Biographies

Recorded on 27 July 1975.

Autodidactic influential libertarian, Isabel Paterson is best known for The God of the Machine (1943). Ayn Rand contributed ideas to it but continued to learn from Paterson both politics and history. Rand rescued the book and promoted it.

Briefly, the importance of the Hayek theory of the business cycle is that it puts the blame for the boom-bust cycle squarely on the shoulders of the government and its controlled banking system, and, for the first time since the classical economists of the 19th century, completely absolves the free-enterprise economy from the blame.

In the course of lengthy arguing against hidden usury in various forms of contracts, the brilliant mind of San Bernardino stumbles, for one of the first times in history, upon what later would be called 'time-preference'.

Murray Rothbard was a cheerful, sweet, likeable man who didn't hate anyone, especially fellow libertarians.

"Keynesians believe that long-run profit expectations, which have no basis in reality in any case, are subject to unexpected change. Economic prosperity is based on baseless optimism, economic depression on baseless pessimism."

"The state has only one role in the novels and it is entirely negative: it makes and enforces the fugitive slave laws."

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is thought to be the greatest work of the 20th century with 150 million readers. The book's thesis - Evil power cannot be defeated by power - is libertarian.

"An individualist unafraid to think for himself, Mariana clearly took little stock in the Jesuit ideal of the society as a tightly disciplined military-like body."

Spooner was an American individualist anarchist with radical opinions on everything. His true calling was writing pamphlets and books on issues of the day. His most famous work was The Unconstitutionality of Slavery. No Treason is his most anarchistic political tract (1867).