Rothbard A to Z
UNCERTAINTY
UNCERTAINTY
… action implies that we live in a world of an uncertain, or not fully certain, future.
Economic Controversies, p. 61
Knowledge of the present, much less of the future, is never perfect … the world in general, and the market in particular, are eternally marked by uncertainty. …
… Man faces the world emphatically knowing some things about his world and not knowing others. He knows absolutely that he and the world, including other people and resources, exist; he knows that natural laws and the laws of cause and effect exist; and that such knowledge cumulates over time. His technological knowledge of what goods will satisfy his wants and of how to acquire them continually increases. And yet he lives in a world of uncertainty, of uncertain future demands, resources, products, prices and costs …
Economic Controversies, p. 173
… uncertainty is crucial to the holding of any cash at all.
Economic Controversies, p. 698
… not even the best of men are infallible and all of us are bound to make errors …
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 934
… errors by any person or group are inevitable.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1194
… the fact of action signifies that the future is uncertain to the actors. This uncertainty about future events stems from two basic sources: the unpredictability of human acts of choice, and insufficient knowledge about natural phenomena.… The omnipresence of uncertainty introduces the ever-present possibility of error in human action …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 7
Since investment in capital goods involves looking toward the future, one of the risks that an actor must always cope with is the uncertainty of future conditions. Producing consumers’ goods directly involves a very short period of production, so that the uncertainty incurred is not nearly as great as the uncertainty of longer processes of production, an uncertainty that becomes more and more important as the period of production lengthens.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 60
We can consider that there is a sort of “uncertainty discount” on the expected future utility of the investment that may be so large as to induce the actor not to make the investment …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 60–61
Uncertainty is a subjective feeling (“hunch” or estimate) and cannot be measured in any way.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 60n36
Uncertainty, indeed, is a fundamental feature of all human action, and uncertainty about changing prices and changing value scales are aspects of this basic uncertainty.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 265
… in the real world of uncertainty, it takes sound judgment to decide how the market is operating, so that present investment will lead to future profits, and not future losses.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 434
Most uncertainties are uninsurable because they are unique, single cases, and not members of a class. They are unique cases facing each individual or business; they may bear resemblances to other cases, but are not homogeneous with them. Individuals or entrepreneurs know something about the outcome of the particular case, but not everything.… Estimates of future costs, demands, etc., on the part of entrepreneurs are all unique cases of uncertainty, where methods of specific understanding and individual judgment of the situation must apply, rather than objectively measurable or insurable “risk.”
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 554–55
Profit and loss are the results of entrepreneurial uncertainty. Actuarial risk is converted into a cost of business operation and is not responsible for profits or losses except in so far as the actuarial estimates are erroneous.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 555
… this world is a world of uncertainty. We shall never be able to forecast the future course of the world with precision. Every action, therefore, involves risk. This risk cannot be eliminated.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1313
… modern economics is a set of formal models and equations purporting to fully determine human behavior, at least in the economic realm. And there is no way that uncertainty can be compressed into determinate mathematical models.… Economic theory, in short, must choose between formally elegant but false and distorting mathematical models, and the “literary” analysis of real human life itself.
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 352
Suppose that all of us were able to foretell the future with absolute certainty. In that case, no one would have to keep cash balances on hand. Everyone would know exactly how much he will spend, and how much income he will receive, at all future dates. He need not keep any money at hand, but will lend out his gold so as to receive his payments in the needed amounts on the very days he makes his expenditures. But, of course, we necessarily live in a world of uncertainty. People do not precisely know what will happen to them, or what their future incomes or costs will be. The more uncertain and fearful they are, the more cash balances they will want to hold; the more secure, the less cash they will wish to keep on hand.
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 27
if it were not for the uncertainty of the real world, there could be no monetary system at all!
