” or even affirmative action “rights” in public services sets the conditions for their admittedly monstrous expansion into the private realm.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 29
Abolish affirmative action …
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 41
Wielding the fearsome brand of “Anti-Semite” as a powerful weapon, the professional Anti-Anti-Semite is able, in this day and age, to wound and destroy anyone he disagrees with by implanting this label indelibly in the public mind. How can one argue against this claim, always made with hysteria and insufferable self-righteousness? To reply “I am not an anti-Semite” is as feeble and unconvincing as Richard Nixon’s famous declaration that “I am not a crook.”
So far, Organized Anti-Anti-Semitism has been able to destroy; to drive out of public life, anyone who receives the “anti-Semite” treatment.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 42
… it is theoretically possible to criticize Israel and not be an anti-Semite.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 44
… the best definition of an anti-Semite is simple and conclusive: a person who hates all Jews.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 49
… the only rational definition of an anti-Semite is one who advocates political, legal, economic, or social disabilities to be levied against Jews …
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 50
I am no fan of affirmative action in any sense.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 352
Every property owner should have the absolute right to sell, hire, or lease his money or other property to anyone whom he chooses, which means he has the absolute right to “discriminate” all he damn pleases.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 372
“Freedom” must mean the freedom to discriminate.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 373
What has to be done is to repudiate “civil rights” and anti-discrimination laws totally; and in the meanwhile, on a separate but parallel track, try to privatize as much and as fully as we can.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 375
It is a ridiculous liberal cliché that blacks are just like whites but with a different skin color …
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 379
… individuals, ethnic groups, and races differ among themselves in intelligence and in many other traits … intelligence, as well as less controversial traits of temperament, are in large part hereditary.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 383
… the egalitarian myth has been the major ideological groundwork for the welfare state, and, in its racial aspect, for the entire vast, ever expanding civil rights-affirmative action-setaside-quota aspect of the welfare state. The recognition of inheritance and natural inequalities among races as well as among individuals knocks the props out from under the welfare state system.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 390
… integration cannot be achieved by law and by coercion; it must first come willingly into the hearts of men.
Left and Right, p. 491
Libertarians are individualists, and believe that candidates for employment or admission to schools or whatever should be judged strictly on the individuals’ own merits or demerits. Libertarians believe that government should have no role in coercing private institutions on who to hire, promote, or admit, and therefore we must stand foursquare against the mammoth affirmative action program that government has been pushing for many years. And libertarians believe that governmental institutions, such as schools, where they (unfortunately) exist, should not be able to discriminate for or against one or another group of taxpayers.… A private firm or college should be able to discriminate or not on any criterion (rational or irrational) that it wishes, without being coerced by government.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 789
Free-market capitalism is a marvelous antidote for racism. In a free market, employers who refuse to hire productive black workers are hurting their own profits and the competitive position of their own company.
Making Economic Sense, p. 385
All “civil rights,” disabilities “rights,” regulations, etc., should be abolished.
Making Economic Sense, p. 492
RATIONALITY
… man always acts by using reason to improve his lot; so that his action is always “rational,” that is, his actions are always beneficial, always necessarily equilibrating ex ante. And the market mechanism is also such that forecasts tend, in general, to pan out as true, so that ex ante decisions become validated ex post. But choice, and action, are always ex ante, and ex ante action on the market is always equilibrating.
Economic Controversies, p. 184
… man is a rational and social animal.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 155
… rational expectations theory violates the real world …
Making Economic Sense, p. 28
The market does have a rational standard: the highest money incomes and highest profits, for these can be achieved only through maximum service of consumer desires.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 750
REASON
Man is born with no innate knowledge of what ends to choose or how to use which means to attain them. Having no inborn knowledge of how to survive and prosper, he must learn what ends and means to adopt, and he is liable to make errors along the way. But only his reasoning mind can show him his goals and how to attain them.
Economic Controversies, p. 4
… it is self-contradictory to use reason in any attempt to deny the validity of reason as a means of attaining knowledge.
Economic Controversies, p. 7
… since every man possesses the faculty of reason, he can employ right reason to understand the truths of the natural law. The important implication for politics is that the natural law, the just and proper moral law discovered by man’s right reason, can and should be used to engage in a moral critique of the positive man-made laws of any state or polis.
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 21
… ends can also be apprehended by reason as either objectively good or bad for man.
Ethics of Liberty, pp. 6–7
… man, “the rational animal,” possesses reason …
Ethics of Liberty, p. 7
Man’s reason is objective, i.e., it can be employed by all men to yield truths about the world. To ask what is man’s nature is to invite the answer. Go thou and study and find out!
Ethics of Liberty, p. 10
… reason can be superior to the passions.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 15
And so man, not having innate, instinctive, automatically acquired knowledge of his proper ends, or of the means by which they can be achieved, must learn them, and to learn them he must exercise his powers of observation, abstraction, thought: in short, his reason. Reason is man’s instrument of knowledge and of his very survival; the use and expansion of his mind, the acquisition of knowledge about what is best for him and how he can achieve it, is the uniquely human method of existence and of achievement. And this is uniquely man’s nature; man, as Aristotle pointed out, is the rational animal, or to be more precise, the rational being. Through his reason, the individual man observes both the facts and ways of the external world, and the facts of his own consciousness, including his emotions: in short, he employs both extraspection and introspection.
Ethics of Liberty, pp. 30–31
Only reason can build a valid and consistent ideology, and only reason can strip unsparingly the veil of custom and habit and myth from dominant ideas and institutions and hold them up to the harsh light of truth. That reason is cold, impersonal and unconcerned is a widespread myth; indeed, nothing is stronger than reason for redoubling one’s passionate commitment and devotion to the cause of truth.
Left and Right, p. 7
The time has come for us to make a stand for reason.… We must raise the banner of Liberty and Reason, Now and Forever, one and inseparable!
