Murray RothbardRecensioni

The state is a parasite that uses a variety of psychological, economic and violent tools to force people to sustain its boundless expansion. It rings true to some extent but rather onesidedly. The author contrasts the state with "the people". One is bad, one is good. A thought immediately springs to mind: what about corporations? If corporations are not the state but rather "the people" and corporations are known to behave rather badly when unchecked - then both sides are bad. One is bad, the other is bad, everything is bad. But if corporations are small states and "the people" are good then what is the proposed way of organising labor and allocating resources among "the people"? Can "the people" survive without the state?
In the end the text felt like an angry pamphlet against immoral power abusers. Perhaps the author is right and we are all just subjects to a number of ever growing parasites that have encompassed the earth but what do i do about it?

If this had been the only book on libertarianism I had ever read, I would probably have become an authoritarian. I'm aware that academics often use words differently than us normies do, but the idea that there is a school of "ethics" that includes allowing one's own baby to starve to death is unfathomable.

Clearly by the 1980s Rothbard was already well on his journey right-ward from the leftist activists had the pleasure of working with in the 1960s Peace & Liberty Party and the author of radical works like "Man economy & State." He spends the whole book looking at his basis for an economic and "legal" system in a libertarian society and expanding upon those for various parts of life and society. However, he just accepts his own basis as fact and doesn't even seem to attempt to argue why that should be a basis of any thought, let alone libertarianism. This is particularly true in the first section of property ownership. There is no explanation why mixing one's labor with unowned property automatically makes it the private property of the laborer. There is no question as to the idea that an individual can be private property, even to himself, while also claiming that slavery, even so-called voluntary slavery, is unethical. There is absolutely no explanation why inheritance is considered an ethical transfer of private property rights, but a promise to do so is not. (There are plenty of reasons he says why a promise is not, but I see that as little difference than inheritance). There was a whole chapter on the transfer of land titles and the problem of tracking such back to its rightful owner, yet there was 0 reference to the obvious cases of this such as European colonialization into Australia, Africa, & the Americas. An incredible western European centric viewpoint, particularly when you consider Rothbard was an American Jew.

One thing he did do right was right in the introduction he made it clear that nothing contained within would be able to challenge Marxists ideals, including the labor-theory-of-value, as the ideas are so far apart, they can't even be compared properly.

I've been a Libertarian for over 20 years, and no argument against liberty written by a statist has come nearly close to making me question my belief in libertarianism as this one of the American libertarian right.

This is a very concise statement of the world's foremost anarcho-capitalist, Murray Rothbard's, view of the state. It's pretty dense and not particularly suited to the audiobook format, although the argument doesn't rely on weird redefinitions or anything else -- more, that the impact of relatively simple statements takes some reflection to consider. Probably better as a print book, although the narration was technically fine.

Rothbard's beliefs are certainly extreme, but even if you don't agree fully with them, they seem to be a logically consistent belief system and are worth learning about.

Great ideas and philosophy! Unfortunately not part of the ANC's planning, but still a model to be pursued, and a new perspective on the role of government. Goes all American in the middle if you have to criticize, but still interesting.

A must-read!

This book begins with a philosophical analysis of property, ethics, and political science. It uses this as the justification and basis of the rest of the book, which breaks down many of the major areas of our lives where our centralized governments (at least nominally) provide services and organize society. For each of those areas, it points out where government either does more harm than good or, at best, seems to come out benefit-neutral, but does so only at the cost of violated individual rights. It goes on to explain how each of these areas might be better served by an anarchocapitalist social order, backing it up with examples from history and layman-accessible economic analysis of the factors involved.

That first part of the book, where Rothbard sets out to establish a system of ethics and political philosophy of property rights from a "natural rights" justification as the most fundamental right of individuals, is easily the weakest part of the book. As many opponents of his ideas have said, Rothbard is a "philosophical lightweight", whose investigations into the necessities of universal ethics fall somewhere on the naive side of important philosophy, and his core argument is circular. He seems to have picked up some good ideas and organized them reasonably well, tried to justify them based on his preferential biases, and come to the conclusion he is a philosophical genius in the process.

The remainder of the book, however, is well researched, well presented, well argued, and grounded in Rothbard's solid mastery of economic theory, for which he is rightly regarded as one of the field's foremost experts. In fact, he does an excellent job of answering the constant annoyance of libertarians everywhere somewhere in the middle of the book -- the strident demands from authoritarians for an answer to the question "What about the roads?" The fact such a question is still asked rhetorically when this book has been around for so long is a testament to the mental laziness of authoritarian pseudo-intellectuals everywhere (just as the widespread acceptance of Rothbard's natural/property rights ethics as unassailable is a testament to the mental laziness of libertarian pseudo-intellectuals everywhere).