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 29
UNEMPLOYMENT
In a free market, wage rates will tend to adjust themselves so that there is no involuntary unemployment, i.e., so that all those desiring to work can find jobs. Generally, wage rates can only be kept above full-employment rates through coercion by government …
America’s Great Depression, p. 43
If workers persist in keeping their wage demands higher than the market, they have only themselves to blame for their unemployment. Keeping any price, including a wage rate, higher than market equilibrium will always lead to an unsold surplus of the good or service: in the case of labor, unsold labor time, or unemployment. If laborers wish to change their unemployed status, they need only lower their wage demands to clear the market and allow themselves to be hired.
Classical Economics, pp. 174–75
The greater the scope of unionism, the more a permanent mass of unemployment will tend to develop.
… A universal union control and restrictionism would mean permanent mass unemployment, growing ever greater in proportion to the degree that the union exacted its restrictions.
Economic Controversies, p. 636
… much of persistent lower-class unemployment, and hence poverty, is voluntary on the part of the unemployed themselves.
For a New Liberty, p. 191
There is no such thing a “full employment.” Employment depends on wage rates …
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 950
… idleness or unemployment of a resource can only occur because the owner of that resource is deliberately withholding it from the market and refusing to sell it at the offered price. In a profound sense, therefore, all unemployment and idleness is voluntary.
Making Economic Sense, p. 44
Government interference, in the form of minimum wage laws and compulsory unionism, creates compulsory unemployment, while welfare payments and unemployment “insurance” subsidize unemployment and make sure that it will be permanently high. We can have as much unemployment as we pay for.
Making Economic Sense, p. 44
An economic bugbear of our times is “unemployment.”
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 581
… labor factors will always be fully employed on the free market to the extent that laborers are so willing.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 582
… the great missing link in their discussion of unemployment is precisely the wage rate. To talk of unemployment or employment without reference to a wage rate is as meaningless as talking of “supply” or “demand” without reference to a price. And it is precisely analogous.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 583
… there can never be, on the free market, an unemployment problem. If a man wishes to be employed, he will be, provided the wage rate is adjusted according to his DMVP. But since no one wants to be simply “employed” without getting what he considers sufficient payment, we conclude that employment per se is not even a desired goal of human action, let alone a “problem.”
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 584
The able-bodied in a developed economy can always find work, and work that will pay an over-subsistence wage. …
… Whenever a man insists on a wage higher than his DMVP, he will remain unemployed, i.e., unemployed at the wage that he insists upon. But then this unemployment is not a “problem,” but a voluntary choice on the part of the idle person.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 585
There will be “unemployment” if … workers insist on their own terms for work, and these terms cannot be met.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 587
… at best, a union can achieve a higher, restrictionist wage rate for its members only at the expense of lowering the wage rates of all other workers in the economy.… The greater the scope of unionism, the more a permanent mass of unemployment will tend to develop.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 708
… unemployment arises when laborers or unions set a minimum wage above what they could obtain on the unhampered market.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 944
… if the government keeps wage rates up, it brings about permanent unemployment.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1001
… government inflation can relieve unemployment and unsold stocks only if the process dupes the owners into accepting lower real prices or wages. This “money illusion” relies on the owners’ being too ignorant to realize when their real incomes have declined—a slender basis on which to ground a cure.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1023
When a minimum wage law is effective, i.e., where it imposes a wage above the market value of a type of labor (above the laborer’s discounted marginal value product), the supply of labor services exceeds the demand, and this “unsold surplus” of labor services means involuntary mass unemployment. Selective, as opposed to general, minimum wage rates create unemployment in particular industries and tend to perpetuate these pockets by attracting labor to the higher rates. Labor is eventually forced to enter less remunerative, less value-productive lines. The result is the same whether the effective minimum wage is imposed by the State or by a labor union.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1080
Unemployment is caused by unions or government keeping wage rates above the free-market level.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1299
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
… welfare payments reduce the net wage a person can earn by working. Hence, the higher the welfare payments, the more the unemployment.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 950
… governmental unemployment relief, often supposed to help in curing unemployment, has the precisely reverse effect: it subsidizes and intensifies unemployment.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 944
Government unemployment benefits are an important means of subsidizing unemployment caused by unions or minimum wage laws. When restrictive wage rates lead to unemployment, the government steps in to prevent the unemployed workers from injuring union solidarity and union-enforced wage rates. By receiving unemployment benefits, the mass of potential competitors with unions are removed from the labor market, thus permitting an indefinite extension of union policies. And this removal of workers from the labor market is financed by the taxpayers—the general public.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1115
… unemployment relief, instead of helping to cure unemployment, as often imagined, actually subsidizes and intensifies it.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1258
… government subsidization of poverty increases poverty and unemployment and encourages the beneficiaries to multiply their offspring, thus further intensifying the problem that the government set out to cure.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1368
UNIONS
If a union achieves a higher wage, some laborers are earning a higher price, while others are excluded from the market and lose the revenue they would have obtained.
