We Want You:
August 11, 2012 – 6:00 pm
The Road to Totalitarianism
July 26, 2012 – 11:00 amThe Road to Totalitarianism by Henry Hazlitt
Totalitarianism in its final form is the doctrine that the government, the state, must exercise total control over the individual. The American College Dictionary, closely following Webster’s Collegiate, defines totalitarianism as “pertaining to a centralized form of government in which those in control grant neither recognition nor tolerance to parties of different opinion.”
Now I should describe this failure to grant tolerance to other parties not as the essence of totalitarianism, but rather as one of its consequences or corollaries. The essence of totalitarianism is that the group in power must exercise total control. Its original purpose (as in communism) may be merely to exercise total control over “the economy.” But “the state” (the imposing name for the clique in power) can exercise total control over the economy only if it exercises complete control over imports and exports, over prices and interest rates and wages, over production and consumption, over buying and selling, over the earning and spending of income, over jobs, over occupations, over workers — over what they do and what they get and where they go — and finally, over what they say and even what they think.
Click Here to read this article 
Robert Wenzel recently created a 30-day reading list for those that would like to become familiar with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is at the core of the Libertarian Party principles. Each day we are posting a new article from this list.
This is Day 18
Did you miss a day? See below for the previous entries.
- Day 1: The Task Confronting Libertarians
- Day 2: The Fascist Threat
- Day 3: Free Economy and Social Order
- Day 4: The Peculiar and Unique Position of Economics
- Day 5: What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us
- Day 6: Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
- Day 7: Is Greater Productivity a Danger?
- Day 8: The Truth About Taxes
- Day 9: Hitler Was a Keynesian
- Day 10: Seeing the Unseen
- Day 11: The Watermelon Summit
- Day 12: Equality and Inequality
- Day 13: How to Think Like an Economist
- Day 14: The Health Plan’s Devilish Principles
- Day 15: Vice Are Not Crimes
- Day 16: Repudiate the National Debt
- Day 17: The Fallacy of the ‘Public Sector’
The Fallacy of the ‘Public Sector’
July 25, 2012 – 11:00 amThe Fallacy of the ‘Public Sector’ by Murray Rothbard
We have heard a great deal in recent years of the “public sector,” and solemn discussions abound through the land on whether or not the public sector should be increased vis-à-vis the “private sector.” The very terminology is redolent of pure science, and indeed it emerges from the supposedly scientific, if rather grubby, world of “national-income statistics.” But the concept is hardly wertfrei; in fact, it is fraught with grave, and questionable, implications.
In the first place, we may ask, “public sector” of what? Of something called the “national product.” But note the hidden assumptions: that the national product is something like a pie, consisting of several “sectors,” and that these sectors, public and private alike, are added to make the product of the economy as a whole. In this way, the assumption is smuggled into the analysis that the public and private sectors are equally productive, equally important, and on an equal footing altogether, and that “our” deciding on the proportions of public to private sector is about as innocuous as any individual’s decision on whether to eat cake or ice cream. The State is considered to be an amiable service agency, somewhat akin to the corner grocer, or rather to the neighborhood lodge, in which “we” get together to decide how much “our government” should do for (or to) us. Even those neoclassical economists who tend to favor the free market and free society often regard the State as a generally inefficient, but still amiable, organ of social service, mechanically registering “our” values and decisions.
Click Here to read this article
Robert Wenzel recently created a 30-day reading list for those that would like to become familiar with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is at the core of the Libertarian Party principles. Each day we are posting a new article from this list.
This is Day 17
Did you miss a day? See below for the previous entries.
- Day 1: The Task Confronting Libertarians
- Day 2: The Fascist Threat
- Day 3: Free Economy and Social Order
- Day 4: The Peculiar and Unique Position of Economics
- Day 5: What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us
- Day 6: Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
- Day 7: Is Greater Productivity a Danger?
- Day 8: The Truth About Taxes
- Day 9: Hitler Was a Keynesian
- Day 10: Seeing the Unseen
- Day 11: The Watermelon Summit
- Day 12: Equality and Inequality
- Day 13: How to Think Like an Economist
- Day 14: The Health Plan’s Devilish Principles
- Day 15: Vice Are Not Crimes
- Day 16: Repudiate the National Debt
Repudiate the National Debt
July 24, 2012 – 11:00 amRepudiate the National Debt by Murray Rothbard
To think sensibly about the public debt, we first have to go back to first principles and consider debt in general. Put simply, a credit transaction occurs when C, the creditor, transfers a sum of money (say $1,000) to D, the debtor, in exchange for a promise that D will repay C in a year’s time the principal plus interest. If the agreed interest rate on the transaction is 10 percent, then the debtor obligates himself to pay in a year’s time $1,100 to the creditor. This repayment completes the transaction, which in contrast to a regular sale, takes place over time.