This was the book that changed my views the most, it's an eye-opener for someone who was born in the current banking system and grows beng told it's the way it should be done.

natural rights theory of libertarianism, weak logic in defining "man"

summary of libertarian philosophy

Por qual razão tantas pessoas estão insatisfeitas com o sistema de ensino atual? Por que gerações de reformadores fracassaram em melhorar o sistema educacional, e ainda fizeram com que ele se degenerasse cada vez mais em direção a um nível de mediocridade cada vez pior?
Nesta monografia acadêmica e radical, Rothbard identifica os pontos cruciais do sistema educacional que o condenaram ao fracasso: em cada um de seus níveis, do financiamento ao comparecimento, o sistema se baseia na compulsão e não no consentimento voluntário.
E isso acarreta em algumas consequências. O currículo é politizado para refletir as prioridades ideológicas do regime no poder. Ocorre um contínuo rebaixamento dos padrões para se adaptarem ao menor denominador comum. Não se permite que as crianças mais inteligentes desenvolvam seus potenciais, as necessidades especiais de determinadas crianças são negligenciadas, e os alunos médios são reduzidos a engrenagens anônimas de uma máquina.
Conforme Kevin Ryan, da Universidade de Boston, indica na introdução, se a reforma educacional algum dia conseguir provocar mudanças fundamentais, ela terá que começar com um repensar completo do ensino público como o que Rothbard nos oferece aqui.
Além da democracia é um livro inovador e fascinante para todos aqueles que desejam compreender melhor os atuais problemas sociais e crises econômicas.

Durante o resto da década 1920, o Banco Central americano reverteu sua postura até então conservadora e adotou uma política monetária muito mais expansionista: em 1920, os juros estavam em 6% ao ano. Ao final de 1927, eles já haviam caído para 3,5%. Uma redução de 42%. Essa política monetária expansionista foi a principal responsável por sustentar a febre especulativa dos "loucos anos 20". A contínua criação de dinheiro pelo Federal Reserve permitia que os bancos concedessem, de forma contínua e aparentemente sem limites, empréstimos fartos e baratos para especuladores, os quais utilizavam esse dinheiro barato para comprar ações e, em seguida, revendê-las a preços muito maiores. A expansão monetária feita pelo Fed garantia que os preços das ações subissem continuamente. (Tudo isso está documentado em detalhes neste livro).

Vale ressaltar que é impossível preços de ativos subirem continuamente sem que esteja havendo uma grande expansão monetária, que dê sustentação a esse processo de alta nos preços. Sem expansão monetária é impossível preços subirem eternamente. E quem controla o processo de expansão monetária de um país é o seu Banco Central. E assim foram os loucos anos 1920.
Até que, em fevereiro de 1928, o Fed, assustado com toda aquela febre especulativa, reverteu sua postura e, contrariamente às expectativas, começou a subir os juros. E o fez por três vezes seguidas. Em um período de 5 meses, ele elevou os juros de 3,50% para 5%. Pode parecer pouco, mas esse aumento de 43% em 5 meses bastou para interromper toda a farra especulativa.

Com o crédito mais caro, os especuladores começaram a ter dificuldades em auferir lucros em suas ações. Pegar dinheiro emprestado para comprar ações (um processo conhecido como "alavancagem") tornou-se 43% mais caro em 5 meses. Com menos empréstimos sendo tomados, a quantidade de dinheiro na economia parou de aumentar. (De novo, todas essas estatísticas estão documentadas neste livro). Com essa interrupção no crescimento da quantidade de dinheiro na economia, a própria atividade especulativa perdeu a potência. Os preços das ações pararam de subir.
Uma correção na bolsa de valores era inevitável.

Now I'd probably rate this book a 2, but at the time, I enjoyed his style, or something...
Very elitist pov.
This book = Austrian School orientation;
p. 7 -Rothbard first to use interpretive appr. of Austrian monetary theory

p. 7 'praxeology' -" distinguishes Rothbard : In Rothbard's view, economic laws can be relied upon in interpreting these nonrepeatable historical events because the validity of these laws”or, better yet, their truth—can be established with certainty by praxeology, a science based on the universal experience of human action that is logically anterior to the experience of particular historical" events econ.= science

--horse hockey!

P. 8 "new economic historians view history as a laboratory in which economic theory is continually being tested." cites 'Douglass C. North, a Nobel Prize-winner in economics' as pioneer in this method...
p. 9 North = positivist w/2 problems: 1. his method limited to quantifiable vs. motivation related issues Who benefits from changes in policies and institutions
2. (p. 10) -2nd flaw = claimed rel. betw. theory history

P. 9 --says new economic historians methods leave quanti. data unexplained, miss 'purposive actions ... aimed at ' goals

p. 10 North uses history as empirical data to gather stats to test theory - economic history always changing [[he says this like it's a bad thing...]

-Rothbard focuses on motives, dismisses, J. K. Galbraith, and insists that one must understand other values and goals

P. 24 'when the steel industry lobbies for higher tariffs or reduced quotas, no sane adult, and certainly no competent historian, believes that it is doing so out of its stated concern for the public interest or national security. Despite its avowed motives, everyone clearly perceives that the primary motivation of the industry is economic,'
-Marshall Plan was to 'promote and subsidize' US export strength

P. 25 -so contextual events don't matter? 'the fact that heavy speculation against the German mark accompanied its sharp plunge on foreignexchange markets is not significant for an Austrian-oriented economic historian seeking to explain the stratospheric rise in commodity prices that characterized the German hyperinflation of the early 1920s.' --since he has supply-and-demand purchasing-power-parity theory of exchange rates,
p. 26 instead, looks at German Reichsbank motives;
--hmmm, -so he says check the motives of the decision-makers, not other factors...