These discharged workers are the main losers in this procedure … they must shift to some other—nonunionized—industry. The trouble is, however, that the workers are less suited to the new industry. Their having been in the now unionized industry implies that their worth in that industry was higher than in the industry to which they must shift; consequently, their wage rate is now lower. Moreover, their entry into the other industry depresses the wage rates of the workers already there.
Consequently, at best, a union can achieve a higher, restrictionist wage rate for its members only at the expense of lowering the wage rates of all other workers in the economy. Production efforts in the economy are also distorted.
Economic Controversies, pp. 635–36
A restrictionist wage raises costs of production for the firms in the industry. This means that the marginal firms in the industry—the ones whose entrepreneurs earn only a bare rent—will be driven out of business.
Economic Controversies, p. 639
When unions are permitted to resort to violence, the state or other enforcing agency has implicitly delegated this power to the unions. The unions, then, have become “private states.”
Economic Controversies, p. 640
Unions have become a nuisance with power to cripple the economy, but only as a result of numerous special privileges afforded by the government.
For a New Liberty, p. 93
There is no moral excuse, in a society claiming to be opposed to slavery and in a country which has outlawed involuntary servitude, for any legal or judicial action prohibiting strikes—or jailing union leaders who fail to comply. …
It is true that the strike is a peculiar form of work stoppage. The strikers do not merely quit their jobs; they also assert that somehow, in some metaphysical sense, they still “own” their jobs and are entitled to them, and intend to return to them when the issues are resolved. But the remedy for this self-contradictory policy, as well as for the disruptive power of labor unions, is not to pass laws outlawing strikes; the remedy is to remove the substantial body of law, federal, state, and local, that confers special governmental privileges on labor unions. All that is needed, both for libertarian principle and for a healthy economy, is to remove and abolish these special privileges.
For a New Liberty, p. 103
Unions, once the pampered favorites of liberals, are now generally seen to use their governmental privileges to exclude poorer and minority-group workers.
For a New Liberty, p. 197
Government control inevitably follows government privilege, and, as in the Fascist or Communist countries, privileged unionism has become in effect a powerful arm of the State apparatus for controlling the labor force and the economic system as a whole. Rather than representing their members, union leaders have been coopted into the power elite, there to serve as transmission belts for keeping the workers under the control of the various governmental “guidelines” …
Left and Right, p. 226
… the major effect of unionism and collective bargaining is to introduce rigidity into the wage-setting process.
Left and Right, p. 229
… during an inflation, the rigidity of union contracts and collective bargaining causes union wage rates to lag behind the rise in non-union rates. Hence, far from unionism being culpable for price inflation, the truth is precisely the reverse: union-set wage rates lag behind the free-market rates during an inflation.
