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Competition

2026-08-16T13:10:31Z

ArchiveBot: Replace the Merriam-Webster lead with the Austrian account of competition as rivalry and as a discovery procedure; drop the stub tag

'''Competition''' in the Austrian sense is rivalry: the effort of independent sellers to win the custom of buyers by offering better terms than the others, and of buyers to secure scarce goods by outbidding one another. It is a process that goes on through time, not a state of affairs, and it is the mechanism by which a [[market]] discovers facts that nobody knew before it operated.

This ordinary meaning has to be stated first because mainstream economics uses the same word for something almost opposite, and the confusion has consequences for policy that Austrians regard as severe.

==Competition as a discovery procedure==

[[F.A. Hayek]] argued that competition is worth having precisely because we do not know in advance what it will reveal. Which methods are cheapest, which products buyers prefer, and what a thing ought to cost are not data available to anyone before the rivalry takes place; they are its output. A procedure whose point is to discover unknown facts cannot be judged by whether its results match what an observer assumed those facts to be, because if they were known there would be nothing to discover and no reason to compete.

This is why the [[entrepreneur]] is central to the Austrian account and absent from the standard one. Competition in the textbook model is a condition that firms find themselves in; competition here is something people do.

==Perfect competition==
{{Main|Perfect competition}}
Under perfect competition, firms are assumed to operate in a market characterized by a homogeneous product, an infinite number of buyers and sellers, the absence of any barriers to entry, and with access to [[perfect information]].<ref name="causal_realist">[[Peter Klein]] "Fundamentals of Economic Analysis: A Causal-Realist Approach", 2007, Lecture 7 Competition and Monopoly.</ref>

This "pure and perfect competition" is unlike anything one normally means by the term "competition." Normally, one thinks of competition as denoting a rivalry among producers, in which each producer strives to match or exceed the performance of other producers. This is not what "pure and perfect competition" means. Indeed, the existence of rivalry, of competition as it is normally understood, is incompatible with "pure and perfect competition." Consider the following passage in a widely used economics textbook by Professor Richard Leftwich:<ref name="Reisman_Platonic">[[George Reisman]]. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/1988 "Platonic Competition"], December 20, 2005. Referenced 2011-11-17.</ref>

"By way of contrast, intense rivalry may exist between two automobile agencies or between two filling stations in the same city. One seller's actions influence the market of the other; consequently, pure competition does not exist in this case."<ref name="Leftwich_Price">Richard H. Leftwich and Ross D. Eckert, [http://books.google.com/books?id=96S7AAAAIAAJ&q=intense+rivalry#search_anchor "The Price System and Resource Allocation"], 9th ed., The Dryden Press, Chicago, 1985, p. 41. Referenced 2011-11-17.</ref>

[[F.A. Hayek]] argues that competition is the more important the more complex or "imperfect" are the objective conditions in which it has to operate. Indeed, far from competition being beneficial only when it is "perfect," the need for competition is nowhere greater than in fields in which the nature of the commodities or services makes it impossible that it ever should create a perfect market in the theoretical sense.<ref name="Hayek_Competition">Friedrich A. Hayek. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4181 "The Meaning of Competition"], from ''Individualism and Economic Order'' (1948), referenced 2011-11-17.</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Bibliography==
* {{Cite book
|last=Bastiat|first=Frédéric|authorlink=Frédéric Bastiat
|title=Economic Harmonies
|publisher=[[Foundation for Economic Education]]
|place=Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
|url=http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/79
|year=1996
|isbn=0-910614-13-X
|oclc=36038045
|pages=284-316
|chapter=Competition
|chapterurl=http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/79/35538
}}
* {{Cite book
|last=Bastiat|first=Frédéric|authorlink=Frédéric Bastiat
|title=[[The Bastiat Collection]]
|edition=2nd
|publisher=[[Mises Institute|Ludwig von Mises Institute]]
|place=Auburn, Alabama
|year=2011
|isbn=978-1-61016-200-5
|oclc=779356719
|pages=743-776
|chapter=Competition
}}
* {{Cite journal
|last=Hayek|first=F. A.|authorlink=Friedrich Hayek
|title=Competition as a Discovery Procedure
|journal=[[Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics|The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics]]
|volume=5|issue=3
|year=2002
|pages=9-23
|doi=10.1007/s12113-002-1029-0
|url=https://freecapitalists.org/journals/qjae/qjae5-3-3/
}}
* {{cite encyclopedia
|last=Kasper|first=Wolfgang|authorlink=
|editor-last=Henderson|editor-first=David R.|editor-link=Wikipedia:David R. Henderson
|title=Competition
|url=http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Competition.html
|encyclopedia=[[Wikipedia:The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics|The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics]]
|year=2007
|publisher=[[Wikipedia:Liberty Fund|Liberty Fund]]
|location=Indianapolis, Indiana
|isbn=978-0-86597-665-8
|oclc=123350134
|pages=73-76
}}
* {{Cite book
|last=Salin|first=Pascal|authorlink=Pascal Salin
|title=La concurrence
|series=Que sais-je?
|publisher=PUF
|place=Paris
|year=1995
|isbn=2-13-046677-X
|oclc=32497366
}}

==Links==
* {{wplink}}
* {{md|4181|The Meaning of Competition|[[Friedrich Hayek|Friedrich A. Hayek]]|Monday, March 15, 2010}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Tariff

2026-08-16T13:10:27Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite: who actually pays, the seen and the unseen, and the protectionist arguments Austrians take seriously; replaces a Britannica gloss and a link list

A '''tariff''', also called a customs duty, is a [[tax]] on [[good]]s crossing a national border, in practice almost always on imports and collected by the importing country's government.

Austrians treat the tariff as an ordinary case of [[interventionism]] rather than a special branch of policy. It is a tax, it falls on the buyer, and like any other restriction on [[production]] it makes the community poorer in order to make a particular group richer.

==Who pays==

The tariff is defended as a charge on foreigners. It is not. The importer pays the duty and passes as much of it as the market will bear into the price, so it is domestic buyers who meet the cost, either in money or by going without. Domestic producers of the protected good can then raise their own prices toward the new level, which is the point of the exercise.

The result is a transfer from a country's own consumers to a favoured domestic industry, with a portion collected by the treasury and a further portion simply destroyed, since some exchanges that both parties wanted no longer happen at all.

==The seen and the unseen==

The political durability of tariffs comes from the shape of the costs rather than their size. The jobs preserved in the protected industry are concentrated, identifiable, and photogenic. The costs are spread across every buyer of the good, and across the industries that would have grown had that money been spent elsewhere. Nobody can name the firms that were never founded.

