Legal System

Does liberty sow the seeds of its own destruction? Yes, by consenting to excessive taxes. Government will not want to give up the power. Taxes were to be only for common defense, not offensive wars.

Exploitative behavior of the state is studied. Brainwashing was required to build states up. Unlike productive activities via division of labor, parasitic activities like cannibalism, slavery, fraud and robbery did not lead to social cooperation.

The Laffer Curve from the 1920s reflects the truism that a 77 percent tax rate produces the same amount of revenue as a 7 percent tax rate. Once the tax rate exceeds twenty-five percent, less will be collected.

The transition from monarchy to democracy deals with how humans create more freedom than is currently had. The role of monarchs in the pre-state societies and their positions as heads of state since the feudal (1100-1500 AD) period and into the absolute monarchies were the more typical form of rulers. Democracies are rare events in history.

What condition does mankind find itself in? Language, property and production are elements unique to mankind. Humans are social animals. Cooperation is normal. Language permits direct communication. Animals can’t abstract in the way humans can. They can form sounds but not words. Animals cannot make inferences explicitly. Animals do not have what we call self-consciousness (reflection).

Humans across the globe develop the division of labor. Hunter gatherers had limited association with each other. Languages were many and varied. Division of labor was only within their tribes. Agricultural life allowed many more people to live in settlements and capital could be accumulated for the first time.

Utopian socialism was a term created by Marx and Lenin to denigrate the enemies of Marx and Lenin. Henri de Saint-Simon’s ideology of the industrial class, opposed to the idling class, inspired and influenced utopian socialism.

So long as we get liberty, the name doesn't matter, writes Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. But it does matter that the Bush campaign would take unto itself a term like "ownership" in an attempt to dupe people.

Gilligan's Island economics can provide useful thought experiments, writes B.K. Marcus, for the same reasons Robinson Crusoe economics has served as a staple of classical and Austrian School economics texts.

Last year, the governor of Alabama proposed and then overwhelmingly lost a bitter referendum to increase taxes and boost revenue, writes Chris Westley.