P.27 states must be oligarchies because: 1. ruling class extorts taxes from productive classes, and if too many become ruling class, system breaks down,
and
2. law of comparative advantage: not everyone is talented at ruling [reminnds me of Sugar Ray Leonard's comment on his talent = 'beating up on ppl']

p. 29 'The ruling class, however, confronts one serious and ongoing problem: how to persuade the productive majority, whose tribute or taxes it consumes, that its laws, regulations, and policies are beneficial; '
--mass tax resistance on large scale bad for ruling class; intellectuals convince public to submit (claim else anarchy chaos)
P. 47 Great Britain on silver standard colonial America: pounds pence shillings;
' shilling defined as equal to 86 pure Troy grains of silver' & legal tender; 'gold guinea, weighing 129.4 grains ... equal ... silver.' -> bimetallic standard -> Gresham's Law;
-said overvalued $ circulates, undervalued leaves (out of the country or into hoards)

P. 48 government does it w/privldg of legal tender '17th, 18th-century Britain, the government maintained a mint ratio between gold and silver that consistently overvalued gold and undervalued silver in relation to world market prices'
-loss of silver, flood of gold;

-Rural areas: north: beaver fur, wampum for Indian trade, fish & corn = money; rice =$ in SC, pound of tobacco = VA currency via warehouse receipts w/full 100 % backing;
-urban & foreign trade: coins English & European (French
P. 49 'guinea, the Portuguese “joe,� the Spanish doubloon, and Brazilian coins, while silver coins included French crowns and livres.'

-asserts no need for national gov monopoly on coinage: 'indeed foreign gold and silver coins constituted much of the coinage in the United States until Congress outlawed the use of foreign coins in 1857.' free market -> foreign coin circulate w/value proportion to market weights;

-'leading specie coin circulating in America was the Spanish silver dollar, defined as consisting of 387 grains of pure silver.

-says was no scarcity of specie despite constant complaints in colonies; admits 'true that England, in a mercantilist attempt to hoard specie, kept minting for its own prerogative and outlawed minting in the colonies; it also prohibited the export of English coin to America. But this did not keep specie from America, for, as we have seen, Americans were able to import Spanish and other foreign coin, including English, from other countries'
--[[somehow this strikes me as saying if we couldn't take pounds sterling from England into Bath, that we could get by in Bath via notes from other countries -not very likely...]]

-blames specie shortage on paper money issues via Gresham's law

-1642 MA dollar = 5 shillings; (led general colonial debasement) to attract more span. dollars to mk MA exports cheaper in dollar terms;
-> inflation & end of temporary export stimulus; English outlawed it in 1707;

P. 51 but they already had paper (MA = first in 1690 in Western wrld w/paper $ ...
not counting '“card money.� The governing intendant of Quebec, Monsieur Mueles, divided some playing cards into quarters, marked them with various monetary denominations, and then issued them to pay for wages and materials sold to the government. He ordered the public to accept the cards as legal tender, and this particular issue was later redeemed in specie sent from France.' ...)

-cites medieval China as first w/paper & printing;
-claims China had boom-bust too: See GordonTullock, Paper Money "Cycle in Cathay"

-MA 'plunder expeditions' against Quebec; lost this one, no loan from merchants - December 1690 printed lbs 7000 ; paid mutinous soldiers w/ pledge: 1. redeem in gold or silver from later tax collections 2. no new notes!
-says they lied in both: months later dropped issue limit -that's inflationary, yes...

-[[but 'the bills continued unredeemed for nearly 40 years.' not a problem,since lack of redemption was due to circulating use as currency w/benefits to local economy, imho...

-Feb. 1691 issued 40,0000 lbs more -> rapid depreciation vs. specie by 40% in 1 year
- 1692 made paper $ 'compulsory legal tender for all debts at par with specie, and by granting a premium of 5 percent on all payment of debts to the government made in paper notes.' -> via Gresham's L. specie left colony, drove up prices, hampered exports from MA;
-claims thus that paper issue was caused the shortage of specie, except that gee whiz, MA couldn't pay the guys in 1690 due to lack of specie in the first place!!


'in 1690, before the orgy of paper issues began, £200,000 of silver money was available in New England; by 1711, however, with Connecticut and Rhode Island having followed suit in paper money issue, £240,000 of paper money had been issued in New England but the silver had almost disappeared from circulation.'
***----But where does he get these figures from??

---the later lack of silver does not mean paper caused the shortage -again, MA couldn't pay soldiers, BEFORE paper issue...

-He also neglects MD colony successfull issue (thus far...)
(seems he may have his own motives and point to make about fiat money...)

P. 53 gov benefited from paper which he alleges did not solve shortage...

This is only in New England, all accepting each other's notes (so what one does all must do...)

P. 54 cites MA, CT, NC & SC, RI & PA depreciations; detailed NJ -inflationary boom & deflationary depression as supply contracted;
1748 after war w/France parliament pressed to retire paper; 1751 New England paper issues prohibited -> 1764 all new paper issues prohib. & retirement of notes
RI only New England colony not to resume specie payment & retire notes rapidly

[I wonder what he means by a ' brief adjustment" to specie resumption...]
also how is he defining 'more prosperous' ?