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 99
We must be guided by reason and by libertarian principle …
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 131
What we need to return to is the classical Aristotelian-Thomist concept of free will as self-determination, and emphasizing the freedom to reason.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 457
… reason is in fact the very opposite of coercion … force and persuasion are antitheses …
Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 64
To deprecate human reason by saying that none of us is or can be omniscient is absurd, for it takes an impossible standard as the judge of a possible and real condition. All of our knowledge we get from the exercise of our reason; to say that no man can be God and know everything is to take an irrational standard of evaluation.
Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 68
Man is born a tabula rasa; he must learn how to choose the ends that are proper for him and the means that he must adopt to attain them. All this must be done by his reason.
Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 123
RECESSION
The “boom,” then, is actually a period of wasteful misinvestment. It is the time when errors are made, due to bank credit’s tampering with the free market.… The “depression” is actually the process by which the economy adjusts to the wastes and errors of the boom, and reestablishes efficient service of consumer desires. The adjustment process consists in rapid liquidation of the wasteful investments.… the depression is the process by which the economy returns to the efficient service of consumers. In short, and this is a highly important point to grasp, the depression is the “recovery” process, and the end of the depression heralds the return to normal, and to optimum efficiency. The depression, then, far from being an evil scourge, is the necessary and beneficial return of the economy to normal after the distortions imposed by the boom. The boom, then, requires a “bust.”
America’s Great Depression, p. 12
Hyperinflation, on any count, is far worse than any depression …
America’s Great Depression, p. 23
Economic theory demonstrates that only governmental inflation can generate a boom-and-bust cycle, and that the depression will be prolonged and aggravated by inflationist and other interventionary measures.
America’s Great Depression, p. 336
The depression is the painful but necessary process by which the free market sloughs off the excesses and errors of the boom and reestablishes the market economy in its function of efficient service to the mass of consumers.
Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, p. 36
The “depression” is thus seen—even more than in the Ricardian theory—as the necessary and healthy period in which the market economy sloughs off and liquidates the unsound, uneconomic investments of the boom, and reestablishes those proportions between consumption and investment that are truly desired by the consumers. The depression is the painful but necessary process by which the free market rids itself of the excesses and errors of the boom and reestablishes the market economy in its function of efficient service to the mass of consumers.
For a New Liberty, pp. 235–36
Recessions unhampered by government almost invariably work themselves into recovery within a year or 18 months.
History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 425
… the recession is the healthy and necessary response of the economy to the excesses and malinvestments of the preceding inflationary boom.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 99
… any hint of recession causes the government to panic and turn on the inflationary taps once again.… given any inflationary boom, a recession is painful but necessary, in order to return the economy to a sound state.
The political prescription that flows from the Hayekian theory is, of course, the diametric opposite of the Keynesian: stop the artificial inflationary boom, and allow the recession to proceed as fast as possible with its work of readjustment. Postponement and government attempts to stop or interfere with the recession process will only drag out and intensify the agony, and lead to our current and probably future turmoil of inflation combined with lengthy recession and depression.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 516
… the faster the depression is allowed to do its work and the less government interferes with that work, the sooner it will be over, and the stage set for a healthy free-market recovery in the structure of investment and production.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 549
… recessions are not irrational acts of God nor random events. They perform a vital function: washing out the unsound malinvestments of the preceding inflationary boom, and redirecting land, labor, and capital to their most efficient uses in the service of consumers. The longer and the more intense the distorting inflationary boom, the greater the work that the cleansing, corrective recession will have to do. This is the insight of the “Austrian” theory of business cycles. But this means that the best that can be done about a recession is for the government to keep hands off—to allow the recession to do its crucial work as quickly as possible. If the government intervenes to allay, check, or stop the workings of the recession, it will only transform a short, sharp recession into a chronic, stagnating depression. The choice is either: transitory acute infection, or a chronic, grinding debilitating disease.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, pp. 1074–75
… the best leading indicator of imminent deep recession is not the indices of the National Bureau; it is the burgeoning of the idea that recessions are a thing of the past.
Making Economic Sense, p. 260
… recessions will be around to plague us so long as there are bouts of inflationary credit expansion which bring them into being.
Making Economic Sense, p. 260
… the bigger and the longer the boom, the greater and deeper will tend to be the recession necessary to wash out the distortions and malinvestment of the inflationary boom, brought on by bank credit expansion.
Making Economic Sense, p. 265
Look fellas: every recession is going to be inflationary from now on.
Making Economic Sense, p. 265
Once an inflationary boom is launched, a recession is not only inevitable but is also the only way of correcting the distortions of the boom and returning the economy to health. The quicker a recession comes the better, and the more it is allowed to perform its corrective work, the sooner full recovery will arrive.
Making Economic Sense, p. 336
… the depression phase is actually the recovery phase.… The trouble occurs during the boom, when malinvestments and distortions take place; the crisis-depression phase is the curative period, after people have been forced to recognize the malinvestments that have occurred. The depression period, therefore, is the necessary recovery period; it is the time when bad investments are liquidated and mistaken entrepreneurs leave the market … The depression period ends when the free-market equilibrium has been restored and expansionary distortion eliminated.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1000–01
RECOVERY
… the only proper course of action is to avoid governmental interference with the depression, and thereby to allow the depression-adjustment process to complete itself as rapidly as possible, and thus to restore a healthy and prosperous economic system.… Laissez-faire—a strict policy of nonintervention by the government—is the only course that can assure a rapid recovery in any depression crisis.
America’s Great Depression, pp. xxviii–xxix
In a depression, it is particularly important that the government’s fiscal burden on the economy be reduced. In the first place, it is especially important at such a time to free the economy from the heavy load of government’s acquiring resources, and second, a lowering of the burden will tend to shift total spending so as to increase investment and lower consumption, thus providing a double impetus toward curing a depression.