So far, it is clear that there is nothing “wrong” with private debt. As with any private trade or exchange on the market, both parties to the exchange benefit, and no one loses. But suppose that the debtor is foolish, gets himself in over his head, and then finds that he can’t repay the sum he had agreed on? This, of course is a risk incurred by debt, and the debtor had better keep his debts down to what he can surely repay. But this is not a problem of debt alone. Any consumer may spend foolishly; a man may blow his entire paycheck on an expensive trinket and then find that he can’t feed his family. So consumer foolishness is hardly a problem confined to debt alone. But there is one crucial difference: if a man gets in over his head and he can’t pay, the creditor suffers too, because the debtor has failed to return the creditor’s property. In a profound sense, the debtor who fails to repay the $1,100 owed to the creditor has stolen property that belongs to the creditor; we have here not simply a civil debt, but a tort, an aggression against another’s property.
Click Here to read this article
Robert Wenzel recently created a 30-day reading list for those that would like to become familiar with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is at the core of the Libertarian Party principles. Each day we are posting a new article from this list.
This is Day 16
Did you miss a day? See below for the previous entries.
- Day 1: The Task Confronting Libertarians
- Day 2: The Fascist Threat
- Day 3: Free Economy and Social Order
- Day 4: The Peculiar and Unique Position of Economics
- Day 5: What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us
- Day 6: Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
- Day 7: Is Greater Productivity a Danger?
- Day 8: The Truth About Taxes
- Day 9: Hitler Was a Keynesian
- Day 10: Seeing the Unseen
- Day 11: The Watermelon Summit
- Day 12: Equality and Inequality
- Day 13: How to Think Like an Economist
- Day 14: The Health Plan’s Devilish Principles
- Day 15: Vice Are Not Crimes
Vices Are Not Crimes
July 23, 2012 – 11:00 amVices Are Not Crimes by Murray Rothbard
This article is taken from Murray Rothbard’s introduction to Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty by Lysander Spooner.
Both the title and the substance of “Vices are not Crimes” highlight the unique role that morality and moral principle had for Spooner among the anarchists and libertarians of his day. For Spooner was the last of the great natural rights theorists among anarchists, classical liberals, or moral theorists generally; the doughty old heir of the natural law–natural rights tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was fighting a rearguard battle against the collapse of the idea of a scientific or rational morality, or of the science of justice or of individual right.
Not only had natural law and natural rights given way throughout society to the arbitrary rule of utilitarian calculation or nihilistic whim, but the same degenerative process had occurred among libertarians and anarchists as well. Spooner knew that the foundation for individual rights and liberty was tinsel if all values and ethics were arbitrary and subjective.
Click Here to read this article
Robert Wenzel recently created a 30-day reading list for those that would like to become familiar with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is at the core of the Libertarian Party principles. Each day we are posting a new article from this list.
This is Day 15
Did you miss a day? See below for the previous entries.
- Day 1: The Task Confronting Libertarians
- Day 2: The Fascist Threat
- Day 3: Free Economy and Social Order
- Day 4: The Peculiar and Unique Position of Economics
- Day 5: What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us
- Day 6: Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
- Day 7: Is Greater Productivity a Danger?
- Day 8: The Truth About Taxes
- Day 9: Hitler Was a Keynesian
- Day 10: Seeing the Unseen
- Day 11: The Watermelon Summit
- Day 12: Equality and Inequality
- Day 13: How to Think Like an Economist
- Day 14: The Health Plan’s Devilish Principles
The Health Plan’s Devilish Principles
July 22, 2012 – 7:00 amThe Health Plan’s Devilish Principles by Murray Rothbard
Murray wrote against Hillarycare in 1994; his article is also relevant to Obamacare in 2010.
The standard media cliché about the Clinton health plan is that God, or the Devil, depending on your point of view, “is in the details.” There is surprising agreement among both the supporters and all too many of the critics of the Clinton health “reform.” The supporters say that the general principles of the plan are wonderful, but that there are a few problems in the details: e.g., how much will it cost, how exactly will it be financed, will small business get a sufficient subsidy to offset its higher costs, and on into the night.