Left and Right, p. 230
Libertarians must always concede the right to strike, since otherwise labor would be compulsory rather than voluntary; but if employers had the fortitude and they were allowed to do so by law, they would automatically fire any and all strikers, and thereby take the strikers’ quitting their jobs with the serious response that they deserve. In the case of outright sabotage and destruction, along with threats of violence against those who continue to work or are hired to replace the strikers, the unions who commit such aggression should be treated as the criminals that they are. And since such coercion is the general rule in strikes, these criminal penalties would, in a libertarian society, be widespread rather than non-existent as they are now.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 214
Of the three major proposals for running an advanced industrial society—socialism, syndicalism, and free-market capitalism—syndicalism is the most blatantly unworkable and most rapidly disastrous.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 215
The unions are responsible for a host of economic ills, feather-bedding, restrictionism, misallocation of resources and wages, but inflation of prices is not one of them.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 234
… in a free society, provided that unions don’t use coercion against strikebreakers (a big proviso!), there is nothing un-libertarian about voluntary unions.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 952
Almost all the violence was committed by union goon squads against the property of the employer, and in particular, against the replacement workers, invariably smeared and dehumanized with the ugly word “scabs.” (Talk about demeaning language!)
The reason unions are to blame is inherent in the situation. Employers don’t want violence; all they want is peace and quiet, the unhampered and peaceful production and shipment of goods. Violence is disruptive, and is bound to injure the profits of the company.
Making Economic Sense, p. 137
… the entire theory of labor unions is deeply flawed. Their view is that the worker somehow “owns” his job, and that therefore it should be illegal for an employer to bid permanent farewell to striking workers. The “ownership of jobs” is of course a clear violation of the property right of the employer to fire or not hire anyone he wants. No one has a “right to a job” in the future; one only has the right to be paid for work contracted and already performed. No one should have the “right” to have his hand in the pocket of his employer forever; that is not a “right” but a systematic theft of other people’s property.
Making Economic Sense, p. 138
Any “unemployment” of resources results from a failure of people to adjust to the new conditions, by insisting on excessively high real prices or wage rates. Such failures will be quickly corrected if the market is allowed freedom to adapt—that is, if government and unions do not intervene to delay and cripple the adjustment process.
Making Economic Sense, pp. 251–52
Union wage increases do not increase the total supply of capital available. Therefore, there can be no general rise in labor productivity.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 719
… the unions’ raising of real wage rates causes unemployment.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 781
… widespread union maintenance of excessively high wage rates will cause unemployment.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 783
… union solidarity causes unemployment and lower wage rates for many workers …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 897
Unions aim for restrictionist wage rates, which on a partial scale cause distortions in production, lower wage rates for nonmembers, and pockets of unemployment, and on a general scale lead to greater distortions and permanent mass unemployment. By enforcing restrictive production rules, rather than allowing individual workers voluntarily to accept work rules laid down by the enterpriser in the use of his property, unions reduce general productivity and hence the living standards of the economy.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1114
The critical problems about unions are (a) their habitual use of violence, (b) their nature as parasitic organizations, and (c) their monopoly privileging …
Strictly Confidential, p. 272
UNITED NATIONS
The U.N. was dedicated to the old, disastrous, and failed League of Nations concept of “collective security against aggression.” Given existing national boundaries, any “aggression” of one state against another must trigger the nation-states of the world to band together to combat and “punish” the designated aggressor. The effect of this misguided policy is to enshrine every dubious state boundary as moral and just, and to maximize every pipsqueak, boundary dispute into a world crisis. It is also a mechanism for freezing the unjust status quo in place forever.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 159
… the whole concept of the United Nations is mischievous. …
… The League of Nations or United Nations then necessarily becomes a gang of States trying to preserve their territories and privileges by force against the newer nations that are trying to win their place in the sun, or against aggrieved States trying to recover some of their national territory. Moreover, the ganging up insures that any war, anywhere in the globe, no matter how trivial, will be maximized into a worldwide conflict. Collective security then becomes a method for the global aggrandizement of dispute and conflict, so that all peoples everywhere get drawn into the net of warfare and killing. In these days of brutal weapons of mass destruction, in our age when warfare rests on the mass murder of innocent civilians, the globalizing of conflict via collective security is a monstrous death trap for the peoples of the world. The sooner the United Nations, or any other scheme of collective security, disappears, the safer shall all of us be.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 253
… it is high time to revive the grand old “isolationist” slogan: that we withdraw from the United Nations.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 254
… the major problem with the UN is not its “anti-Americanism” but its being designed as an instrument for “collective security against aggression,” i.e., bringing us a state of potentially permanent war in seeking the chimera of permanent peace. The trouble with the UN is that it gets us into situations like a seemingly harmless “peacekeeping” operation.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1116
… there is danger in underestimating the malice of UN activities. For underlying all the tedious nonsense is a continuing and permanent drive for international government despotism to be exercised by faceless and arrogant bureaucrats accountable to no one.