[[Frédéric Bastiat]] built his best-known satire on this asymmetry, in which the candlemakers petition for protection from the ruinous competition of the sun. [[Henry Hazlitt]] made the general form of the argument the organising principle of ''[[Economics in One Lesson]]'': the bad economist sees only what is immediately visible, the good one traces what follows.<ref name="hazlitt">[[Henry Hazlitt]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/economics-in-one-lesson/ ''Economics in One Lesson''].</ref>

==Exports pay for imports==

A tariff aimed at reducing imports reduces exports too. Foreigners acquire the currency to buy a country's goods by selling it theirs; block the selling and the buying loses its means. [[Ludwig von Mises]] treated protection under the general heading of restriction of production, whose defining feature is that it makes people worse off in the aggregate and is adopted because the loss is not traced to it.<ref name="ha29">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xxix-restriction-of-production/ XXIX. Restriction of Production], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

This is also why tariffs tend to spread. Protecting steel raises costs for everyone who uses steel, who then have a case for protection of their own.

==The arguments that are taken seriously==

Austrians do not treat every protectionist argument as frivolous, though they reject each in the end.

* The '''infant industry''' argument holds that a new industry needs shelter until it reaches efficient scale. The Austrian reply is that if the industry will eventually pay, its future earnings are a reason for investors to fund it now, and that shelter removes the pressure to become efficient rather than supplying it.
* The '''national defence''' argument holds that some capacity must exist domestically whatever it costs. This is conceded as a claim about strategy rather than economics, and the reply is that it is invoked far beyond any plausible military need.
* The '''revenue''' argument is the oldest and the most honest, since a tariff was the simplest tax to collect before income taxation. It is an argument for a low uniform duty, not for protection, which works precisely by ''not'' raising revenue on the trade it prevents.

==Tariffs in American history==

The tariff was the principal federal revenue source for most of the nineteenth century and a persistent sectional grievance, since it protected northern manufacturing while raising costs for southern and western buyers of manufactured goods. [[Thomas DiLorenzo]] has argued that this made it a substantial cause of the sectional conflict, a reading disputed by historians who treat slavery as the overwhelming cause. F. W. Taussig's ''The Tariff History of the United States'' remains the standard narrative account.<ref name="taussig">F. W. Taussig. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/tariff-history-of-the-united-states/ ''The Tariff History of the United States''].</ref>

==See also==
* [[Free trade]]
* [[Tax]]
* [[Interventionism]]
* [[Comparative advantage]]
* [[Mercantilism]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/2644 How the Shrimp Tariff Backfired] by Aleksandra Dunaeva and Don Mathews, August 2007
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/1388 Some Subtler Arguments for Tariffs] by Robert P. Murphy, December 2003
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/952 Lincoln's Tariff War] by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, May 2002
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/5008 Once-Temporary Tariff] by F.W. Taussig (from [https://freecapitalists.org/books/tariff-history-of-the-united-states/ The Tariff History of the United States])
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-tariff-idea/ The Tariff Idea] by W. M. Curtiss, February 1953
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/2086 Henry George and the Tariff Question] by Karen De Coster, April 2006
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/protection-or-free-trade-an-examination-of-the-tariff-question-with-especial-regard-to-the-interests-of-labor/ Protection or Free Trade] by Henry George, 1886
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Free trade

2026-08-16T13:10:24Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite: corrects the lead, which wrongly gave laissez-faire as a synonym for free trade. Adds the law of association and the unilateral argument

'''Free trade''' is the absence of government interference with exchange across national borders: no [[tariff]]s or quotas on imports, no subsidies or restrictions on exports, and no discrimination between a domestic and a foreign counterparty.

It is not a synonym for [[laissez-faire]], though the two are often run together. Laissez-faire is a position about economic policy generally; free trade is the application of it to one margin. A government can practise free trade while regulating domestic industry heavily, and has often done so.

==There is nothing special about a border==

The Austrian starting point is that international trade raises no new economic question. An [[exchange]] takes place because each party values what he receives above what he gives up, and that is as true when the parties are in different countries as when they are in the same town. The border is a political fact, not an economic one, so a theory of trade between nations is just the theory of exchange applied to parties who happen to be separated by one.

This is why Austrians treat talk of a country "competing" with another, or of a trade deficit as a loss, as a category error. Countries do not trade; people do, and each of them trades because he expects to gain.

==The law of association==

The standard objection is that a country able to produce everything more cheaply will simply outproduce its trading partners and leave them with nothing to sell. [[David Ricardo]] answered it in 1817 with the principle of [[comparative advantage]], which [[Ludwig von Mises]] generalised and renamed the '''law of association''', because it explains not only trade but the [[division of labor]] itself.<ref name="ha24">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xxiv-harmony-and-conflict-of-interests/ XXIV. Harmony and Conflict of Interests], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

The argument is that what governs the pattern of production is not absolute cost but what has to be given up to obtain a thing. A lawyer who types faster than any typist he could hire still does better to argue cases and let someone else type, because every hour he spends typing costs him an hour of law. The same holds for a country that can make everything more cheaply: its resources are still finite, so devoting them to what it does best and buying the rest leaves it with more.

The conclusion is stronger than it first appears. Trade is mutually profitable between parties of ''any'' relative productivity, which is why the argument does not depend on the trading partners being comparably developed.

==Free trade as a moral question==

For nineteenth-century liberals the case was not only about output. A tariff is a tax collected from a domestic buyer for the benefit of a domestic producer, and the buyer is not asked. [[Frédéric Bastiat]] made this the centre of his campaign, arguing that protection is a transfer disguised as a policy and that its beneficiaries are visible while its victims are dispersed and never identified.

Mises added that free trade and peace stand or fall together. Where governments assign markets and raw materials by decree, the assignment becomes worth fighting over; where goods move without permission, the borders they cross matter less.

==The unilateral point==

A conclusion Austrians press harder than most economists: the benefits of free trade do not require an agreement. If foreign tariffs make imports dear, a country's own tariffs make them dearer still, and removing them helps its own citizens whatever anyone else does. Retaliation is on this view a policy of harming one's own buyers to punish a foreign government.

That has consequences for trade agreements. A managed treaty running to thousands of pages of negotiated exceptions is not free trade, and several Austrians have argued that such agreements are better understood as cartels among governments than as liberalisations.