The alleged critics of the Clinton Plan also hasten to assure us that they too accept the general principles, but that there are lots of problems in the details. Often the critics will present their own alternative plans, only slightly less complex than the Clinton scheme, accompanied by assertions that their plans are less coercive, less costly, and less socialistic than the Clinton effort. And since health care constitutes about one-seventh of the American output, there are enough details and variants to keep a host of policy workers going for the rest of their lives.
But the details of the Clintonian plan, however diabolic, are merely petty demons compared to the general principles, where Lucifer really lurks. By accepting the principles, and fighting over the details, the Loyal Opposition only succeeds in giving away the store, and doing so before the debate over the details can even get under way. Lost in an eye-glazing thicket of minutiae, the conservative critics of Clintonian reform, by being “responsible” and working within the paradigm set by The Enemy, are performing a vital service for the Clintonians in snuffing out any clear-cut opposition to Clinton’s Great Leap Forward into health collectivism.
Click Here to read this article
Robert Wenzel recently created a 30-day reading list for those that would like to become familiar with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is at the core of the Libertarian Party principles. Each day we are posting a new article from this list.
This is Day 14
Did you miss a day? See below for the previous entries.
- Day 1: The Task Confronting Libertarians
- Day 2: The Fascist Threat
- Day 3: Free Economy and Social Order
- Day 4: The Peculiar and Unique Position of Economics
- Day 5: What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us
- Day 6: Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
- Day 7: Is Greater Productivity a Danger?
- Day 8: The Truth About Taxes
- Day 9: Hitler Was a Keynesian
- Day 10: Seeing the Unseen
- Day 11: The Watermelon Summit
- Day 12: Equality and Inequality
- Day 13: How to Think Like an Economist
How to Think Like an Economist
July 21, 2012 – 7:00 amHow to Think Like an Economist by Murray Rothbard
Let us consider some of the immediate implications of the action axiom. Action implies that the individual’s behavior is purposive, in short, that it is directed toward goals. Furthermore, the fact of his action implies that he has consciously chosen certain means to reach his goals. Since he wishes to attain these goals, they must be valuable to him; accordingly he must have values that govern his choices. That he employs means implies that he believes he has the technological knowledge that certain means will achieve his desired ends. Let us note that praxeology does not assume that a person’s choice of values or goals is wise or proper or that he has chosen the technologically correct method of reaching them. All that praxeology asserts is that the individual actor adopts goals and believes, whether erroneously or correctly, that he can arrive at them by the employment of certain means.
All action in the real world, furthermore, must take place through time; all action takes place in some present and is directed toward the future (immediate or remote) attainment of an end. If all of a person’s desires could be instantaneously realized, there would be no reason for him to act at all. [3] Furthermore, that a man acts implies that he believes action will make a difference; in other words, that he will prefer the state of affairs resulting from action to that from no action. Action therefore implies that man does not have omniscient knowledge of the future; for if he had such knowledge, no action of his would make any difference. Hence, action implies that we live in a world of an uncertain, or not fully certain, future. Accordingly, we may amend our analysis of action to say that a man chooses to employ means according to a technological plan in the present because he expects to arrive at his goals at some future time.
Click Here to read this article
Robert Wenzel recently created a 30-day reading list for those that would like to become familiar with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is at the core of the Libertarian Party principles. Each day we are posting a new article from this list.
This is Day 13
Did you miss a day? See below for the previous entries.
- Day 1: The Task Confronting Libertarians
- Day 2: The Fascist Threat
- Day 3: Free Economy and Social Order
- Day 4: The Peculiar and Unique Position of Economics
- Day 5: What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us
- Day 6: Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
- Day 7: Is Greater Productivity a Danger?
- Day 8: The Truth About Taxes
- Day 9: Hitler Was a Keynesian
- Day 10: Seeing the Unseen
- Day 11: The Watermelon Summit
- Day 12: Equality and Inequality
Equality and Inequality
July 20, 2012 – 7:00 amEquality and Inequality by Ludwig von Mises
The doctrine of natural law that inspired the 18th century declarations of the rights of man did not imply the obviously fallacious proposition that all men are biologically equal. It proclaimed that all men are born equal in rights and that this equality cannot be abrogated by any man-made law, that it is inalienable or, more precisely, imprescriptible. Only the deadly foes of individual liberty and self-determination, the champions of totalitarianism, interpreted the principle of equality before the law as derived from an alleged psychical and physiological equality of all men.