P. 55 claims 'Rhode Island still on depreciated paper, the result was that Newport, which had been a flourishing center for West Indian imports for western Massachusetts, lost its trade to Boston and languished in the doldrums'
-claims in note 7 that RI exported inflation to MA via paper money [a bit like the Western world does via the US Dollar nowadays...]

-claims lower deflation via wheat prices for Boston than Philadelphia (specie vs. paper), stable exchange rates

***Finally mentions MD:
'8 If Rhode Island was the most inflationary of the colonies, Maryland's monetary expansion was the most bizarre. In 1733, Maryland's public land bank issued £70,000 of paper notes, of which £30,000 was given away in a fixed amount to each inhabitant of the province. This was done to universalize the circulation of the new notes, and is probably the closest approximation in history of Milton Friedman's helicopter model, in which a magical helicopter lavishes new paper money in fixed amounts of proportions to each inhabitant. The result of the measure, of course, was rapid depreciation of new notes. However, the inflationary impact of the notes was greatly lessened by tobacco still being the major money of the new colony. Tobacco was legal tender in Maryland and the paper was not receivable for all taxes. '

-clearly favors metal (specie) -gold or bimetallic?

P. 56 Private Bank Notes
-1st European banks in Venice 14th century (calls credit 'money lenders' who lent own savings)

-puts 1st England banks (lending other ppls savings) to 'scriveners' early 17th c: clerks of contracts bonds

-no deposit banks in England 'til mid-17th c after
P. 57 king Charles I confiscated lbs 200,000 in gold 1638 as 'a loan' - merchants using goldsmiths warehouses in 1660's fractional reserve banking via receipts

[how many times have we heard this story, let us count the ways...]]
-note 12 cites Tullock 'Paper Money' on China 8th century fractional reserve banking

-cite MA Land Bank of 1740 alternative to gov. paper; 1741 Parliament outlawed land bank silver banks

P. 58 MA land bank backed by wealthy merchants & land speculators

P. 59 1775 Rev. War -Gouverneur Morris of NY landed aristocracy idea fiat paper $
-retire via future state taxes
-issued
$6 million 1775 (one year); Continental paper ; total $225 million 5 years
-dramatic depreciation against specie
[which specie -silver?]

P. 60 soldiers paid in Continentals -worthless, farmers forced to accept
p. 61 -by war's end all state paper withdrawn; loan certificates also used as currency, depreciated, remained as peacetime federal debt due to Robert Morris (Phil.) agitated for par redeemable debt & fed assumption of state debts
-claims reasons 1. subsidize speculators 2. to gain federal taxing power

P. 62 Morris disciple = Alexander Hamilton
-claims Morris wanted: strong central government, federal tax power, public debt payable by permanent taxes;
-'spring of 1781, Morris introduced a bill to create the first commercial bank, as well as the first central bank, in the history of the new Republic. This bank, headed by Morris himself, the Bank of North America, was not only the first fractional reserve commercial bank in the U.S.; it was to be a privately owned central bank, modeled after the Bank of England.'
-money backed by specie, but inflationary; opened 1782 w/it's notes good for taxes at par with specie; claims all other banks forbidden

--V. very interesting note 18: 'Morris candidly put it, this windfall to the public debt speculators at the expense of the taxpayers would cause wealth to flow into those hands which could render it most productive. [b:The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance 1776-1790|750100|The Power of the Purse A History of American Public Finance 1776-1790|E. James Ferguson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347310546s/750100.jpg|736238] p. 124.

P 63
-bank lent to government to buy pub. debt, reimbursed via taxes
-also deposited all congressional funds, lent Congress 1.2million $
-depreciated outside Phil. (bank hq);
-end 1783 Morris had sold fed gov. stock
---note claims, in prev. Rothbard book, Morris embezzled lots for him & friends...

P. 64 end of Rev. war contraction of paper resumed imports (from G Britain he says...) - deflation by half by mid 1780's
-states trying to pay war debt w/out high taxes;
-again claims paper issues 'shortage' of money; cites NC: merchants had to accept local paper in NC but couldn't pay foreign creditors w/it.
-claims Bank of No America didn't help: Banks of NY & MA (Boston) both got regional

P. 65 monopolies -> expansion & then contraction of credit, making recession worse

-bimetallic coin -quotes Jefferson in J. Laurence Laughlin 1901: spanish silver dollar ubiquitousness -> dollar = basic US currency

- new Constitution (Article I section 8) coinage powers -> 'Coinage Act of 1792 on the recommendation of Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s “Report on the Establishment of a Mint� of the year before.25 '
-fixed 15-1 silver - gold, silver dollar & $10 gold eagle;
-problem = market fluxuations via Mexican silver mines -> '15.75-to-1. The latter figure was enough of a gap between the market and mint ratios to set Gresham’s Law into operation so that by 1810 gold' -> gold leaving US, silver flooding US
-says 1810-1834 only had silver coin in US


p. 68 complex left 'of Gresham’s Law, the United States was left, especially after 1820, with no gold coins and only Spanish fractional silver coin in circulation.32'
-alleges 'scarcity' of specie was made up...
-claims Hamilton allied w/Morris, continuation of Bank of No America: 'Bank of the United States in February 1791. The charter of the bank was for 20 years, and it was assured a monopoly of the privilege of having a national charter...'