America’s Great Depression, p. 254
… the greater the credit expansion and the longer it lasts, the longer will the boom last. The boom will end when bank credit expansion finally stops. Evidently, the longer the boom goes on the more wasteful the errors committed, and the longer and more severe will be the necessary depression readjustment.
America’s Great Depression, p. 13
… what can help a depression is not more consumption, but, on the contrary, less consumption and more savings (and, concomitantly, more investment).
America’s Great Depression, p. 17
If government wishes to see a depression ended as quickly as possible, and the economy returned to normal prosperity, what course should it adopt? The first and clearest injunction is: don’t interfere with the market’s adjustment process. The more the government intervenes to delay the market’s adjustment, the longer and more grueling the depression will be, and the more difficult will be the road to complete recovery. Government hampering aggravates and perpetuates the depression.
America’s Great Depression, p. 19
The most important canon of sound government policy in a depression, then, is to keep itself from interfering in the adjustment process.
America’s Great Depression, p. 21
There is one thing the government can do positively, however: it can drastically lower its relative role in the economy, slashing its own expenditures and taxes, particularly taxes that interfere with saving and investment. Reducing its tax-spending level will automatically shift the societal saving-investment-consumption ratio in favor of saving and investment, thus greatly lowering the time required for returning to a prosperous economy. Reducing taxes that bear most heavily on savings and investment will further lower social time preferences. Furthermore, depression is a time of economic strain. Any reduction of taxes, or of any regulations interfering with the free market, will stimulate healthy economic activity; any increase in taxes or other intervention will depress the economy further.
America’s Great Depression, p. 22
If government wishes to alleviate, rather than aggravate, a depression, its only valid course is laissez-faire—to leave the economy alone. Only if there is no interference, direct or threatened, with prices, wage rates, and business liquidation will the necessary adjustment proceed with smooth dispatch. Any propping up of shaky positions postpones liquidation and aggravates unsound conditions. Propping up wage rates creates mass unemployment, and bolstering prices perpetuates and creates unsold surpluses. Moreover, a drastic cut in the government budget—both in taxes and expenditures—will of itself speed adjustment by changing social choice toward more saving and investment relative to consumption. For government spending, whatever the label attached to it, is solely consumption; any cut in the budget therefore raises the investment-consumption ratio in the economy and allows more rapid validation of originally wasteful and loss-yielding projects. Hence, the proper injunction to government in a depression is cut the budget and leave the economy strictly alone.
America’s Great Depression, p. 185
… generating another inflation to end the recession will simply set the stage for another, and deeper, recession, later on … business cycles are generated by the inflationary policies of government … once underway, the best thing that government can do is to leave the economy alone. In short, the Austrian doctrine is the only consistent espousal of laissez-faire …
Economic Controversies, p. 237
The sooner the depression-readjustment is gotten over with, the better. This means, also, that the government must never try to prop up unsound business situations; it must never bail out or lend money to business firms in trouble. Doing this will simply prolong the agony and convert a sharp and quick depression phase into a lingering and chronic disease. The government must never try to prop up wage rates or prices of producers’ goods; doing so will prolong and delay indefinitely the completion of the depression- adjustment process; it will cause indefinite and prolonged depression and mass unemployment in the vital capital goods industries. The government must not try to inflate again, in order to get out of the depression. For even if this reinflation succeeds, it will only sow greater trouble later on.
Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, pp. 38–39
… the Austrian prescription for the business cycle will be: First, if we are in a boom period, the government and its banks must cease inflating immediately. It is true that this cessation of artificial stimulant will inevitably bring the inflationary boom to an end, and will inaugurate the inevitable recession or depression. But the longer the government delays this process, the harsher the necessary readjustments will have to be. For the sooner the depression readjustment is gotten over with, the better. This also means that the government must never try to delay the depression process; the depression must be allowed to work itself out as quickly as possible, so that real recovery can begin.… The government must never try to prop up wage rates or prices … The government must not try to inflate again in order to get out of the depression.
For a New Liberty, p. 239
… the heart of the Austrian theory of the business cycle is that the inflationary boom leads to over-investment of the “higher orders of production,” an over-expansion in capital goods’ industries. What is needed during a recession, and what the recession accomplishes, is a shift of resources from the swollen capital goods, to the underinvested consumers’ goods industries. What impels this necessary readjustment is a fall of prices in the capital goods industries relative to consumer goods, or, to look at it another way, a rise in consumer goods’ prices relative to other prices. The beginning of a recession is marked by wage and cost pressure upon profits in the capital goods industries, with selling prices in these industries relatively falling, and the relative rise in prices and therefore in profits in consumer goods inducing resources to move into these latter industries. The process ends with the end of, and therefore recovery from, the recession.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 122
More saving and investment in relation to consumption is an Austrian remedy for easing a recession …
Making Economic Sense, p. 179
The sooner a recession comes, the fewer the unsound investments that the recession has to liquidate, and the sooner the recession will be over. The important point about a recession is for the government not to interfere, not to inflate, not to regulate, and to allow the recession to work its curative way as quickly as possible. Interfering with the recession, either by inflating or regulating, can only prolong the recession and make it worse …
Making Economic Sense, pp. 180–81
… there is no school of economic thought—be it New Classical, Keynesian, monetarist, or Austrian that advocates raising taxes in a recession. Indeed, both Keynesians and Austrians would advocate cutting taxes in a recession, albeit for different reasons.
Making Economic Sense, p. 236
… contraction of bank credit is always a healthy reaction to previous inflationary bank credit intervention in the market. Contractionary calls upon the banks to redeem their swollen liabilities in cash is precisely the way in which the market and consumers can reassert control over the banking system and force it to become sound and non-inflationary. A market-driven credit contraction speeds up the recovery process and helps to wash out unsound loans and unsound banks.