==See also==
* [[Comparative advantage]]
* [[Tariff]]
* [[Division of labor]]
* [[Laissez-faire]]
* [[Mercantilism]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/liberal/ch3sec7.asp Free Trade] by Ludwig von Mises (chapter 7 of [[Liberalism|Liberalism (book)]])
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/3604 What Is Free Trade?] by William Graham Sumner, 1918
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4814 Physiocracy and Free Trade in 18th-Century France] by Murray N. Rothbard (excerpted from [[An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought]])
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/protection-or-free-trade-an-examination-of-the-tariff-question-with-especial-regard-to-the-interests-of-labor/ Protection or Free Trade] by Henry George, 1886
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Industrial Revolution

2026-08-16T13:10:20Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite: capital accumulation, the standard-of-living debate and child labour, with the limits of the Austrian case stated; replaces the Britannica gloss

The '''Industrial Revolution''' is the transformation, beginning in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century, of an economy of agriculture and handicraft into one of machine production in factories. The term was popularised by the historian Arnold Toynbee to describe England between roughly 1760 and 1840, and has since been applied more broadly.

For Austrian economists the episode is of interest less as a chapter of economic history than as the standing test case for how history gets written, since the received account of it is one they regard as demonstrably inverted.

==Capital accumulation, not invention==

The popular explanation credits inventions. Austrians reply that the inventions were the visible part of something else: an accumulation of capital that made it worth building machines, and a legal order secure enough that people saved rather than consumed. Ideas for labour-saving devices had appeared repeatedly in earlier centuries and gone nowhere, because the savings needed to embody them did not exist and the returns could be confiscated.

What allowed output per worker to rise was the lengthening of the structure of production: tools to make tools, and the abstention from present consumption that funds them. On this reading the Industrial Revolution is [[capital]] theory illustrated at scale, and the reason wages rose is that workers were suddenly worth more to employ.

==The standard-of-living debate==

The received account holds that early industrialisation degraded the condition of the working class, and rests on the testimony of contemporary reformers and parliamentary inquiries into factory conditions.

The Austrian reply, argued at length by [[Ludwig von Mises]], is that the comparison is drawn against the wrong baseline. The factories did not take a prosperous peasantry and immiserate it. They drew in people who were already destitute: the surplus rural population that the old order had no place for and that had previously died young. Factory conditions were terrible by any modern standard and better than the available alternative, which was starvation, and that is why people went.<ref name="ha21">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xxi-work-and-wages/ XXI. Work and Wages], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

W. H. Hutt examined the specific evidentiary basis of the standard story, arguing that the parliamentary inquiries into the factory system were partisan proceedings whose findings were shaped by landed interests hostile to the new manufacturers and by competitors seeking regulation of rivals.<ref name="hutt">[[William Harold Hutt|W. H. Hutt]]. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/2443 The Factory System of the Early Nineteenth Century], 1926.</ref>

[[F.A. Hayek]] collected these arguments in ''Capitalism and the Historians'' (1954), whose thesis is that the pessimistic account survived not because the evidence favoured it but because the historians who wrote it were hostile to the system it described.

The debate is not settled, and Austrians overstate their position when they present it as though it were. Careful economic historians continue to disagree about real wages before 1820, where the data are thin and the price indices contested. What is much better established is the direction after 1820 and the demographic fact underneath the whole dispute: population grew rapidly, which is not what an immiserating system produces.

==Child labour==

The same reversal applies to the case most often cited against the period. Children worked in the factories, and this is treated as the system's characteristic cruelty. The Austrian reply is that children had always worked, on farms and in cottage industry, for longer hours and at higher risk, and that what was new was that the work became visible and concentrated where reformers could see it.

Children stopped working when families grew rich enough not to need the income, which is a consequence of rising productivity rather than of the legislation that followed it. The argument is not that the factories were benign but that the legislation is credited with a change that the wealth had already made possible.

==See also==
* [[Capital]]
* [[Division of labor]]
* [[Capitalism]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4604 The Popular Interpretation of the "Industrial Revolution"] by Ludwig von Mises (excerpted from chapter 21 of [[Human Action]])
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/2443 The Factory System of the Early Nineteenth Century] by William H. Hutt, 1926
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/5814/Redeeming-the-Industrial-Revolution Redeeming the Industrial Revolution] by Wendy McElroy, November 2011
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/2105 The Third Industrial Revolution] by Hans F. Sennholz, April 2006
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:History]]

Ethics

2026-08-16T13:10:16Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite: sets out the three incompatible Austrian positions (Mises's utilitarianism, Rothbard's natural law, Hoppe's argumentation ethics) rather than a Britannica definition

'''Ethics''', or moral philosophy, is the study of what is right and wrong and of the standards by which conduct is judged. It matters to the [[Austrian School]] in a particular way, because Austrian economics is explicitly '''value-free''' and therefore cannot by itself recommend anything.

==Why economics is value-free, and what that leaves over==

[[Ludwig von Mises]] insisted that economics is a ''wertfrei'' science: it establishes what means tend to bring about what ends, and says nothing about which ends are worth pursuing. The proposition that a [[price control|price ceiling]] produces shortages is not a recommendation; someone who wants the shortage is not refuted by it.

This is not a modest disclaimer but a load-bearing commitment, and it is why so much libertarian argument depends on a separate ethical theory rather than on economics. It also explains why economists in this tradition who agree completely about how markets work can disagree entirely about what ought to be done.

The Austrian and libertarian literature contains three distinct answers to that ethical question, and they are genuinely incompatible.

==Mises: the utilitarian answer==

Mises held that there is no way to demonstrate an ultimate end, so argument must appeal to ends people already have. Almost everyone wants a longer life, more goods, and peace with the neighbours. Economics shows that social cooperation under the [[division of labor]] serves those ends and that intervention frustrates them. On this account there is no need for natural rights: the case for [[liberty]] is that it works, addressed to people who want what it produces.

The obvious objection is that it makes the argument hostage to the facts. If some interference genuinely raised general welfare, a Misesian would have no ground to object. Mises accepted this and denied the antecedent.

==Rothbard: the natural-law answer==

[[Murray N. Rothbard]] rejected the utilitarian route as too weak to support the conclusions libertarians actually draw, and grounded rights instead in a natural-law account of what human beings are and what their flourishing requires. From self-ownership and original appropriation he derived the [[non-aggression principle]] and worked out its implications for [[contract]], punishment and children in ''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]''.<ref name="ethics">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ ''The Ethics of Liberty''].</ref>

Rothbard's ethics is deontological: an act of [[aggression]] is wrong whatever its consequences, so no calculation of benefits can license it. The standing objection is the one made against natural law generally, that the derivation from human nature to binding obligation is never quite completed.