p. 69 -'Bank of the United States engaged in massive temporary lending to the government, which reached $6.2 million by 1796' -> inflation (cites 'wholesale prices rose from an index of 85 in 1791 to a peak of 146 in 1796, an increase of 72 percent.34In addition, speculation boomed in government securities and real estate values were driven upward.35'
-loves to use the word 'pyramiding' as in pyramid scheme? ...
-claims commercial banks boomed: 'eight new banks were founded shortly thereafter, in 1791 and 1792, and 10 more by 1796.' -> 18 new banks in 5 years
--> 'grave constitutional argument, the Jeffersonians arguing that the Constitution gave the federal government no power to establish a bank. Hamilton, in turn, paved the way for virtually unlimited expansion of federal power by maintaining that the Constitution “implied� a grant of power for carrying out vague national goals. The Hamiltonian interpretation won out officially in the decision of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland(1819).37'
-says Justice John Marshall repeated Hamilton's args in Dunne 1960 'Monetary Decisions of the Supreme Court'

p. 72 merchants favored recharter;
-note 41 says state banks also favored recharter, not restrained terribly by central bank...

P. 73 War of 1812 -New England against, few bonds;
-claims fed. gov. encouraged inflationary banks in rest of country, used those notes to buy goods in New England
--now he makes 'heroic assumptions' to guess estimate money stock in 1811...
*[note great methodology imho...]


P. 74 New England banks asking other banks to redeem in specie blamed for August 1814 suspending of specie payments 'to stop all redemption of notes and deposits in gold or silver' while operating
-calls a flagrant violation of property rights'

P. 75 says banks increased, reserves dropped, inflation major 1815
-claims other historians blame inflation on lack of central bank
-he blames Federal Government
-many Treasure notes; used as money and reserves (accepted for debts & taxes so it was quasi-legal tender)

P. 76 -> inflation & Gresham's Law drove specie to New England & abroad
-cites wholesale price increase especially w/imports
-set precedent for banks to ignore contracts during crisis
P. 77 -says free banking only when banks just like any other business, but they weren't ;
-complains 'Burdened by he tradition of allowing general suspensions that arose in the United States in 1814, the pre–Civil War banking system, despite strong elements of competition when not saddled with a central bank, must rather be termed in the phrase of one economist, as “Decentralization without Freedom.�46 '

P. 78 'bank note detectors' = monthly journals by 'money brokers' listing note - specie ratios of various banks
-wildcat banks just issued money & didn't redeem, located in hard to find places

p. 79 says if gov didn't allow banks to suspend specie payment this wouldn't have happened
-says money brokers often not welcomed in small towns by locals, blamed stranger for bank collapse
-panic of 1819: MD & PA passed laws requiring full redemption, but allowing ignoring of money brokers
-note 48
P. 80 -note 48 show VT & NY cases dubbing money brokers as money grubbers...
-GA banks pennies & oaths for specie;
-NC & MD not paying & charging licensing fees to money brokers

[[Obviously the locals see a problem with large redemptions from out of state; but if the point of money is to help the local economy, their POV is right...]]

P. 81 MD par laws and penalties only helped specie leave
-KY, TN, Missouri forced debtors to accept bank paper
-claims all states accepted bank notes for taxes or state debts
P. 82 quotes 'Philadelphia state Senator Condy Raguet, and the eminent English economist David Ricardo' letter: all USA either own bank stock or in debt to them...

P. 83 1816 Second Bank of US -opened January 1817, gave loan to NY, Phil. Baltimore & VA banks before they resumed specie payments
-mutual support agreement (he says = prop up state banks)

P. 85 paper stayed, specie (quotes Bray Hammond) better, but not good
P. 86 -claims inflation, lack of redemption in specie, & fraud, esp. in Phil. & Baltimore branches (esp. in Baltimore, he says)

P. 87 -says western & southern branches inflated notes & redeemed in NY & Boston
-blames Second Bank for inflation & expansion of state banks

P. 88 money ; credit expansion -> 'fullscale inflationary boom. Prices rose greatly in real estate, land, farm improvement projects, and slaves, much of it fueled by the use of bank credit for speculation: real estate.'
...[interesting: shaky state banks were good for locals, but centralizing on a North Eastern model would hurt planters; Banks owned the land...]]

Rothbard wrote The Betrayal of the American Right as a kind of personal intellectual history, a partizan’s idiosyncratic view of the evolution of right-wing thought in American politics through the 1960s. The laissez-faire/isolationist Old Right to which he pledged allegiance emerged from the individualist tradition, in opposition to the New Deal and US entry into WWII. By the mid-1940s, Rothbard had graduated from Colombia and was calling himself ‘an extreme right winger.’ His discovery of Austrian economics in 1949 and subsequent conversion to anarchism (‘a simple exercise in logic’) Rothbard calls the ‘two most exciting and shattering intellectual events’ of his life. Naturally, he says, the anarchism he adopted was individualistic and free-market. None of that ‘woolly communalism’ for Murray. In Rothbard's telling, the Old Right was suppressed during WWII, by calumny and obloquy and political espionage, but experienced a short renaissance after the war as Cold War anxieties opened up space for its freedom & free-enterprise agitation. Alas, the antiwar isolationist Old Right made its last stand at the Korean War, and by the mid-1950s had been ‘betrayed’ by the New Right and the theocratic warmongering civil-liberties-crushing ‘conservative’ intellectuals given a platform at William F. Buckley’s National Review. The Goldwater campaign was a dagger through the heart of the Old Right, and Rothbard surprisingly found himself in agreement with the Free Speech/antiwar New Left in the 1960s.

