James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent—published over sixty years ago in 1962—has been one of the most influential books that apply economic ideas to politics. The authors were by no means libertarians, but they favored, for the most part, a limited state and the free market. An additional point in their favor was that both authors read my book reviews. In this week’s column, I’m going to discuss some points of interest in the book, some of which haven’t gotten as much attention as they deserve.The authors are strong supporters of methodological individualism, and they cite Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action in defense of this view. Actions must always be traced back to individual decisions, and they reject “organic” conceptions of the state that

James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent—published over sixty years ago in 1962—has been one of the most influential books that apply economic ideas to politics. The authors were by no means libertarians, but they favored, for the most part, a limited state and the free market. An additional point in their favor was that both authors read my book reviews. In this week’s column, I’m going to discuss some points of interest in the book, some of which haven’t gotten as much attention as they deserve.The authors are strong supporters of methodological individualism, and they cite Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action in defense of this view. Actions must always be traced back to individual decisions, and they reject “organic” conceptions of the state that

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.

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Albert Jay Nock’s Our Enemy the State, which was published nearly ninety years ago in 1935, had a great influence on Murray Rothbard, transmitted though his friend and mentor Frank Chodorov, who was Nock’s main follower. The book is rich in insights, some of which I have discussed in a forthcoming review for The Misesian, but there are many more. In what follows, I’ll comment on some of these.Nock distinguishes two ways in which people in a community can co-exist. One is by peaceful cooperation and the other is by taking what others have produced. He calls the first way the “economic means” and the second the “political means.” By Nock’s definition, the state is necessarily parasitic: “The State, then, whether primitive, feudal or merchant, is the organization 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.

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Classical liberals like Friedrich Hayek and Richard Epstein have often claimed that the rule of law imposes strong constraints on the state’s regulation of private property. If they are right, this would be a highly effective argument against such regulation, as the rule of law is an ideal commanding wide respect, by no means confined to those of classical-liberal or libertarian inclinations.Governments that arbitrarily deny legal process to groups of people or punish people for violating orders undisclosed to them obviously violate the rule of law; but how can formal requirements of proper law such as generality and nondiscrimination limit the power of the state to regulate property? The classical liberals answer that people should be able to use law to guide

The First Amendment: Essays on the Imperative of Intellectual Freedomby Tara Smith, Onkar Ghate, Gregory Salmieri, and Elan JournoAyn Rand Institute Press, 2024418 pp.What is the source of human rights? Are they derived from man’s nature, or are they simply privileges that the government grants to its citizens? Or is some intermediate view also an option? According to Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, the first of these positions is correct.Tara Smith—the principal author of the essays collected in The First Amendment and a philosopher who teaches at the University of Texas at Austin—is a leading member of the Ayn Rand Institute, and her collaborators are associated with it as well. You would anticipate that they would support the former view (i.e., that human beings

The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Dangerby Joseph Solis-MullenLibertarian Institute, 2023; vii + 145 pp.It’s often claimed that China, aspiring to world hegemony, plans to wage war against the United States. Democrats and Republicans alike warn of an impending war. Joseph Solis-Mullen, a libertarian who often writes for antiwar.com and knows a great deal about China (although he claims he is no Sinologist), dissents. In his view, China poses no threat to America. The difficulty in the relations between the two countries rather stems from the fact that China has built up sufficient military capacity to have a good chance of defeating an American assault aimed at defending Taiwan, which is hardly evidence of Chinese aggression. Solis-Mullen maintains that the

How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policyby John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian RosatoYale University Press, 2023; 304 pp.In this very useful book, the political scientists John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato warn against a logic that leads to war: America is challenged by an evil dictator who will not respond rationally to incentives. Such a person can be dealt with only through overwhelming force and must be eliminated from the scene. Today Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are the world’s irrational dictators, and in past years it was Saddam Hussein.The fallacy in this way of thinking, Mearsheimer and Rosato aver, is that these dictators, however evil we may consider them, and the states they represent are in fact acting in a rational way. This at