Click Here to read this article
Robert Wenzel recently created a 30-day reading list for those that would like to become familiar with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is at the core of the Libertarian Party principles. Each day we are posting a new article from this list.
This is Day 12
Did you miss a day? See below for the previous entries.
- Day 1: The Task Confronting Libertarians
- Day 2: The Fascist Threat
- Day 3: Free Economy and Social Order
- Day 4: The Peculiar and Unique Position of Economics
- Day 5: What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us
- Day 6: Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
- Day 7: Is Greater Productivity a Danger?
- Day 8: The Truth About Taxes
- Day 9: Hitler Was a Keynesian
- Day 10: Seeing the Unseen
- Day 11: The Watermelon Summit
Tags: 30 Day Reading List, Ludwig von Mises, Mises
The Watermelon Summit
July 19, 2012 – 7:00 amThe Watermelon Summit by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
An “environmentalist” is a totalitarian socialist whose real objective is to revive socialism and economic central planning under the subterfuge of “saving the planet” from capitalism. He is “green” on the outside, but red on the inside, and is hence appropriately labeled a “watermelon.”
A conservationist, by contrast, is someone who is actually interested in solving environmental and ecological problems and protecting wildlife and its habitat. He does not propose having government force a separation of man and nature by nationalizing land and other resources, confiscating private property, prohibiting the raising of certain types of animals, regulating human food intake, etc. He is not a socialist ideologue who is hell bent on destroying capitalism. He does not publicly wish that a “new virus” will come along and kill millions, as the founder of “Earth First” once did. More often than not, he seeks ways to use the institutions of capitalism to solve environmental problems. There is even a new name for such a person: enviropreneur. Or he may call himself a “free-market environmentalist” who understands how property rights, common law, and markets can solve many environmental problems, as indeed they have.
Click Here to read this article
Robert Wenzel recently created a 30-day reading list for those that would like to become familiar with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is at the core of the Libertarian Party principles. Each day we are posting a new article from this list.
This is Day 11
Did you miss a day? See below for the previous entries.
- Day 1: The Task Confronting Libertarians
- Day 2: The Fascist Threat
- Day 3: Free Economy and Social Order
- Day 4: The Peculiar and Unique Position of Economics
- Day 5: What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us
- Day 6: Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
- Day 7: Is Greater Productivity a Danger?
- Day 8: The Truth About Taxes
- Day 9: Hitler Was a Keynesian
- Day 10: Seeing the Unseen
Seeing the Unseen
July 18, 2012 – 7:00 amSeeing the Unseen by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Even now, people think nothing of professing their attachment to socialist ideology at cocktail parties, at restaurants serving abundant foods, and lounging in the fanciest apartments and homes that mankind has ever enjoyed. Yes, it is still fashionable to be a socialist, and — in some circles within the arts and academia — socially required. No one will recoil. Someone will openly congratulate you for your idealism. In the same way, you can always count on eliciting agreement by decrying the evils of Wal-Mart and Microsoft.
Isn’t it remarkable? Socialism (the real-life version) collapsed nearly twenty years ago — vicious regimes founded on the principles of Marxism, overthrown by the will of the people. Following that event we’ve seen these once decrepit societies come back to life and become a major source for the world’s prosperity. Trade has expanded. The technological revolution is achieving miracles by the day right under our noses. Millions have been made far better off, in ever-widening circles. The credit is wholly due to the free market, which possesses a creative power that has been underestimated by even its most passionate proponents.
Click Here to read this article
Robert Wenzel recently created a 30-day reading list for those that would like to become familiar with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is at the core of the Libertarian Party principles. Each day we are posting a new article from this list.
This is Day 10
Did you miss a day? See below for the previous entries.
- Day 1: The Task Confronting Libertarians
- Day 2: The Fascist Threat
- Day 3: Free Economy and Social Order
- Day 4: The Peculiar and Unique Position of Economics
- Day 5: What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us
- Day 6: Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
- Day 7: Is Greater Productivity a Danger?
- Day 8: The Truth About Taxes
- Day 9: Hitler Was a Keynesian
Tags: 30 Day Reading List, Lew Rockwell, Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., Rockwell