Between the lines, The Betrayal of the American Right is an entertaining intellectual dissection of the ideologue, with his aversion to complexity and ambiguity; the obsessively meticulous assignment of factional labels, from Tory Anarchists to Minnesota Trotskyists; the unfounded assumptions and the hysterical hyperbole. Murray says that ‘the despotism of Prohibition’ was ‘surely the greatest single act of tyranny ever imposed in America.’ Come on. A well-sourced narrative history of the Prohibition era like Daniel Okrent’s Last Call tells instead of the ineptitude of the State, the futility of commanding particular behaviors, and the capacity of enterprising and resourceful people to subvert stupid laws. For the ideologue, though, every slope is slippery. The New Deal unleashed ‘the tyranny of the Executive’ and transferred the ‘ultimate power of initiative’ from private enterprise to government. Nope. WWII, according to Murray, ‘would transform America into a Leviathan state, a domestic totalitarian collectivism.’ (yikes!) It did not, unless that is what you believe you see.

Murray and his friends spend a lot of time trying to figure out where exactly they sit on the ideological spectrum, which they assume is a linear arrangement from Left to Right. Time and again, though, he tells us that such and such a development led to a ‘reshuffling’ of the ideological spectrum. The drive of the New Deal toward war was supported by Left-Liberals. Business interests once opposed to FDR supported the stimulus provided by government spending on armaments and materiel. Conservatives/liberals didn't like this/that, then they did. Murray even tells us that Robert A. Taft was ‘on the extreme left wing of the extreme right wing’ (?!), but never really figures out how and why the conventional Left/Right designations are inadequate for anything but polemical jousting.

Rothbard got his anti-pragmatic myopia from his mentor, Ludwig von Mises, who wrote in his magnum opus Human Action that his economic theories were ‘not open to any verification or falsification on the ground of experience’ (p. 862). Deduce from your preferred first principle, then stick with it regardless. Except that laissez faire and isolationism in the American context are ahistorical and impracticable. The American State was never not expansionist and interventionist, and market economies do not exist apart from government activity. Perhaps they could, but they never have.

Murray wants you to think of him as a libertarian, forever committed to individual liberty, and you might if all you read was The Betrayal of the American Right, written in 1971 (published 2007). Oh, but Murray went bad. By the 1990s, he was promoting a boorish social conservatism, arguing in favor of obedience to tradition as the foundation of liberty, property and order—the individualist tendency jettisoned in favor of a retrograde right-wing populism. Blech. So long, Murray.½

A meglehetősen rövid könyv valójában három esszé. Az elsőben általánosságban olvashatunk az oktatásról, arról, hogy vajon mennyire helyes, hogy az állam kötelezővé teszi az oktatást, amit természetesen utána rögtön saját maga kezd szabályozni. Az írót ismerve nem lep meg túlzottan, hogy ezt az állami szabályozást is elveti, és a kötelező oktatás hátrányait sorolja fel.

A második részben a kötelező oktatás európai elterjedésének történetét, a harmadikban az USA-n belüli bevezetés folyamatát ismerteti a szerző, nem túl meglepő módon ezek a részek (különösen a korabeli idézetek) alátámasztják Rothbardnak azt a véleményét, hogy veszélyes ilyen jogot adni az állam kezébe.

A könyv nagyon érdekes, de szerintem legjobb esetben is csak gondolatébresztő, nem igazából vázol alternatívát.

An ethics/morals based case for a society without rulers. Rothbard outlines the legal framework for a free society. Very convincing.

How a society organised without rulers might work. i.e. political anarchy (not to be confused with violence, chaos and disorder).

The case against modern monetary policy of inflation-targeting central banking to a free-market money such as gold.

Since the Libertarian party has been getting so much attention during the 2016 election as a possible alternative to the candidates from the two major parties, it seemed like a good idea to try to learn more about the positions of the party. I started with their 2016 party platform but found it nothing more than the equivalent of a few powerpoint bullet points.

I was therefore happy to have found this book from Rothbard since it tries to layout the Libertarian position on everything from drugs, abortion, foreign policy, and even air and noise pollution. Although I still have many questions about their positions, after finishing this book I feel I have a real understanding of the principles of the party. The book begins with a discussion of the basic principles of the Libertarians and then, chapter for chapter applies those principles to specific topics in a well reasoned fashion. It is also easy to read depite many of the political discussions being dated to the situations in the 1970s.

The author, Murray Rothbard, is considered to be one of the founders of the Libertarian movement and had been involved with other key movement figures like Ayn Rand and the Koch brothers. According to other books about the movement, most of those relationships ended in disagreements. This book was published originally in 1973 as an attempt to layout the Libertarian principles. It succeeds very well.