Herbert Butterfield was Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University. He was a renowned historian, who contributed important books on diplomatic history, the history of historical writing, the politics of George III, and the history of science. He and Leonard Liggio—a close associate of Murray Rothbard for many decades—were friends.I would like to concentrate on an aspect of Butterfield’s thought, likely to be of considerable interest to libertarians, especially libertarians who follow Rothbard. Butterfield, though not himself a libertarian, viewed with alarm the power of the state. He would have agreed with Jacob Burckhardt that “power is evil.” Power, he thought, often disguises itself in self-righteousness: a powerful state will endeavor to portray

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.

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Praxeological Ethics: An Inquiry into the Nature and Foundation of Ethicsby J.W. Rich; (Independently published, 2024, 153)I met J.W. Rich when he was a student last month at Mises University, and he mentioned to me that he was working on a book about praxeological ethics. He has now sent me the book, and it is very impressive indeed. It is remarkable in its scope, and in what follows I’ll indicate some points of the many insightful points in the book as well as a few places where the argument moves too quickly.“Praxeological ethics” appears to be a contradiction in terms, in that praxeology—Ludwig von Mises’s science of human action—was conceived by him to be a value-free science, but one can hardly speak of a value-free ethics. (Rich does not distinguish between

A tautology is a law of logic, part of a law of logic, or a definition. Some people do not think that tautologies tell us anything useful, pointing out that if someone inquires about the weather, to be told, “Either it’s raining or it’s not raining,” is not very helpful.Ludwig von Mises disagrees with this view. He would readily acknowledge that there are useless tautologies, but he suggests in Human Action that there are also useful tautologies. (Whether he changed his mind on the status of the propositions of praxeology in works written after Human Action isn’t a topic that will be addressed in this article).Mises says:“Aprioristic reasoning is purely conceptual and deductive. It cannot produce anything else but tautologies and analytic judgments. All its

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.

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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.

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The American Constitution is far from perfect, but one good feature is that it lacks a provision found in some European constitutions. This provision allows the president to suspend the Constitution if there is a national emergency.As the theologian David Bentley Hart observes,“I am not a devout admirer of the United States constitution, but I do find many of its essential principles admirable — chief among them, the refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of a ‘state of exception.’ Ideally, a president merely presides: he or she supervises the executive function of a parliamentary legal order, but is in no sense elevated above that order. In actual practice, of course, this too has as often as not proved something of a fiction — even Lincoln suspended habeas

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.

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“The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding”by William HogelandNew York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2024; x + 575 pp.Most readers of the Mises Wire will be familiar with the account of American history developed in many books by Mises Institute President Thomas J. DiLorenzo. According to him, American history since our founding as a nation has been shaped by two conflicting traditions: one, begun by Alexander Hamilton, favoring a centralized government and the other, best personified in Thomas Jefferson, supporting decentralized government and the rights of the states and local communities. Hamilton favored building up American industry artificially through high tariffs, as well as a national bank and a system of costly “national

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.

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Woodrow Wilson is no longer the left-wing icon he once was owing to his role in promoting segregation in federal employment, and this revised view is much evidenced in Corey Brettschneider’s work “The Presidents and the People.” Those of us already inclined to a negative view of Wilson will find much of value in the book.According to Brettschneider, beginning with his time as a graduate student in political science at Johns Hopkins University, Wilson believed throughout his academic career in a strong state based on hierarchy.“Wilson attended lectures about how history could be theorized in systematic terms that describe a progressive improvement of the human condition. He became absorbed by the philosophy of Georg Hegel. … In Hegel’s works, personal freedom was

The economist and social critic Glenn C. Loury has written a book sure to attract attention, but in what follows, I don’t propose to address what is likely to be the principal source of that attention. In Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative (W.W. Norton, 2024), Loury has offered an account of his life that reads like a romantic thriller. Readers in search of salacious gossip will find it in abundance. It transpires, for example, that both Loury and the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling led “double lives.” At the risk of losing my readers’ interest, I’ll discuss a problem in the way Loury argues that is distressingly common nowadays.Loury, I claim, is guilty of argument by fiat. In setting up a problem, he treats certain premises as

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.