Making Economic Sense, p. 252
Once a recession has taken hold, the government cannot inflate out of it; government can only delay recovery, not hasten it. This is a vital truth of Austrian economics that has been absorbed by virtually no one. Once a recession is underway, Keynesian-monetarist type stimulation: cheap money, accelerating the money supply, etc., can only make things worse.
Making Economic Sense, p. 267
It should be clear that any governmental interference with the depression process can only prolong it, thus making things worse from almost everyone’s point of view. Since the depression process is the recovery process, any halting or slowing down of the process impedes the advent of recovery. The depression readjustments must work themselves out before recovery can be complete. The more these readjustments are delayed, the longer the depression will have to last, and the longer complete recovery is postponed.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1001
The only way to hasten the curative process of the depression is for people to save and invest more and consume less …
… prolonging the boom by ever larger doses of credit expansion will have only one result: to make the inevitably ensuing depression longer and more grueling. The larger the scope of malinvestment and error in the boom, the greater and longer the task of readjustment in the depression. The way to prevent a depression, then, is simple: avoid starting a boom. And to avoid starting a boom all that is necessary is to pursue a truly free-market policy in money, i.e., a policy of 100-percent specie reserves for banks and governments.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1002
… when deflation takes place first on the loan market, i.e., as credit contraction by the banks—and this is almost always the case—this will have the beneficial effect of speeding up the depression-adjustment process. For credit contraction creates higher price differentials. And the essence of the required adjustment is to return to higher price differentials, i.e., a higher “natural” rate of interest.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1005–06
REGRET
… in catallactics, the past is of no interest.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 170
… the rational course is not to bewail the past …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 642
REGULATIONS
Any statute or administrative regulation necessarily makes actions illegal that are not overt initiations of crimes or torts according to libertarian theory. Every statute or administrative rule is therefore illegitimate and itself invasive and a criminal interference with the property rights of noncriminals.
Economic Controversies, p. 406
… government regulation itself is the cause of the problem.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 574
… secrecy is a great spur to competitive rivalry. If business firms can somehow engineer the coercing of publicity about their rivals, they will be able to know much more about their competitors’ affairs, their pricing and production policies, and hence cartel agreements, formal or informal, become far more enforceable and active competition may be crippled. Secondly, the cost of making reports and obeying government regulations puts an extra burden on small, new, and innovative competitors and hampers their chances of competing with existing and more staid large firms.
Progressive Era, p. 212
The paternalistic idea that government exists to protect everyone from their own folly also mean[s] … regulation to keep out some usually new marginal promoters for the benefit of older and stronger competitors.
Progressive Era, p. 216
Government meat inspection … lures the public into always thinking the food is safe and reduces competitive pressures to improve meat quality.
Progressive Era, p. 239
One advantage to imposing uniform sanitary conditions on all meatpackers is that the burden of the increased costs would fall more heavily on the smaller than on the bigger plants, thereby crippling the smaller competitors …
Progressive Era, pp. 239–40
Statistics is a vital, though much underplayed, requisite of modern government. Government could not even presume to control, regulate, or plan any portion of the economy without the service of its statistical bureaus and agencies. Deprive government of its statistics and it would be a blind and helpless giant, with no idea whatever of what to do or where to do it.
Progressive Era, p. 436
RELIGION
In contrast to the non-militant variety, which expresses a simple disbelief in God’s existence, militant atheism seems to believe implicitly in God’s existence, but to hate Him and to wage war for His destruction.
Classical Economics, p. 340
Christianity is a deeply individualistic creed …
Classical Economics, p. 350
At the root of Catholicism as a religion is that God can be approached or apprehended through all the faculties of man, not simply through faith but through reason and the senses. Protestantism, and especially Calvinism, sternly put God outside man’s faculties …
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, pp. 128–29
The well-known theme of “separation of Church and State” was but one of many interrelated motifs that could be summed up as “separation of the economy from the State,” “separation of speech and press from the State,” “separation of land from the State,” “separation of war and military affairs from the State,” indeed, the separation of the State from virtually everything.
For a New Liberty, p. 3
… to ban even voluntary prayer from the public schools, or to ban the teaching of religion, is a pettifogging willful misconstruction of the text and of the intent of the framers …
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 31
… public schools must allow prayer …
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 41
It is high time for Christians to stop being shamefaced.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 279
… some religion is going to be dominant in every society.… There is no getting around this basic truth of human nature.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 365
… I see nothing at all wrong with any religious tradition, among which Roman Catholicism is outstanding, which endorses this rational moral order and attempts to encase it in a theistic framework.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 163
… in the field of ethics and philosophy in general, it is simply an empirical fact that the greatest thinkers, for two thousand years, have been Christian. …
… The Christian ethic is, in the words of the old hymn, a Rock of Ages, and it is at least incumbent upon the individual to think long and hard before he abandons that Rock lest he sink into the quagmire of the capricious and the bizarre.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 225
… the Christian concept of forgiveness … rests ineluctably on genuine repentance, on full confession of moral wrongdoing, and on throwing oneself on the mercy of one’s previous victims.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 493
… an ethical concept is scarcely enough to qualify philosophically as a “religion.” … “Religion” requires an ontological affirmation of the existence of a certain type of supernatural Creator. Whatever ethical concepts may flow from such ontology, it is the ontological concept—the affirmation of the existence of a certain type of God—which must be dominant and axiomatic in the religious system. Since the libertarian ethic is not necessarily grounded in ontological supernaturalism, it is not a religion …
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 746
Shun as the plague all cults and gurus …
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 853
The Judeo-Christian heritage is quite correct in refusing to forgive a sinner until he convincingly demonstrates that he has repented his evil ways.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 971
The Christian tradition is correct: Forgiveness can come only after genuine repentance.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1087
Christ was a great individualist …
Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 55
REPUTATION
Reputation is strictly a function of the subjective opinions of other minds, and they have the absolute right to their own opinions whatever they may be. Hence, outlawing defamation is itself a gross invasion of the defamer’s right of freedom of speech, which is a subset of his property right in his own person.