==Hoppe: argumentation ethics==

[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]] proposed a third route, arguing that the norms of self-ownership cannot be coherently denied, because denying them is something one does in an argument, and argument already presupposes each party's exclusive control of his own body and of the scarce means he is using. Anyone arguing against self-ownership is therefore in performative contradiction.<ref name="eepp">[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/economics-and-ethics-of-private-property-studies-in-political-economy-and-philosophy-the/ ''The Economics and Ethics of Private Property''].</ref>

The claim is strong and correspondingly contested, including by sympathisers. Critics ask whether the presuppositions of a conversation bind anyone once the conversation is over. See [[argumentation ethics]].

==Why the disagreement is worth preserving==

It is tempting to present these as three routes to one destination. They are not. They diverge on what to say when liberty and welfare come apart, on whether rights can be traded off, and on how to argue with someone who is unmoved. A reader who leaves this article thinking the Austrian tradition has a single ethics has been misled, and will misread most of its internal arguments.

==See also==
* [[Argumentation ethics]]
* [[Non-aggression principle]]
* [[Natural law]]
* [[Utilitarianism]]
* ''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]''
* ''[[The Economics and Ethics of Private Property]]''

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ The Ethics of Liberty] by Murray N. Rothbard
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/economics-and-ethics-of-private-property-studies-in-political-economy-and-philosophy-the/ The Economics and Ethics of Private Property] by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/principles-of-ethics-anthology/ Principles of Ethics: Anthology]
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Debt

2026-08-16T13:10:12Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite: debt as intertemporal exchange, time preference, credit expansion vs genuine saving, and the public-debt arguments; replaces the Britannica gloss

'''Debt''' is an obligation to deliver goods or [[money]] in the future, incurred in return for goods or money received now. Its price is [[interest]].

Austrians treat debt as a case of exchange across time rather than as a distinct financial phenomenon. A lender gives up present goods and receives a claim on future goods; the premium he gets is the market expression of [[time preference]], the general fact that a good available now is valued above the same good available later. Interest is therefore not the price of money and not a charge invented by lenders. It would exist in a barter economy and cannot be legislated away, only disguised.

==Productive and consumptive debt==

The useful distinction is between debt that finances the acquisition of capital and debt that finances consumption. It is a distinction of purpose and effect, not of legal form, and the two are often hard to tell apart in practice.

Debt incurred for a commercial or industrial [[investment]] designed to earn a future income can cover its own interest cost and yield a [[profit]] besides. A second mortgage taken out to buy a holiday home, a car or a cruise may be called productive by the borrower, but it builds no shop or factory and adds nothing to the productivity of labour. Hans Sennholz argued that such borrowing may actively consume [[capital]] and so depress living standards, while presenting itself in the statistics as economic activity.<ref name="sennholz">Hans F. Sennholz. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=468 Deep in Debt], ''The Free Market'', vol. 24, no. 1, January 2004.</ref>

==Credit expansion is not saving==

The Austrian claim that distinguishes this treatment from most others is that it matters enormously ''where'' the loanable funds came from.

When lending is funded by genuine savings, someone has abstained from consumption and released real resources. When it is funded by newly created bank credit, no one has abstained and no resources have been released, but the interest rate falls anyway. Entrepreneurs read the lower rate as a signal that people have become more willing to wait, and start long-dated projects for which the means do not exist. The projects cannot all be completed, and the discovery that they cannot is the bust. This is [[Austrian Business Cycle Theory]], and on this account a debt boom is not merely a risk factor for a crisis but its mechanism.

==Public debt==

Government borrowing raises questions private borrowing does not, because the borrower is not the party who will repay.

The classical treatment is [[David Ricardo]]'s. Examining Walpole's sinking fund, which was established in the 1720s to retire England's [[public debt]], Ricardo observed that its revenues were repeatedly diverted to war and then to ordinary spending, so that the fund which was supposed to extinguish the debt served mainly to make borrowing easier and the debt larger.<ref name="ricardo">David Ricardo. ''On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation'' (1817), chapter 17, on taxes and the sinking fund.</ref>

Austrians add two points. The first is that public debt is a claim on future taxpayers who were never asked and cannot decline, which makes it a transfer between generations rather than an ordinary contract. The second is that a government which also controls the currency has a third option besides repaying and defaulting: it can inflate, which is a default carried out on the holders of money instead of the holders of bonds.

[[Murray N. Rothbard]] drew the conclusion most economists resist, arguing that repudiation of public debt is the honest course, since the obligation was contracted by people spending money they had taken from others and is owed by people who never consented. The position follows from his ethics rather than from any technical claim, and most Austrians who accept the analysis stop short of the conclusion.

==See also==
* [[Interest]]
* [[Time preference]]
* [[Public debt]]
* [[Austrian Business Cycle Theory]]
* [[Inflation]]
* [[Bankruptcy]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=468 Deep in Debt] by Hans F. Sennholz, January 2004
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Property

2026-08-16T13:10:07Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite in original prose: the previous text reproduced three passages of Waldron's Stanford Encyclopedia entry verbatim without quotation marks. Adds the calculation argument and the intellectual-property dispute

'''Property''', or a '''property right''', is a rule assigning to some person the authority to decide how a particular scarce resource is used. The subject matter runs from land and raw materials through the means of [[production]] and finished [[good]]s, and on some accounts to inventions and texts as well, though that extension is disputed within the Austrian tradition.

Property is the institution Austrian economics is built on rather than one topic among many. [[Ludwig von Mises]] wrote that the programme of liberalism, condensed to a single word, would read "property", meaning private ownership of the means of production.<ref name="lib1">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/liberal/ch1sec1.asp Property], ''[[Liberalism|Liberalism (book)]]''.</ref>

==Property as the answer to conflict==

The Austrian case begins from [[scarcity]]. Where a resource can serve two incompatible purposes and two people want it for different ones, some rule has to determine whose purpose prevails, or the matter is settled by force. A property rule is that determination. On this reading property rights are not an imposition on an otherwise harmonious world; they are the technique by which the conflict that scarcity implies is resolved without violence.

The point generalises past physical shortage. Two parties can quarrel over a piece of land not because land in general is short but because ''that'' site has a history or a significance neither will trade away. Even then the question the property rule answers is the same one: who decides.

