Big Government

The recent actions by the preservation commission against a private-property owner are nothing less than aggressive theft by a third party.

Social order is like barbecue. Both are defined in the process of their emergence.

Recorded at The Mises Circle in Phoenix, Arizona, on April 10th, 2010. Sponsored by James M. Rodney.

In the end, this is the reason why progressivism as a system of economic thought is every bit as bankrupt as Social Security.

Men do well under a plan and its controls if the Gestalt to be accomplished makes sense, is not too distant, and offers rewards as well as challenges for different levels of skill. But this is quite different from a superimposed, infallible political philosophy which would urge on us an engineered society.

Since states are created and directed by the boundaries of what people will accept as proper, since they exist only in the vacuum created by the public’s tolerance for aggression, the only lasting way to change the state is to persuade the public to rethink the program.

Every state needs justification. And the justifiers are always welcomed and cheered by the state. So we should not be shocked that a false science — a science that props up the state — is embraced by the state and associated sycophants.

"The kind of power traditionally exercised by kings and princes, represented chiefly by the tax collector and the military, was in fact a very weak kind of power compared with what a philosophy of government resting on the general will could bring about."

The inevitable collapse — and the moral outrage of those it hurts — will continue for as long as the public buys into the myth that higher education (and its professors) are too important to have to keep their costs and production in line with consumer demand.

"There is no greater example of why it is morally incumbent on everyone to oppose all forms of government intervention in all times. That includes, especially, wars that socialize the economy."