Economic Controversies, p. 375
We can, of course, readily concede the gross immorality of spreading false libels about another person. But we must, nevertheless, maintain the legal right of anyone to do so.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 127
… someone’s “reputation” is not and cannot be “owned” by him, since it is purely a function of the subjective feelings and attitudes held by other people. But since no one can ever truly “own” the mind and attitude of another, this means that no one can literally have a property right in his “reputation.” A person’s reputation fluctuates all the time, in accordance with the attitudes and opinions of the rest of the population. Hence, speech attacking someone cannot be an invasion of his property right and therefore should not be subject to restriction or legal penalty.
It is, of course, immoral to level false charges against another person …
For a New Liberty, p. 117
No man is allowed to own the body or mind of another, that being the essence of slavery. This condition completely overthrows the basis for a law of defamation, i.e., libel (written defamation) or slander (oral defamation). For the basis of outlawing defamation is that every man has a “property in his own reputation” and that therefore any malicious or untruthful attack on him or his character (or even more, a truthful attack!) injures his reputation and therefore should be punished. However, a man has no such objective property as “reputation.” His reputation is simply what others think of him, i.e., it is purely a function of subjective thoughts of others. But a man cannot own the minds or thoughts of others.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 182
Every individual in the free society has a right to ownership of his own self and to the exclusive use of his own property. Included in his property is his name, the linguistic label which is uniquely his and is identified with him. A name is an essential part of a man’s identity and therefore of his property.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 670–71
REVOLUTION
… any revolt against a tyrannical state, other things being equal, is ipso facto a libertarian move. This is all the more true because even a revolution that fails … gives the people a training ground and a tradition of revolution that may later develop into a revolution more extensively and clearly founded on libertarian motives. If cherished in later tradition, a revolution will decrease the awe in which the constituted authority is held by the populace, and in that way will increase the chance of a later revolt against tyranny.
Conceived in Liberty v. 1, p. 105; p. 95
… the proper path to victory for a people’s revolution against a well-armed state force is guerrilla warfare, not a foolhardy rush to open confrontation and instant defeat.
Conceived in Liberty v. 3, p. 344; p. 1108
Since it is crucial to the success of a revolution to keep the active support of the masses, coercion must be held to the necessary minimum, both for daily mass support and so as not to provoke enemy reprisals against the people.
Conceived in Liberty v. 3, p. 344; p. 1108
No revolution has ever sprung forth, fully blown and fully armed like Athena, from the brow of existing society; no revolution has ever emerged from a vacuum. No revolution has ever been born out of ideas alone, but only from a long chain of abuses and a long history of preparation, ideological and institutional. And no revolution, even the most radical, from the English Revolution of the seventeenth century to the many Third World revolutions of the twentieth, has ever come into being except in reaction to increased oppression by the existing State apparatus.
Conceived in Liberty v. 4, p. 441; p. 1555
Revolution is a mighty, complex, long-run process, a complicated movement with many vital parts and functions. It is the pamphleteer writing in his study, it is the journalist, the political club, the agitator, the organizer, the campus activist, the theoretician, the philanthropist. It is all this and much more.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 191
Now there are crucial and vital differences between inter-State warfare on the one hand and revolutions against the State or conflicts between private individuals on the other. One vital difference is the shift in geography. In a revolution, the conflict takes place within the same geographical area: both the minions of the State and the revolutionaries inhabit the same territory. Inter-State warfare, on the other hand, takes place between two groups, each having a monopoly over its own geographical area …
… Neither a revolutionary group nor a State combating revolution, for example, can use nuclear weapons against the other. …
… it is possible for revolutionaries to pinpoint their targets and confine them to their State enemies, and thus avoid aggressing against innocent people, pinpointing is far less possible in an inter-State war.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 192
All State wars, therefore, involve increased aggression against the State’s own taxpayers, and almost all State wars (all, in modern warfare) involve the maximum aggression (murder) against the innocent civilians ruled by the enemy State. On the other hand, revolutions are generally financed voluntarily and may pinpoint their violence to the State rulers, and private conflicts may confine their violence to the actual criminals. We must, therefore, conclude that, while some revolutions and some private conflicts may be legitimate, State wars are always to be condemned.
Ethics of Liberty, pp. 193
… revolutionary guerrilla war can be far more consistent with libertarian principles than any inter-State war.… Guerrilla war returns us to the ancient and honorable virtue of pinpointing the enemy and sparing innocent civilians.
For a New Liberty, pp. 336–37
… every State in history, with no exception, has ruthlessly fought to suppress every revolution against its rule.
Left and Right, p. 450
All revolutionary movements proceed in zigs and zags, with revolutionary periods succeeded by periods of counter-revolution and falling-back.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 99
Revolution per se is both moral and aesthetically pleasing …
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 147
… any revolution, battling as it does the professional vested interest of the State, and needing to lift the mass of the people out of their accustomed inertia, must have the active support of a large majority of the population in order to succeed.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 522
… if the government transgresses against rights of person and property, then it is proper to rebel against it …
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 786
… every State in history, with no exception that I know of, has ruthlessly fought to suppress any revolution against its rule.
Strictly Confidential, p. 338
… every state suppresses revolutions against its power …
Strictly Confidential, p. 339
RICARDO, DAVID
… Ricardo made the value paradox and the unfortunate split between use- and exchange-value the key to his value theory.
Classical Economics, p. 19
Ricardo adopted [Say’s Law].