[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]] developed this into a systematic argument that norms governing scarce means are what any dispute presupposes, since the parties to an argument are already exercising exclusive control over their own bodies while they argue.<ref name="eepp">[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/economics-and-ethics-of-private-property-studies-in-political-economy-and-philosophy-the/ ''The Economics and Ethics of Private Property''].</ref>

==Property and calculation==

The second Austrian argument is economic rather than ethical, and it is the one Mises regarded as decisive. Where the factors of production are owned and traded, they carry money [[price]]s, and those prices let a producer compare the many technically possible ways of making a thing and find which wastes least. Remove ownership of the factors and the prices go with it, leaving no way to make the comparison. Mises's argument against [[socialism]] is therefore an argument about property, and it holds against planners of any degree of diligence and good faith. See [[economic calculation problem]].

==The three systems==

Arrangements are conventionally sorted into three kinds, and the distinctions matter because the second and third are routinely confused.

* Under '''common property''' a resource is open to all comers, with no one entitled to exclude anyone. Grazing land held in common is the standard case, and the difficulty it runs into is that each user bears the whole benefit of taking more and only a fraction of the cost. See [[tragedy of the commons]].
* Under '''collective property''' use is directed by a body acting in the name of society. This is not the same as common property and often its opposite: the resource is closed to individual decision rather than open to it, and the decision passes to whoever speaks for the collective.
* Under '''[[private property]]''' a determinate owner decides, need account to no one for the decision, bears the consequences, and may transfer the authority to another who then holds it on the same terms.

==Where titles come from==

A theory of ownership needs an account of how anything came to be owned in the first place, since [[exchange]] and gift only move a title that already exists. Austrians in the Lockean line, above all [[Murray N. Rothbard]], hold that unowned resources are appropriated by being brought into use, and that the resulting title is then transferable.<ref name="ethics">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ ''The Ethics of Liberty''].</ref>

The rival account, that titles are conferred by the state or by social convention, is rejected on the ground that a grant revocable by the granter is not ownership but a licence. Whether that objection succeeds is one of the live disagreements between libertarian and mainstream legal theory.

==Where the tradition disagrees: intellectual property==

Austrians divide sharply over whether ideas can be owned. The older position, held by Rothbard in a qualified form, allowed copyright as a matter of contract while rejecting patents. The position that has become dominant among Rothbardians, argued at length by Stephan Kinsella, denies that [[intellectual property]] is property at all: patterns of information are not scarce in the relevant sense, since one person's use of a design does not prevent anyone else's, so no conflict arises that a property rule would be needed to settle. On this view intellectual property is a state-granted monopoly privilege and an interference with property in physical things.

Others in the tradition hold that the products of the mind are the clearest case of something a person made and therefore owns. The dispute turns on whether scarcity is the ground of property or merely a common occasion for it, which is why it reaches back into the argument at the top of this article.

==See also==
* [[Private property]]
* [[Scarcity]]
* [[Economic calculation problem]]
* [[Intellectual property]]
* [[Tragedy of the commons]]
* [[Contract]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/liberal/ch1sec1.asp Property] by Ludwig von Mises (from [[Liberalism|Liberalism (book)]])
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ The Ethics of Liberty] by Murray N. Rothbard
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/economics-and-ethics-of-private-property-studies-in-political-economy-and-philosophy-the/ The Economics and Ethics of Private Property] by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

History

2026-08-16T13:10:03Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite: lead with the Austrian account of history (methodological dualism, thymology, the Methodenstreit, historicism) rather than a Britannica definition

'''History''' is the study of past human action in its individuality: what particular people did, in particular circumstances, for particular reasons. Austrian economists give history an unusually precise place, because the boundary between history and [[economics]] is exactly where the [[Austrian School]] parted company with the rest of the profession.

==Why history cannot yield economic laws==

The natural sciences establish laws by observing constant relations between measurable quantities. [[Ludwig von Mises]] argued that human action exhibits no such constant relations. A quantity measured in the historical record, such as the effect of a tax rise in one country in one decade, is the joint product of countless valuations that were never repeated and never will be. There is no way to hold the other conditions fixed, and no experiment to run.

It follows that economic history can neither prove nor refute an economic proposition on its own. Statistics of the past are economic history, not economics.<ref name="ha2">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-ii-the-epistemological-problems-of-the-sciences-of/ II. The Epistemological Problems of the Sciences of Human Action], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref> This is why [[praxeology]] is held to be prior to history: the theory is what makes the record intelligible, rather than something distilled out of it.

The claim is easy to overstate and often is. Mises did not hold that history is uninformative or that economists should ignore it. He held that a historical episode has to be interpreted through theory the historian brings to it, and that a historian who denies having any theory is using one unexamined.

==Methodological dualism==

The underlying position is '''methodological dualism''': the methods appropriate to studying purposeful action differ in kind from those appropriate to studying matter, not because human beings are exempt from causality but because we have no knowledge of how mental states arise from physical ones, and must therefore start from the fact that people act for reasons.<ref name="th_intro">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/theory-and-history-an-interpretation-of-social-and-economic-evolution/read/introduction-1-methodological-dualism/ Introduction: Methodological Dualism], ''Theory and History''.</ref>

Mises set this out at length in ''[[Theory and History]]'' (1957), which remains the fullest Austrian statement on the subject.<ref name="th">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/theory-and-history-an-interpretation-of-social-and-economic-evolution/ ''Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution''] (1957).</ref>

==Thymology and understanding==

If theory supplies the general laws, something else must account for the particulars: why ''these'' people valued ''that'' outcome at ''that'' moment. Mises called this '''thymology''', the knowledge of human valuations and reactions that everyone acquires by living among other people and that the historian applies deliberately.<ref name="th12">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/theory-and-history-an-interpretation-of-social-and-economic-evolution/read/chapter-12-psychology-and-thymology-1-naturalistic/ Chapter 12: Psychology and Thymology], ''Theory and History''.</ref>

Thymological judgement is not arbitrary, but neither is it demonstrable in the way a theorem is. Two competent historians working from the same documents can weigh the relevance of the several causes differently and neither be convicted of error. Mises treated this as a permanent feature of historical work rather than a defect to be engineered away, and it is the ground of his objection to attempts to make history predictive.<ref name="th13">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/theory-and-history-an-interpretation-of-social-and-economic-evolution/read/chapter-13-meaning-and-use-of-the-study-of-history-1-the/ Chapter 13: The Meaning and Use of the Study of History], ''Theory and History''.</ref>

==The Methodenstreit==

The dispute has an origin. In the 1880s [[Carl Menger]] and Gustav von Schmoller, leader of the German Historical School, argued over whether economics had any theoretical content at all. Schmoller's school held that economic knowledge could only be gathered inductively from the historical record of each nation and epoch; Menger held that there were universal laws of value and exchange that no amount of historical detail could establish or overturn.

