Big Government

The Mises Circle in Indianapolis. Sponsored by Weaver Popcorn Company. Recorded 14 May 2011.

You can chart the course of human progress in terms of how clean our clothing is. In early times people used animal skins, had no change of clothing, and had no soap. Then history turned on a dime toward progress — until recent regulations.

Nothing so threatened the interests of this emerging industrial order as the free play of market forces at work in an environment of legally unrestrained competition.

I use the term “liberal” without irony or contempt, for the liberal tradition in the true sense was devoted to freeing people from the

From the Libertarian Review, May 1979, Rothbard provides a well-rounded discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of a balanced-budget amendment.

It is generally accepted that a government can enslave the citizens — unless it is a democratic government. Mistake!

The foremost aim of despotic government is to prevent any innovations that could endanger its own supremacy.

Government planners developed a particular aesthetic obsession: they were frustrated by the untidy complexity of real human societies, writes

Fannie and Freddie, far from being the sole miscreants of the crisis, operate on the same parlous economic principles that the Fed functions on and facilitates. Ridding the market of the crippling appetites of Fannie and Freddie, even if a step in the right direction, is hardly a panacea for the current economic plights.

The Mises Circle in Naples, Florida. Recorded 26 February 2011.