Reading the book, it was hard to escape the impression that Libertarian thinking fit perfectly for a comfortably living academic who now has his own and wants to keep everyone else away. It is hard to imagine this philosophy appealing to people that are poor or downtrodden or not strong enough to protect their own interests like the women killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire or coal miners who had been forced to "sell their souls to the company store."

It is easy to imagine the movement as an association of people arguing about true principles rather than as an association of people that could actually build a society that functions. One conservative (William Buckley) described them as a group of people that would argue constantly about privatizing garbage disposal. I can imagine their get-togethers having the same level of discussion as a get-together of Trotsky and Lenin followers.

It is debatable whether many of these Libertarian approaches would work in practice. For that reason, it would be really useful if a group of Libertarians would form a community somewhere based upon their principles to see if they could really make this work. For example, many of their approaches for providing community services and infrastructure is based upon an assumption that so many firms would be competing to supply you with water and remove your garbage that those businesses would provide perfectly efficient services to you. Ironically, Rothbard's love of firms in the earlier chapters is dismissed by his attacks of our current big businesses with their tendencies to drive towards monopolies and to feed at the government trough.

The Libertarian society painted by Rotbard would likely be a very litigious society since many of Rothbard's remedies for air and noise pollution involve suing the person who caused this attack on your personal property.

Rothbard paints the Libertarian movement like other utopian movements but claims that his utopian vision is the one utopia that will really work since he feels it is the only movement based upon real human nature. The last chapter at the end of the book discusses how to make a Libertarian world come about. His proposed techniques are admittedly borrowed from Marxist movements and include many strategies that have since been implemented by the Koch brothers and the tea party movement. He also sees the need for a "crisis moment" to occur in order to get the world to adopt the Libertarian agenda. If he were still alive, Rothbard would clearly be made happy by the crisis of the 2016 election. He sees hope that "government itself has been desanctified in America. No one trusts politicians or government anymore; all government is viewed with abiding hostility, thus returning us to that state of healthy distrust of government ...."

One challenge for the Libertarian political party having a presidential candidate would be what would happen if he would actually win. Since Rothbard explains that the Libertarian movement is against government in general, it would make it very difficult for any true Libertarian to take the presidential oath to preserve the constitution.

In summary, this book is recommended as a logical and easy to read explanation of Libertarian thinking.

Nekem úgy tűnik az emberek többsége az államot egy szükséges és alapvetően jó intézménynek tartja. Az átlagembernek konkrétan persze rengeteg gondja van az állam bizonyos intézményivel, az éppen hatalmon lévőkkel meg még több, de az állam létét és jóságát mégsem kérdőjelezi meg. Bosszankodik egy sort, hogy az állam rosszul és drágán működik, és hogy az éppen hatalmon lévők lopnak, de bízik abban, hogy a következő választás után majd jobb lesz. Aztán többnyire nem lesz.

Ebben a nagyon rövid könyvben Rothbard célja szerintem összesen annyi, hogy megkérdőjelezze ezt az általánosan elfogadott nézetet. Egy mondattal összefoglalva a könyvet: Az állam rossz és gonosz. Ha pusztán annyit elér az író, hogy az olvasó elgondolkodik az állam szerepén, már elérte a célját.

Sajnos a könyv nem túl meggyőző, nem fejti ki elég részletesen az elveit. Vannak nagyon jó és elgondolkodtató részletek benne, de végig olyan érzésem volt, mintha hosszabb munkákból ollóztak volna össze egy rövid kivonatot.

I read this book in the late 1970s (I'm guessing about 1977), along with competing analyses by Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith, among others. In my view, Rothbard's principal contribution is his demonstration that it was the deliberate governmental inflation of the money supply during the 1920s that led to the 1929 stock market crash. As President Calvin Coolidge famously said, "The business of America is business," and the Republican administrations of the 1920s did everything they could to stimulate business by using inflationary policies to create an artificial boom. The chickens came home to roost in 1929. Whether or not the Austrian School's disagreement with Keynesianism (increasing government spending and money supply during recessions and decreasing same during booms) is correct I leave to the economists. The Keynesian approach makes sense to me, but I am not an economic expert.

Of the books my friends have recommended lately this has been the best. Rothbard does a fantastic job at exposing the state for what it is, and not what the state has taught us it is. Moreover he goes beyond the tired libertarian rhetoric “thieves with guns" and "a monopoly on force" and actually shows what’s wrong with these things. Most interesting, I founds, was Rothbard's attack on "nullification" and showing how it is just as wrong as any other government action for the protection of individual liberty. I'm so glad for the recommendation.

I agree with almost nothing in this book, and find the arguments facile, the examples contrived, the analogies false, and the general intellectual tone shallow and utterly unconvincing.

The best criticism comes from the book itself (p. 217): "Every reader of detective fiction knows that private insurance detectives are far more efficient than the police in recovering stolen property." That is the caliber of the argument throughout: it's easy to pretend X, therefore X is the case.

But, none of that means this is a bad book. It's a good book: well-organized, easy to follow, covering a lot of ground simply, clearly and coherently. It's written for the ones who have already drank the Kool-Aid and so provides talking points, not really arguments, and it's a breeze to get through.