Making Economic Sense, p. 150
UNIVERSALIZATION PRINCIPLE
… to be a valid ethic the theory must hold true for all men, whatever their location in time or place.… the society of liberty is the only society that can apply the same basic rule to every man …
Ethics of Liberty, p. 42
Every person, at any time or place, can be covered by the basic rules: ownership of one’s own self, ownership of the previously unused resources which one has occupied and transformed; and ownership of all titles derived from that basic ownership—either through voluntary exchanges or voluntary gifts. These rules—which we might call the “rules of natural ownership”—can clearly be applied, and such ownership defended, regardless of the time or place, and regardless of the economic attainments of the society. It is impossible for any other social system to qualify as universal natural law; for if there is any coercive rule by one person or group over another (and all rule partakes of such hegemony), then it is impossible to apply the same rule for all; only a rulerless, purely libertarian world can fulfill the qualifications of natural rights and natural law, or, more important, can fulfill the conditions of a universal ethic for all mankind.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 43
A rights-ethic for mankind is precisely that: for all men, regardless of race, creed, color or sex, but for the species man alone.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 155
UTILITARIANISM
Utilitarianism provided economists with the ability to square the circle: to allow them to make pronouncements and take firm positions on public policy, while still pretending to be hard-headed, “scientific,” and therefore “valuefree.”
Classical Economics, p. 56
Utilitarianism consists in two fundamental parts: personal utilitarianism, and social utilitarianism, the latter being built upon the former. Each is fallacious and pernicious, but social utilitarianism … adds many fallacies, and would be unsound even if personal utilitarianism were to be upheld.
Classical Economics, p. 57
… utilitarianism is self-refuting in violating its own axiom of not going beyond given emotions and valuations.
Classical Economics, p. 57
… economists, by adopting utilitarianism, were able to pretend or to delude themselves that they were being strictly scientific, while smuggling unanalyzed and shaky ethical notions into economics. In that way, economics embraced the worst of both worlds, implicitly smuggling in fallacy and bias in the name of hard-nosed value-freedom.
Classical Economics, p. 57
Personal utilitarianism counsels that actions be judged not on their nature but on their consequences.… how is anyone to gauge the consequences of any action? And why is it considered easier, let alone more “scientific,” to judge consequences than to judge an act itself by its nature? Furthermore, it is often very difficult to figure out what the consequences of any contemplated action will be. How we are to find the secondary, tertiary, etc., consequences, let alone the more immediate ones? … it is often easier to know what is right than what is expedient.
Classical Economics, p. 60
… why is their abstract moral principle—for that is what it is—legitimate while all others, such as natural rights, are to be brusquely dismissed as nonsense? What justification is there for the greatest happiness formula? The answer is none whatever; it is simply assumed as axiomatic, above and beyond challenge.
Classical Economics, p. 61
There can be no valid or meaningful cost-benefit analysis of political or legal decisions or institutions.
Economic Controversies, p. 258
… utilitarian free-market economists, implicitly or explicitly leave it to the hands of government to define and allocate the titles to private property.
It is a curious fact that utilitarian economists, generally so skeptical of the virtues of government intervention, are so content to leave the fundamental underpinning of the market process—the definition of property rights and the allocation of property titles—wholly in the hands of government.… the utilitarians have failed in their wish to escape having a theory of justice in property; actually they do have such a theory, and it is the surely simplistic one that whatever government defines as legal is right.
Economic Controversies, p. 349
… utilitarians in their vain quest for the Wertfrei, really conclude by endorsing as right and just whatever the government happens to decide, that is, by blindly apologizing for the status quo.