Classical Economics, p. 27
Ricardo … [took] all the most egregious errors in Smith, throwing out all qualifications and contradictions, then building his system upon what was left. The worst of Smith was magnified and intensified.
Classical Economics, p. 82
… his writing style was inordinately crabbed and obtuse.… Ricardo was undoubtedly one of the worst and most turgid literary stylists in the history of economic thought.
Classical Economics, p. 82
… entrepreneurship could not exist in Ricardo’s world of long-run equilibrium …
Classical Economics, p. 82
Ricardo, even more than Smith, totally leaves out the entrepreneur. There can be no role for the entrepreneur, after all, if everyone is always in long-run equilibrium and there is never risk or uncertainty.
Classical Economics, p. 86
… Ricardo had a cost theory of value or price …
Classical Economics, p. 87
While Ricardo formally admitted that supply and demand determine day-to-day market pricing, he tossed that aside as of no consequence, and concentrated solely on long-run equilibrium, i.e., “natural” price … Utility Ricardo brusquely disposed of as ultimately necessary to production but of no influence whatever on value or price …
… Prices of goods are determined by their costs, i.e., by the quantity of labor hours embodied in them …
Classical Economics, pp. 88–89
The Ricardian socialist call for turning over all of the product to labor follows directly from the Ricardian system …
Classical Economics, p. 90
… he oddly enough cleaved strongly, and more firmly than Adam Smith, to laissez-faire. Probably the reason was his strong conviction that virtually any kind of government intervention could only make matters worse. Taxation should be at a minimum, for all of it cripples the accumulation of capital and diverts it from its best uses, as do tariffs on imports. Poor laws—welfare systems—only worsen the Malthusian population pressures on wage rates. And as an adherent of Say’s Law, he opposed government measures to stimulate consumption, as well as the national debt. In general, Ricardo declared that the best thing that government can do to stimulate the greatest development of industry was to remove the obstacles to growth which government itself created.
While Adam Smith’s free market views concentrated on the sinister nature of predatory government action, Ricardo was particularly struck by government’s pervasive ineptness and counterproductivity.
Classical Economics, p. 92
Ricardo did not originate [the law of comparative advantage] … he did not understand and had little interest in the law, and that it played virtually no part in his system. Ricardo devoted only a few paragraphs to the law in his Principles, the discussion was meager, and it was unrelated to the rest of his work and to the rest of his discussion of international trade.
Classical Economics, p. 96
Ricardo’s motivation was not abstract theory but its use in advancing politico-economic conclusions. Ricardo, like Mill, was devoted to free trade and laissez-faire …
Classical Economics, p. 103
Ricardo was interested above all in political applications …
Classical Economics, p. 110
David Ricardo was first and foremost a monetary economist …
Classical Economics, p. 193
… Ricardo set forth a mechanistic, strictly proportional causal relation between the quantity of money and the level of prices, a strictly proportionate “quantity theory of money.”
Classical Economics, p. 196
Ricardo’s crabbed and tortured style reflected the muddled complexities of his doctrine.
Classical Economics, p. 278
Ricardo focused only on entire, allegedly homogeneous, “classes” of producers: workers earning wages, capitalists earning “profits” and landlords acquiring rent. …
… for Ricardo, the conditions were already there for a class-struggle theory of the capitalist economy.
Classical Economics, p. 392
David Ricardo and his followers … developed the “monetary theory” of the business cycle.
Economic Controversies, p. 790
Ricardo [wanted to] a national bank for purposes of issuing 100 percent reserve bank notes.
Economic Controversies, p. 870; Mystery of Banking, p. 282
The first economists to develop a cycle theory centering on the money and banking system were the early nineteenth-century English classical economist David Ricardo and his followers, who developed the “monetary theory” of the business cycle.
For a New Liberty, p. 230
Ricardo and his followers of the Currency School correctly believed that business cycles are generated by expansions and contractions of bank credit …
Keynes, the Man, p. 49
The eminent David Ricardo and his successors in the Currency School, lost a great chance to establish truly hard money in England because they never grasped the fact that bank deposits are part of the supply of money.
Mystery of Banking, p. 2
RICH AND POOR
… workers benefit from capitalist development.
Classical Economics, p. 133
… luck cannot be legislated … it is usually the able and enterprising that can take advantage of the luck that comes their way. Each person is equally liable to be confronted with good or bad “luck.”
Economic Controversies, p. 567
… on the market prices are the same to all, rich or poor …
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 78
… a free market would bring far greater abundance and a healthier economy to everyone, rich and poor alike …
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 240
… the economic fortunes of people tend over the long run to be their own internal responsibility …
For a New Liberty, p. 188
… the major problem with the lower-class poor is irresponsible present-mindedness …
For a New Liberty, p. 191
Soaking the rich would not only be profoundly immoral, it would drastically penalize the very virtues: thrift, business foresight, and investment, that have brought about our remarkable standard of living. It would truly be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
For a New Liberty, p. 202
What, then, can the government do to help the poor? The only correct answer is also the libertarian answer: Get out of the way. Let the government get out of the way of the productive energies of all groups in the population, rich, middle class, and poor alike, and the result will be an enormous increase in the welfare and the standard of living of everyone, and most particularly of the poor …
For a New Liberty, pp. 202–03
The best way to help the poor is to slash taxes and allow savings, investment, and creation of jobs to proceed unhampered.
For a New Liberty, p. 203
… one of the most significant ways in which the government could aid the poor is by removing its own direct roadblocks from their productive energies. Thus, minimum wage laws disemploy the poorest and least productive members of the population. Government privileges to trade unions enable them to keep the poorer and minority-group workers from productive and high-wage employment. And licensing laws, the outlawing of gambling, and other government restrictions prevent the poor from starting small businesses and creating jobs on their own.
For a New Liberty, p. 206
Government could then best help the poor—and the rest of society—by getting out of the way: by removing its vast and crippling network of taxes, subsidies, inefficiencies, and monopoly privileges.
