Libertarians think that taxation is theft. The government takes away part of your income and property by force. Your payments aren’t voluntary. If you think they are, try to withhold payment and see what happens. An influential book by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership , tries to show that this view of taxation is wrong. Many
[ The Vanishing Tradition: Perspective on American Conservatism . Edited by Paul Gottfried. Cornell University Press, 2020. 223 + pages.] Paul Gottfried’s excellent anthology of essays on American conservatives chronicles a key phenomenon of our times. Understanding it is important not only for those, like Gottfried and his contributors, who are
Sometimes the government passes laws that restrict people for what it claims to be their own good, such as laws that ban drugs that are supposed to be bad for your health. Laws like this are called “paternalistic.” Libertarians oppose paternalism, but it is not only libertarians who reject it. It is at odds with the whole tradition of classical
The most famous work of twentieth-century political philosophy is John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971). The most controversial part of this book is the “difference principle”: “Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: (a) They are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of
Can a Roman Catholic be an Austro-Libertarian as well? Christopher Ferrara in a book called The Church and the Libertarian says that one cannot. In Ferrara’s view, Austrian economists deny that the moral law applies to the economy. Instead, Austrians say, strictly scientific laws govern the economy and these limit what the State or the Church can
Today is Hans Hoppe’s birthday. He is an outstanding libertarian theorist, in the tradition of Murray Rothbard, and his strikingly original work ranges widely over philosophy, history, and economics. Among his many contributions are a defense of self-ownership and property rights through argumentation ethics and a trenchant criticism of
Today would have been Joey Rothbard’s 91st birthday. She was Murray Rothbard’s “indispensable framework.” She was a scholar in her own right, but she devoted her life to helping Murray. She was a wonderful friend, and I miss her very
Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War Lindsey A. O’Rourke Cornell University Press, 2018 330 pages Lindsey O’Rourke has given us a devastating indictment of the foreign policy of the United States during the Cold War and after. O’Rourke, who teaches political science at Boston College, is not a principled non-interventionist in the
In a recent article in The Claremont Review of Books , Michael Anton says that conventional conservatism does not appeal to American youth. “It’s been evident for a while, at least to me, that conventional conservatism no longer holds much purchase with large swaths of the under 40, and especially under 30, crowd. Tax cuts, deregulation, trade
Those who us who accept self-ownership and a Lockean account of property acquisition must face an important objection. In this account, self-owners occupy land and other natural resources, in that way acquiring exclusive rights to the land or resources. Once they done so, they may transfer their titles to the property they have acquired through
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.