If you want to know how radical libertarians think, this is a very good place to start. Much of the content is dated (the book was originally published in 1973), so read fast and be prepared to skip large sections.

The Mystery of Banking by Murray N. Rothbard. Austrians have made pretty much all of their books free, which is part of why their ideas are far-reaching.

This book reads like a well-written textbook and has basically three parts:
1) A primer on supply and demand for money. (Those are parts I quoted from in my previous post).
2) An explanation of how fractional reserve banking works.
3) A history of banking in the U.K. and U.S., with some prescriptions to how an ideal Rothbardian system would work.

While Von Mises and Rothbard build and develop from much earlier monetarists, they reach radically different conclusions from them: Any increase in the overall price level is evil. Fractional reserve banking is immoral because it creates something out of nothing. Our modern banking system is built to create inflation to enrich some at the expense of others. Only by returning to a gold standard and eliminating our central bank and all fractional reserve banking can we achieve a completely stable business cycle (utopia with no involuntary unemployment).

Except for these ideas, parts 1 & 2 are similar to any textbook on Money and Banking, or a Principles of Macro text. Part 3 is very jaded, there is a lot of history that Rothbard omits or reinterprets. For example, there was a lot more going into the Panic of 1873 for the U.S. than Jay Cooke's bubble bursting-- the crisis started in Europe, which doesn't get mentioned. That said, there are a lot of interesting facts I was unaware of. I also liked having a Money & Banking text that didn't deal with interest rates at all, everything was in terms of supply and demand for money. That monetarist bent is badly needed in today's world focusing on a mythical "zero bound."

The book really illustrated for me the quixotic nature of the Austrian cause. Since coinage was invented, the makers of those coins have been debasing them in order to profit or inflate away debt. Since people have gotten used to calling their currency the "pound," "dollar," etc. instead of it just being "gold," people don't notice the debasement. But it would take a radical departure from thousands of years of human nature to move people away from this problem, even if currency was "denationalized."

Rothbard compares the fixing of a price of gold as the same as a government determining uniform weights and measures -- a centimeter is the same everywhere. But the value of a centimeter never changes whereas gold-- being a commodity-- sees its value change with supply and demand, which then changes the value of any currency whose price is fixed to it. The Austrians seemingly ignore this. For example, the late 1800s period in the U.S. the population was growing, output was increasing, but gold supplies were not growing so much so the value of gold rose and prices fell. Rothbard would say this is a naturally good thing, lower prices mean people can afford to buy more. But if you're a farmer who has fixed obligations -- contracted workers, a loan from a bank, etc. lower prices means it's much harder to stay in business and not default. (Hence we had a bimetallic inflationist political movement as a result.) Rothbard completely ignores this.

These fluctuations in the value of gold can happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Given so much of the (correct) emphasis that I see Von Mises placing on expectations of entrepreneurs, I find Rothbard's position pretty problematic.

As mentioned in my previous post, Rothbard and Mises acknowledge that prices are often sticky, but have a one-size-fits-all explanation for this that doesn't actually fit everywhere. All weight is put on the evil of prices inflation, no weight is put on the harmful effects of deflation.

I now see the Austrians as on par with the hard-core left-wing Communists who want to issue in a utopia that is impossible due to human nature. The idea that simply by moving to a 100% reserve gold system and moving to anarcho-capitalism will solve all of our ills and make everyone purely rational yet benevolent is pure nonsense. It's odd to me that as such an astute student of history, Rothbard doesn't see the continual "Road to Serfdom"-like cycle that all civilizations have ridden since the Fall of Man.

In the end, there is an Appendix where Rothbard absolutely rips Lawrence White, also an Austrian, for what Rothbard sees as an incorrect interpretation of the history of free banking. Austrians, like Keynesians, have a good reputation for trying to destroy and humiliate those they don't like.

George Selgin, whose Theory of Free Banking will be my next read, is a former Rothbardian disciple who sums it up thus:

Rothbard, on the other hand, was only too determined to identify himself with the Austrian School and, more than that, to both take part in a personality cult, built around von Mises, and attract such a cult himself. One sign of the presence of such a cult is precisely the scorn its members heap on potential rivals to the cult figure.
As a monetary economist (I don't pretend to judge Rothbard's other economic contributions) Rothbard was mediocre to bad. His version of the Austrian business cycle theory was naive--in essence it equated behavior of M consistent with keeping interest rates at their "natural" levels with the elimination of fractional-reserve banking, an equation that holds only with the help of about a dozen auxilliary assumptions, all of which are patently false. He then went on to conjure up an equally false history of banking and of bank contracts designed to square his theory of the cycle, with its implied condemnation of fractional reserve banking, with his libertarian ethics.

As such, I give this book 3 stars out of 5. It's very readable, and you can learn a good deal of history, monetary economics, and how banking works from it. However, if you don't take it with a large grain of salt you may not see the many errors and omissions that cause it to be quite slanted.

I read the entire book in a day. A great history of money, and how it's been manipulated. It's free to download, but it's one you'll want a hard copy of.

Available from: http://blog.mises.org/archives/005896.asp

Fundamental read to understand the modern libertarian movement in the USA.