The quarrel gave the Austrian School its name, which began as a term of derision aimed at Menger's circle in Vienna by his German opponents. Its substance is still live wherever economics is treated as an empirical science on the model of physics.

==History against historicism==

Mises distinguished history from '''historicism''', the doctrine that there are laws of historical development which determine the sequence of social forms. Marxian stage theory is the leading example, and Mises rejected it on the ground that a law of succession would have to be derived from something, and no method exists for deriving one.<ref name="th10">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/theory-and-history-an-interpretation-of-social-and-economic-evolution/read/chapter-10-historicism-1-the-meaning-of-historicism/ Chapter 10: Historicism], ''Theory and History''.</ref>

The related target is '''scientism''', the transfer of methods that work in the natural sciences to subject matter where the required constants do not exist. [[F.A. Hayek]] made this the theme of ''The Counter-Revolution of Science'', arriving at conclusions close to Mises's from a different direction.

==Austrian historical writing==

The methodological position did not make Austrians shy of writing history. [[Murray N. Rothbard]] produced a four-volume history of colonial America (''Conceived in Liberty''), a two-volume history of economic thought, and ''America's Great Depression'', which applies [[Austrian Business Cycle Theory]] to a single episode. That last book is the clearest illustration of the method in practice: the theory is not tested against 1929, it is used to sort which of the many things happening in 1929 mattered.

==See also==
* [[Praxeology]]
* [[Economics]]
* [[Austrian School]]
* [[Carl Menger]]
* [[Methodological individualism]]
* [[America's Great Depression]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/theory-and-history-an-interpretation-of-social-and-economic-evolution/ Theory and History] by Ludwig von Mises, 1957
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-ii-the-epistemological-problems-of-the-sciences-of/ The Epistemological Problems of the Sciences of Human Action] by Ludwig von Mises (chapter II of [[Human Action]])
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:History]]

Austrian Economics Wiki:Copyrights

2026-08-16T12:52:05Z

ArchiveBot: Restate licensing for the fork: site default CC BY 4.0, 2010-2014 contributions CC BY 3.0, Wikipedia-derived text CC BY-SA 3.0

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Private property

2026-08-16T06:05:28Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite in original prose with the Austrian account; the previous body was two unquoted paragraphs from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

'''Private property''' is a system of [[property]] rules under which each contested resource is assigned to the decisional authority of a particular person or firm. The owner decides what is done with the thing, is not acting as an agent of society in doing so, need give no one an account of the decision, and may transfer that authority to another, who then holds it on the same terms.

The alternative systems are commonly distinguished as common property, where the resource is open to all, and collective property, where its use is determined by a body acting for society as a whole.<ref name="Waldron_Property">Waldron, Jeremy. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/ "Property and Ownership"], ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''.</ref>

==Why the Austrian argument turns on it==

For Austrian economists private property is not primarily a moral posture but the institution on which the possibility of [[economic calculation]] rests. Where the factors of production are owned and exchanged, they acquire money [[price]]s; where they do not, there are no prices for them, and no way to compare the many technically possible methods of producing a thing and identify which wastes least. [[Ludwig von Mises]]'s argument against [[socialism]] is therefore an argument about ownership rather than about incentives: it holds even for planners who are diligent and well intentioned.<ref name="ha24">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4718 Private Property], excerpted from chapter 24 of ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

The complementary argument is that private property is what makes peaceful use of a world of [[scarcity|scarce]] means possible at all. Two people can want the same resource for incompatible purposes; assigning it to a determinate owner settles who decides, and so converts a potential conflict into a question about title. On this account property rights are not an imposition on an otherwise harmonious world but the means by which the conflict scarcity implies is resolved without violence.

==Owning does not mean being unaccountable==

The owner's freedom from having to justify a decision is a legal fact, not an economic one. An owner who uses a resource in ways consumers do not value bears the loss himself, and continued misuse costs him the resource, since he must eventually sell it to someone who values it more. This is the sense in which private ownership subjects even the unaccountable owner to the judgment of others, and the sense in which [[consumer sovereignty]] operates through property rather than against it.

The point cuts against a common objection. When a factory owner closes a plant, the decision may fall heavily on employees and on the surrounding town. That the decision is his to make is precisely what makes him bear its consequences; the alternative is not that the loss disappears but that it is borne by people who did not choose it and cannot be held to account for it.

==Original appropriation==

Since ownership is transferred by [[exchange]] and gift, a complete theory needs an account of how a thing came to be owned in the first place. Austrians in the Lockean tradition, above all [[Murray N. Rothbard]], hold that unowned resources become owned through original appropriation: bringing a thing into use establishes the title, which may then be transferred. The rival view, that titles derive from the state or from social convention, is rejected on the ground that it makes property a grant revocable by the granter and so no property at all.<ref name="ethics">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ ''The Ethics of Liberty''].</ref>

[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]] developed the economic and ethical case at length in ''[[The Economics and Ethics of Private Property]]''.

==See also==
* [[Property]]
* [[Economic calculation problem]]
* [[Scarcity]]
* [[Consumer sovereignty]]
* [[Socialism]]
* [[Contract]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4718 Private Property] by Ludwig von Mises (excerpted from chapter 24 of [[Human Action]]: The Scholar's Edition (1949))
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/liberal/ch2sec2.asp Private Property and Its Critics] by Ludwig von Mises (from [[Liberalism|Liberalism (book)]])
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/934/All-Hail-Private-Property All Hail Private Property] by Tibor R. Machan, April 2002
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/3705 Private Property's Philosopher] by David Gordon, September 2009
* [[The Economics and Ethics of Private Property]] by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
* [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/jls/1-2-4/ Coase and Demsetz on Private Property Rights] (pdf) by Walter Block, 1977
* [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/jls/9-1-1/ Enforcement of Private Property Rights in Primitive Societies: Law without Government] (pdf) by Bruce L. Benson, 1989
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Barter

2026-08-16T06:02:05Z

ArchiveBot: Write from the Austrian literature with archive citations

'''Barter''' is direct [[exchange]]: goods traded against goods, with no [[money]] serving as a medium. It matters in Austrian theory chiefly for what it cannot do, since the difficulties of direct exchange are what explain the emergence of money.

==The double coincidence of wants==

Under barter an exchange requires that each party hold precisely what the other wants and want precisely what the other holds. That coincidence is rare, and it becomes rarer as the [[division of labor]] deepens: a specialist produces one thing and needs thousands, so the more productive the arrangement, the harder direct exchange becomes.

