[A Selection from Libertarian Review , August 1978.] If victory is indeed our given end, an end given to us by the requirements of justice, then we must strive to achieve that end as rapidly as we can. But this means that libertarians must not adopt gradualism as part of their goal; they must wish to achieve liberty as early and as rapidly as
Years ago I joked that every economist’s highest goal was to have a graph or concept named for him or her. Among the existing ones are the Keynesian Cross Graph, the Edgeworth Box , the Phillip’s Curve, the Laffer Curve, Rothbard’s Law, Buridan’s Ass, Mises’s Butler, Hume’s Specie-Flow Mechanism, Rostow’s Stages of Growth, the Ricardo Effect,
Traffic congestion reaches into all aspects of living: working, shopping, recreation. It insidiously cripples the ability of people to coordinate activities with one another, as it becomes virtually impossible to make exact appointments —a broad interval of time is usually the best that can be planned on. Volume 4, Number 3 (1980) Block, Walter.
The doctrine of natural liberty is ultimately grounded on two premises which are necessary to the understanding of why governments are “criminal.” By the self-ownership axiom, every individual has an absolute right to his or her own mind and body and the labor thereof; i.e., each person has the right to control that mind and body free of coercive
When government monopolization of the roadways is discussed by economists, the “externalities” argument is usually raised. The argument is said to be simple, clear, and irrefutable. In fact, none of these terms really apply. Let us consider the argument closely. Volume 7, Number 1 (1983) Block, Walter. “Public Goods and Externalities: The Case
Given the temper of the times it was surprising that following the American Revolution there appeared proposals for national systems of education. The libertarian tradition which fed the flames of the Revolution was staunchly opposed to a union of government and schooling. The greatest fear was that such a union would lead to despotism over the
There are those to whom the question of whether to privatize the nation’s police forces is mere academic whimsy—a question of consequence only to the eggheads and cranks of the Academy, not to those who so solidly inhabit the “real world.” Most of these believe the enforcement of law to be the exclusive province of the state. Such a belief is
The recent widely cited National Agricultural Lands Study (NALS) adds to the growing number of individuals and organizations holding the view that land resources are too important to be left to the “whims of market forces.” In this view, there should be a shift from private ownership of land to social or political control of land use. Volume 7,
Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia presented his by-now-famous view that “a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified.” He went on to say that only such a state is justified. Since then, the view has been frequently presented that a more
In recent years, as libertarian policy analysts have put their minds to the question of tax reform, some have succumbed to the lure of a broad-based, proportional, or flat, income tax. Under these proposals, the current progressive multirate structure would be replaced by a single rate that would apply to all taxpayers. Moreover, all forms of
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.