Brian Doherty

Nowadays every frontier of human achievement faces a regulatory barrier that must be crossed. Those regulatory barriers are often prompted by interest group fears based more in political theory than reality. In particular, biotechnology is one of the more contested and feared additions to man's arsenal of control over his environment.

Once again, the federal government is scrambling to make good on its own past mistakes. And private industries are facing massive costs, and potentially massive lawsuits, because of their attempt to keep up with federal regulators' changing whims. The controversy over Methyl tert-Butyl Ether (MTBE) shows once again that government's heavy-handed approach to environmental problems guarantees not solutions, but a continuing mess for which government will again posit itself as a solution-a clear example of Ludwig von Mises's theory of intervention.

There are useful and rich nuggets covering every aspect of Rothbard's intellectual project, starting with his bold call for the necessity of a pure and unsullied libertarian set of institutions and activists.