Two further limits compound it. Many goods are not divisible, so a trader with one ox and a need for a week's grain cannot make the trade at any ratio. And under barter every good has an exchange ratio against every other, so the number of ratios a trader must know grows roughly with the square of the number of goods, where under [[money]] each good has just one [[price]].

==How money emerges from barter==

[[Carl Menger]] used these difficulties to explain the origin of money without appealing to invention or decree. A trader who cannot find a direct counterparty can improve his position by accepting, in exchange, a good he does not want himself, provided it is more ''saleable'' than what he currently holds, since it will be easier to trade on. Each trader doing this converges on the most saleable goods, and those goods thereby become general media of exchange.

No one has to intend money for money to appear. It is the standard illustration of [[spontaneous order]], and it is why Austrians regard money as a market phenomenon rather than a creation of the state.<ref name="menger">[[Carl Menger]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/principles-of-economics/ ''Principles of Economics''] (1871).</ref>

[[Ludwig von Mises]] built his [[regression theorem]] on the same starting point: money's purchasing power today traces back through yesterday's purchasing power to a point at which the commodity was valued for its non-monetary uses in direct exchange. Barter is thus the historical anchor that keeps the theory of money's value from circularity.

==Whether barter economies existed==

Whether whole societies ever ran on barter is disputed by anthropologists, several of whom argue that credit and customary obligation, rather than spot barter, preceded coinage.<ref>{{md|5921|Barter in Prehistoric Times|Franz Oppenheimer|February 15, 2012}}</ref> The dispute bears less on the theory than is sometimes supposed: Menger's argument is about the logic by which a more saleable good is preferred in exchange, and it does not require that a barter-only society ever existed as a historical stage.

Barter also reappears where money fails. Under [[hyperinflation]], and where exchange controls or [[price control]]s make monetary transactions unattractive, trade reverts toward direct exchange, and the resulting loss of specialization is a standard measure of the damage done.

==See also==
* [[Money]]
* [[Exchange]]
* [[Spontaneous order]]
* [[Division of labor]]
* [[Carl Menger]]
* [[Hyperinflation]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Consumer sovereignty

2026-08-16T06:02:01Z

ArchiveBot: Write from the Austrian literature with archive citations

'''Consumer sovereignty''' is the principle that in an unhampered [[free market|market economy]] it is [[consumer]]s, not producers, who ultimately determine what is produced, in what quantities, and by whom. The term was coined by [[William Harold Hutt|W. H. Hutt]] and became central to [[Ludwig von Mises]]'s account of [[capitalism]].

==The mechanism==

Producers do not decide what will be made in any final sense. They forecast what buyers will pay for, bid factors of production away from competing uses on the strength of that forecast, and then discover whether they were right. Those who judged well earn [[profit]] and command more resources next time; those who judged badly take losses and command fewer. Ownership of capital is therefore not a settled position but a continually renewed appointment, and the electorate is the buying public.

Mises put the point as a metaphor of voting: the market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to cast a ballot, and the outcome is a daily plebiscite in which the consumers decide who shall own what and run which business.<ref name="humanaction_ch15">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xv-the-market/ XV. The Market], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

On this account the [[entrepreneur]] is not a ruler of the productive apparatus but a servant of the consumers, and his authority over his employees and his suppliers is derivative: he can pay them only what consumers have made it worth paying.

==What the doctrine does not claim==

The principle is frequently read as a claim that consumers get what they deserve, or that whatever the market produces is thereby good. It asserts neither.

* '''It is about causation, not merit.''' Consumer sovereignty says that consumer valuations govern production, not that those valuations are wise. Mises was explicit that the market gives people what they want rather than what a critic thinks they ought to want, and treated complaints about vulgar output as complaints about the public rather than about the mechanism.
* '''It is not a claim of consumer omnipotence.''' Consumers cannot conjure goods that are technically impossible or make scarce things abundant. Sovereignty is exercised over the direction of production, within the limits [[scarcity]] sets.
* '''It presupposes the absence of privilege.''' Where the state confers monopoly, licence, subsidy or tariff, producers are shielded from the verdict, and to that extent sovereignty passes from the consumer to whoever grants the privilege. Austrians therefore treat the entrenched, unresponsive firm as evidence of [[interventionism]] rather than of markets working normally.

==Relation to the calculation argument==

Consumer sovereignty is what [[economic calculation]] serves. Money [[price]]s allow producers to compare the countless possible ways of satisfying consumer demand and to identify which of them wastes least. Where those prices are absent, as under [[socialism]], the mechanism transmitting consumer valuations back into production decisions is broken, and the direction of production passes to the planners whether or not they intend to override anyone's preferences.

==See also==
* [[Capitalism]]
* [[Consumer]]
* [[Entrepreneur]]
* [[Market]]
* [[Economic calculation problem]]
* [[William Harold Hutt]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Template:Quotable

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ArchiveBot: Point the Quotable Mises link at the archived original

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Template:Mises daily

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Joseph Salerno

2026-08-16T05:50:43Z

ArchiveBot: Expand from verified biography; add intellectual contribution and archive links

[[File:JoeSalerno.jpg|thumb|right]]
'''Joseph T. Salerno''' (born 1950) is an [[Austrian School]] economist in the [[United States]]. He is academic vice president of the [[Mises Institute]], professor emeritus of economics at Pace University, and editor of the ''[[Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics]]''.<ref name="bio">[https://freecapitalists.org/authors/joseph-t-salerno/ Joseph T. Salerno] at the Liberty Archive.</ref> He received his Ph.D. in economics from Rutgers University.

His work is chiefly in monetary theory, the history of economic thought, and the interpretation of [[Ludwig von Mises]].

==Mises and Hayek de-homogenized==

Salerno is best known for arguing that the views of [[Ludwig von Mises]] and [[Friedrich Hayek]] on [[economic calculation]] have been wrongly merged into a single position. On the standard reading, both were making an argument about the dispersal of knowledge, and Hayek's version is taken as the mature statement of it.

Salerno's contention is that the two arguments are distinct. Mises's objection to [[socialism]] is that without exchangeable ownership of the factors of production there are no money [[price]]s for them, and therefore no way to perform the arithmetic by which competing production plans are compared. That is a claim about calculation and it does not depend on knowledge being dispersed; it would hold even for a planner who knew everything. Hayek's argument, by contrast, concerns the tacit and dispersed character of knowledge and the impossibility of assembling it centrally.