… utilitarians base their theory of justice in property only on whatever the government defines as legal …
Economic Controversies, p. 350
… the supposed defense of the free market and of property rights by utilitarians and free-market economists is a very weak reed indeed. Lacking a theory of justice that goes beyond the existing imprimatur of government, utilitarians can only go along with every change and shift of government allocation after they occur, no matter how arbitrary, rapid, or politically motivated such shifts might be. And since they provide no firm roadblock for governmental reallocations of property, the utilitarians, in the final analysis, can offer no real defense of property rights themselves. Since governmental redefinitions can and will be rapid and arbitrary, they cannot provide long-run certainty for property rights, and therefore they cannot even ensure the very social and economic efficiency which they themselves seek.
Economic Controversies, p. 351
… utilitarians have no theory of justice in property beyond endorsement of whatever the status quo happens to exist.
Economic Controversies, p. 352
… utilitarianism cannot be supported as a groundwork for property rights or, a fortiori, for the free-market economy.
Economic Controversies, p. 352
… utilitarian considerations must always be subordinate to the requirements of justice.
Economic Controversies, p. 407
… utilitarianism—the common ground of free-market economists—is unsatisfactory for developing a flourishing libertarian movement.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 240
… I at no time believed that value-free analysis or economics or utilitarianism (the standard social philosophy of economists) can ever suffice to establish the case for liberty.
Ethics of Liberty, p. xlvii
… the utilitarian, who has no conception, let alone theory, of justice, must fall back on the pragmatic, ad hoc view that all titles to private property currently existing at any time or place must be treated as valid and accepted as worthy of defense against violation. This, in fact, is the way utilitarian free-market economists invariably treat the question of property rights. Note, however, that the utilitarian has managed to smuggle into his discussion an unexamined ethic: that all goods “now” (the time and place at which the discussion occurs) considered private property must be accepted and defended as such. In practice, this means that all private property titles designated by any existing government (which has everywhere seized the monopoly of defining titles to property) must be accepted as such. This is an ethic that is blind to all considerations of justice, and, pushed to its logical conclusion, must also defend every criminal in the property that he has managed to expropriate. We conclude that the utilitarian’s simply praising a free market based upon all existing property titles is invalid and ethically nihilistic.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 52
… the laissez-faire utilitarian cannot simply oppose “government” ownership and defend private; for the trouble with governmental property is not so much that it is governmental (for what of “private” criminals like our watch-stealer?) but that it is illegitimate, unjust, and criminal … And since “private” criminals are also reprehensible, we see that the social question of property cannot ultimately be treated in utilitarian terms as either private or governmental. It must be treated in terms of justice or injustice: of legitimate property-owners vs. illegitimate, criminal invaders of such property, whether these invaders are called “private” or “public.”
Ethics of Liberty, p. 56
… utilitarian social philosophy holds the “good” policy to be the one that yields the “greatest good for the greatest number”: in which each person counts for one in making up that number, and in which “the good” is held to be the fullest satisfaction of the purely subjective desires of the individuals in society … this doctrine is hardly scientific and by no means value-free …
Ethics of Liberty, p. 201
… whereas the natural-rights libertarian seeking morality and justice cleaves militantly to pure principle, the utilitarian only values liberty as an ad hoc expedient. And since expediency can and does shift with the wind, it will become easy for the utilitarian in his cool calculus of cost and benefit to plump for statism in ad hoc case after case, and thus to give principle away.
For a New Liberty, p. 19
To say that a utilitarian cannot be “trusted” to maintain libertarian principle in every specific application may sound harsh, but it puts the case fairly.
For a New Liberty, p. 31
Unfortunately what happened is that economics grew up at the same time, and conjoined with, utilitarianism. Hence economists—whether free-market oriented or not—have generally been utilitarians. Hence the idea that in order to be happy, all one has to do is to be free to pursue one’s own utility schedules—an idea that ignores the existence of an objective moral order and what the Thomists call the existence of a “science of happiness.”
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 447
Free-market economists have been, almost entirely, utilitarians, and therefore all too willing to abandon libertarian principles at the drop of an ad hoc hat …
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 626