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Many people argue in this way: The 1964 Civil Rights Act was fine. No one should be discriminated against because of his race or sex. Because blacks and women have suffered such discrimination in the past, it may be that programs like affirmative action are justified, at least temporarily. However, the purpose of these programs should be to promote equality of opportunity. Everybody deserves an equal chance to live a good life or, at any rate, a fair chance.The problem that has arisen since the passage of the 1964 act, it is further alleged, is that “equality of outcomes or results” has come to replace “equality of opportunity.” This is a socialistic measure that is incompatible with the free market. In short—equality of opportunity, good; equality of results,

Ludwig von Mises tries in Human Action to reconcile two arguments about charity that pull in opposite directions. The first of these is that some people cannot survive without receiving help: unless they are guaranteed such help by law, they are dependent on charitable donations from the better-off.Within the frame of capitalism the notion of poverty refers only to those people who are unable to take care of themselves. Even if we disregard the case of children, we must realize that there will always be such unemployables. Capitalism, in improving the masses’ standard of living, hygienic conditions, and methods of prophylactics and therapeutics, does not remove bodily incapacity. It is true that today many people who in the past would have been doomed to life-long

Ludwig von Mises tries in Human Action to reconcile two arguments about charity that pull in opposite directions. The first of these is that some people cannot survive without receiving help: unless they are guaranteed such help by law, they are dependent on charitable donations from the better-off.Within the frame of capitalism the notion of poverty refers only to those people who are unable to take care of themselves. Even if we disregard the case of children, we must realize that there will always be such unemployables. Capitalism, in improving the masses’ standard of living, hygienic conditions, and methods of prophylactics and therapeutics, does not remove bodily incapacity. It is true that today many people who in the past would have been doomed to life-long

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.

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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.

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Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction (2006) has remained since its publication one of the most influential studies of the Nazi economy. Tooze, an economic historian who teaches at Columbia University, writes from a leftist perspective and does not appear to be familiar with the work of Ludwig von Mises, but the interpretation he offers of the aims of Nazi economic policy is the same as that of Mises. In what follows, I will first discuss Mises’s analysis and then show how Tooze confirms and supplements what Mises says.Mises’s account of Nazism is contained in his book Omnipotent Government, published in 1944 while World War II had not yet ended. In Mises’s view, the fundamental fact that confronted all major German political figures after World War I was that

Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction (2006) has remained since its publication one of the most influential studies of the Nazi economy. Tooze, an economic historian who teaches at Columbia University, writes from a leftist perspective and does not appear to be familiar with the work of Ludwig von Mises, but the interpretation he offers of the aims of Nazi economic policy is the same as that of Mises. In what follows, I will first discuss Mises’s analysis and then show how Tooze confirms and supplements what Mises says.Mises’s account of Nazism is contained in his book Omnipotent Government, published in 1944 while World War II had not yet ended. In Mises’s view, the fundamental fact that confronted all major German political figures after World War I was that

In recent days, we have had brought home to us what “show trials” are like. They are not confined to Soviet Russia and its satellite countries during the Cold War but are a very present reality to us in America today. Political opponents of Donald Trump charged him with felonies for acts that were entirely legal. The judge in the case was a political opponent of Trump and worked artfully to prevent the trial jury from hearing testimony that would have exposed the imposture.In view of what has happened, I think it would be interesting to discuss some earlier show trials, the Nuremberg trials held after World War II, as discussed in the important book by Danilo Zolo, Victor’s Justice (Verso, 2009).Should war crimes (i.e., violations of rights during a war) be