For a New Liberty, p. 209
There is something worse than poverty of material goods, and that is poverty of the soul.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1097
… the “poor” do not “rob the rich” under progressive taxation. Instead, it is the State that “robs” both through taxation …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 926
That one is robbed in greater proportion does not eliminate the fact that both are being injured. It may be objected that the poor receive a net subsidy out of the tax proceeds because the government spends money to serve the poor. Yet this is not a valid argument. For the actual act of robbery is committed by the State, and not by the poor.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1193–94
… since usually there are far more poor than rich, the poor en masse may very well bear the greatest burden of the tax “robbery.”
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1194
… “the poor”—or the “deserving” poor—have been exalted as a privileged caste, with an enforceable claim to the production of the more able. This is a far cry from a request for charity. Instead, the able are penalized and enslaved by the State, and the unable are placed on a moral pedestal. Certainly, this is a peculiar sort of moral program. The further consequence will be to discourage the able, to reduce production and saving in all of society, and beyond this, to subsidize the creation of a caste of poor. Not only will the poor be subsidized by right, but their ranks will be encouraged to multiply, both through reproduction and through their moral exaltation and subsidization. The able will be correspondingly hampered and repressed.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1320
… how can luck be isolated and identified? It should be evident that it is impossible to do so. In every market action luck is interwoven inextricably and is impossible to isolate. Consequently, there is no justification for saying that the rich are luckier than the poor.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1333
What makes us rich is an abundance of goods, and what limits that abundance is a scarcity of resources: namely land, labor, and capital.
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 24
RIGHTS
… man’s natural rights are inalienable and cannot therefore be alienated to the state by any social contract.
Conceived in Liberty v. 3, p. 335; p. 1099
… rights stem from the nature of man and of the world around him.
Ethics of Liberty, pp. 22–23
… the concept of “rights” only makes sense as property rights …
Ethics of Liberty, p. 113
… man has rights because they are natural rights. They are grounded in the nature of man: the individual man’s capacity for conscious choice, the necessity for him to use his mind and energy to adopt goals and values, to find out about the world, to pursue his ends in order to survive and prosper, his capacity and need to communicate and interact with other human beings and to participate in the division of labor.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 155
In general, those problems where rights seem to require weakening are ones where the locus of ownership is not precisely defined, in short where property rights are muddled.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 117
… there is no such thing as a right to privacy except the right to protect one’s property from invasion. The only right “to privacy,” is the right to protect one’s property from being invaded by someone else. In brief, no one has the right to burgle someone else’s home, or to wiretap someone’s phone lines. Wiretapping is properly a crime not because of some vague and woolly “invasion of a ‘right to privacy’,” but because it is an invasion of the property right of the person being wiretapped.
Ethics of Liberty, pp. 121–22
… no one person or group of people (and therefore “the public”) has the right to know anything. They have no right to knowledge which other people have and refuse to disseminate. For if a man has the absolute right to disseminate knowledge inside his head, he also has the corollary right not to disseminate that knowledge. There is no “right to know”; there is only the right of the knower to either disseminate his knowledge or to keep silent.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 122
Property rights are human rights. …
In fact, there are no human rights that are separable from property rights.
For a New Liberty, p. 52
Wiretapping is a contemptible invasion of privacy and of property right, and of course should be outlawed as an invasive act.
For a New Liberty, p. 133
Every man can enjoy the right of self-ownership, without special coercion upon anyone. But in the case of a “right” to schooling, this can only be provided if other people are coerced into fulfilling it. The “right” to schooling, to a job, three meals, etc., is then not embedded in the nature of man, but requires for its fulfillment the existence of a group of exploited people who are coerced into providing such a “right.”
For a New Liberty, pp. 164–65
… new egalitarian “rights” are discovered that are supposed to be enforced by majesty of the law.… these “rights” are concocted at the expense of the genuine rights of every person over his own property …
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 27
Yes. I am against all “rights” for special groups, because these “rights” are simply unjust claims on the pocketbook, on the status, and on the trumped-up guilt feelings of all those not in these specially privileged groups. The only rights I favor are the rights of each individual to his person and property; free of the vicious assaults of phony “rights” creators.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 291
… one of the most precious rights of an individual in a free society is privacy …
Left and Right, p. 459
Surely every libertarian supports civil liberties, the corollary and complement of private property rights and the free-market economy.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 42
Only the argument from the natural rights of the individual is absolute, apodictic, and eternal, cutting through differences of time, place, or expert opinion.… the libertarian must take his stand on natural rights rather than on the shifting sands of alleged “social utility.”
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 275
The whole point of natural rights is that they are eternal and absolute, and that every man’s rights are compossible with the rights of every other man.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1180
Property rights are indissolubly also human rights. …
… there are no rights but property rights. The only human rights, in short, are property rights.… The “human” rights of the person that are defended in the purely free-market society are, in effect, each man’s property right in his own being, and from this property right stems his right to the material goods that he has produced.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1337
… the person who does wish to construct his political theory on the basis of “rights” must not only discard the spurious distinction between human rights and property rights, but also realize that the former must all be absorbed into the latter.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1340
… every individual has equal rights and has equal claim to be treated with justice and to have an opportunity for self-development with freedom.
Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 59
RISK
… business firms on the market can in no way be “insured,” and why the very concept applied to a firm is absurd and fraudulent. The very essence of the “risks” or uncertainty faced by the business entrepreneur is the precise opposite of the measurable risk that can be alleviated by insurance. Insurable risks, such as death, fire (if not set by the insured), accident, or appendicitis, are homogeneous, replicable, random, events that can therefore be grouped into homogeneous classes which can be predicted in large numbers. But actions and events on the market, while often similar, are inherently unique, heterogeneous, and are not random but influencing each other, and are therefore inherently uninsurable and not subject to grouping into homogeneous classes measurable in advance. Every event in human action on the market is unique and unmeasurable. The entrepreneur is precisely the person who faces and bears the inherently uninsurable risks of the marketplace.
Case Against the Fed, p. 136
Risk is a subjective concept unique to each individual; therefore, it cannot be placed in measurable quantitative form. Hence, no one person’s quantitative degree of risk can be compared to another’s, and no overall measure of social risk can be obtained. As a quantitative concept, overall or social risk is fully as meaningless as the economist’s concept of “social costs” or social benefits.
Economic Controversies, p. 382
… there are risks in any course of action or inaction. Life itself is a risk.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 518
… actuarial risks can be “insured” against, but not the entrepreneurial uncertainty of the market.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 548n36
… “risk” has an actuarially “certain” connotation …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 550
“Risk” occurs when an event is a member of a class of a large number of homogeneous events and there is fairly certain knowledge of the frequency of occurrence of this class of events.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 552
Insurable risk is an example of class probability.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 554
Insurance is a basic method of pooling and abating risks on the market. While entrepreneurs assume the burdens of uncertainty, insurance takes care of actuarial risks, where stable collective frequencies can be arrived at and premiums can be charged accordingly.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1314
ROADS
For so long as the urban governments are allowed to continue to own the streets, we are at any time liable to be oppressed by all sorts of regulations and controls made over those of us who use the streets—which means everyone. …
The only ultimate solution to this problem is to abolish all government ownership and control of the streets, and to turn the nation’s streets over to private ownership, which might assume all sorts of individual, cooperative, or corporate forms. But until that golden day, we must at least see to it that government exercise its ownership powers as little as possible. We must proclaim that the streets belong not to the government, but to the people, for the people to use as they see fit. Community no-ownership is far better than government ownership; for a little obstruction of the streets is better than frozen tyranny.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 4
ROMANTICISM
… many socialists and other opponents of the Industrial Revolution exalt the primitive and preindustrial periods as a golden age of harmony, community, and social belonging—a peaceful and happy society destroyed by the development of individualism, the Industrial Revolution, and the market economy.
Economic Controversies, p. 613
… the primitive community, far from being happy, harmonious, and idyllic, is much more likely to be ridden by mutual suspicion and envy of the more successful or better-favored, an envy so pervasive as to cripple, by the fear of its presence, all personal or general economic development.
Economic Controversies, p. 621
… the back-to-nature path would not only mean shuffling off the benefits of civilization, but would also mean starvation and death for the vast bulk of mankind, who are dependent on the capital and the division of labor of the modern industrial market economy. Or are our modern Romantics operating on a death, as opposed to a life, premise? It very much looks that way.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 180
… the result of this return to primitivism would be starvation and death for nearly all of mankind and a grinding subsistence for the ones remaining.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 203
… egalitarian tribal and peasant communities, happy, loving and sharing in the fantasy world of Left-intellectuals, are actually worlds driven by hate, suspicion, envy, and the fear of the envy of one’s neighbors.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 144
… for the romantic, all the rules of life are simply arbitrary, man-made conventions that he defies at the behest of his emotions. The absolutist, on the other hand, is a classicist, who discovers and then adheres to fixed truths, and is guided, presumably, by reason.
Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 119
… the existing primitive tribes are precisely the ones that didn’t progress—that remained in their primitive state. To infer from observing them that this is the way our ancestors behaved is nonsense—and apt to be the reverse of the truth, for our ancestors presumably behaved in ways that quickly advanced them beyond the primitive stage thousands of years ago.
Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 122
Civilization is precisely the record by which man has used his reason to discover the natural laws on which his environment rests, and to use these laws to alter his environment so as to suit and advance his needs and desires. Therefore, worship of the primitive is necessarily corollary to, and based upon, an attack on man’s reason and intellect.
Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, pp. 123–24
Anyone, at any time, can leave the market: can go off in the woods and live on berries in a cave, can buy his own farm and be completely self-sufficient, cut off from the rest of the world, or can vary his participation as much as he likes.
Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, p. 129
Tribalism, not capitalism, is the “rule of the jungle,” for warfare and extermination of the “unfit” is the only way that some of the tribes can keep alive. It is the capitalist market economy which increases resources by mutual benefit, that is able to bypass the rule of the jungle and to rise above such animal-like existence to the status of advanced civilizations—and amicable relations among men.
The market, therefore, is preeminently social; and the rest of the social consists of other voluntary, friendly, nonmarket relations, which also, however, are best conducted on the basis of a spiritual exchange and mutual gain.
Rothbard vs. the Philosophers, pp. 134–35
ROUSSEAU, JEAN-JACQUES
For all his confusions, contradictions, and romantic irrationalism that opened the doors to future forms of tyranny, Rousseau staunchly supported the people against the despotic ruling classes of his day. He therefore must be regarded overall as a vital part of the broad radical-liberal movement … Rousseau condemned the accretion of centuries of coercive government—with its hordes of officials and auxiliaries of power in the legal profession, as contrasted to the more natural or voluntary government of the past.… Building on Locke’s insight that private property began in the mixture of people’s labor with land and natural resources, Rousseau described how the state arose in the imposition of violence on such properties and their owners. This violence resulted in a ruling class imposing slavery and domination over the body of the ruled. From the state flowed the institutionalization of violence.
Conceived in Liberty v. 3, p. 338; p. 1102
… Rousseau later turned to such a philosophic inquiry in his own Social Contract, he developed two contradictory positions, for individual liberty, and for a popular collectivism.
Conceived in Liberty v. 3, p. 339
Rousseau and his host of modern followers, who hold that man is good, but corrupted by his institutions, must finally wither under the query: And who but men created these institutions?
Economic Controversies, p. 9