Treating the second as a restatement of the first, on this reading, concedes ground Mises never conceded, and it made the calculation debate look settled by the market-socialist proposals of Oskar Lange in a way that Salerno argues it was not.<ref name="dehom">Joseph T. Salerno, "Mises and Hayek Dehomogenized", ''[https://freecapitalists.org/journals/rae/ Review of Austrian Economics]'', 1993.</ref>

The interpretation is contested, and the resulting literature on how far Mises and Hayek differ is now substantial.

==Money and banking==

Salerno has written extensively on [[money]], on the definition of the [[money supply]] appropriate to Austrian theory, on [[deflation]], and on the case for a [[gold standard]] with fully backed reserves. He is among the leading modern proponents of the view that [[fractional reserve banking]] is inherently destabilising, and his collected monetary writings appear as ''Money: Sound and Unsound''.

==See also==
* [[Austrian School]]
* [[Economic calculation]]
* [[Ludwig von Mises]]
* [[Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics]]
* [[True Money Supply]]
* [[Fractional reserve banking]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://freecapitalists.org/authors/joseph-t-salerno/ Works by Joseph T. Salerno] at the Liberty Archive

{{DEFAULTSORT:Salerno, Joseph}}
[[Category:Economists]]

Israel Kirzner

2026-08-16T05:50:39Z

ArchiveBot: Expand from verified biography; add intellectual contribution and archive links

'''Israel M. Kirzner''' (born 1930) is an Austrian-American economist, born in London, who studied under [[Ludwig von Mises]] at New York University and earned his Ph.D. there in 1957, taking a faculty chair in 1968. He taught at NYU until his retirement in 2001 and built, with Ludwig Lachmann, the graduate programme that trained much of the modern [[Austrian School]] in the United States.<ref name="bio">[https://freecapitalists.org/authors/israel-m-kirzner/ Israel M. Kirzner] at the Liberty Archive.</ref>

He is best known for a theory of [[entrepreneur]]ship built on the idea of alertness.

==Entrepreneurship as alertness==

Kirzner's central claim is that the [[entrepreneur]]'s distinguishing function is neither bearing [[risk]] nor supplying capital nor managing a firm, but ''noticing'' an opportunity that others have overlooked. Where the same good sells for different prices in two places, or where inputs can be combined into something worth more than they cost, a discrepancy exists that anyone might in principle exploit. What is scarce is not the resources but the alertness to see that the opportunity is there.

The entrepreneur so understood need not own anything. He earns [[profit]] by acting on a discrepancy, and in acting on it he removes it: buying where the price is low and selling where it is high narrows the gap. Entrepreneurial activity is therefore an equilibrating force, driving the [[market]] toward the coordination it never fully reaches.<ref name="mtps">Israel M. Kirzner. ''Market Theory and the Price System'' (1963); ''Competition and Entrepreneurship'' (1973).</ref>

This is a deliberate contrast with [[Joseph Schumpeter]], for whom the entrepreneur is a disruptive innovator who ''displaces'' an existing equilibrium. Kirzner argued that both descriptions capture real behaviour but that the equilibrating function is the more fundamental, since without it markets would exhibit no tendency toward coordination at all.

==The debate with Lachmann==

Kirzner's position was contested within the school by his own NYU colleague Ludwig Lachmann, who held that in a world of genuine [[uncertainty]] and divergent expectations there is no reason to expect entrepreneurial activity to converge on anything. On Lachmann's radical subjectivist view the market is a continuous process without a destination, and expectations are as likely to scatter outcomes as to coordinate them.

The exchange is one of the defining internal disputes of the modern Austrian School, and the two positions continue to mark a division between those who emphasise the market's coordinating tendency and those who emphasise its open-endedness.

==Selected works==
* ''The Economic Point of View'' (1960)
* ''Market Theory and the Price System'' (1963)
* ''An Essay on Capital'' (1966)
* ''Competition and Entrepreneurship'' (1973)
* ''Perception, Opportunity, and Profit'' (1979)
* ''Discovery and the Capitalist Process'' (1985)

==See also==
* [[Entrepreneur]]
* [[Austrian School]]
* [[Ludwig von Mises]]
* [[Market]]
* [[Competition]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://freecapitalists.org/authors/israel-m-kirzner/ Works by Israel M. Kirzner] at the Liberty Archive
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/author/178 Daily articles] by Israel Kirzner
* {{wplink}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirzner, Israel}}
[[Category:Economists]]

Market

2026-08-16T05:47:52Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian literature with sourced citations to the Liberty Archive

'''Market''' is the process by which the [[exchange]] of [[good]]s and services takes place among people acting under the [[division of labor]]. In the Austrian tradition the market is defined not as a place, nor as an institution, nor as the aggregate of buyers and sellers, but as a ''process'' constituted by their actions.

==The market as a process==

[[Ludwig von Mises]] made this the foundation of his treatment: the market is not a thing or a collective entity but a process, driven by the interplay of the actions of individuals cooperating under the division of labor. It has no purposes of its own, and the forces determining its state are the [[value]] judgments of those individuals and the actions they take on the strength of them.<ref name="humanaction_ch15">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xv-the-market/ XV. The Market], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

This is a substantive claim rather than a definitional preference. If the market is a process, then its characteristic phenomena ([[price]]s, [[profit]] and loss, the structure of [[production]]) are outcomes of continuous adjustment rather than properties of a state of rest, and the analytical task is to trace how the adjustment proceeds rather than to describe the conditions under which it would cease.

==Catallactics==

Mises used the older term ''catallactics'' for the analysis of market phenomena, from the Greek verb meaning to exchange and also to admit into the community and to turn from enemy into friend. He preferred it to "economics" because it names the subject matter directly: the study of exchange ratios and of the market process that generates them.<ref name="humanaction_ch14">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xiv-the-scope-and-method-of-catallactics/ XIV. The Scope and Method of Catallactics], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

==Equilibrium as a tool, not a description==

Austrians make heavy use of equilibrium constructions while denying that they describe reality. Mises's [[evenly rotating economy]] is an [[imaginary construction]]: an economy in which the same transactions repeat endlessly, all [[uncertainty]] has been removed, and consequently there is neither [[profit]] nor loss and no function for the [[entrepreneur]]. Its purpose is precisely to isolate, by its absence, what entrepreneurship contributes to a real economy.

The contrast with the mainstream treatment is sharp. Where general equilibrium theory takes the equilibrium state as the object of analysis and treats deviations as frictions, Austrians take the disequilibrium process as the object and treat equilibrium as a mental tool that would, if ever reached, abolish the phenomena being explained.

==Competition==

[[Competition]] on this account is a rivalrous activity rather than a market structure. It consists in entrepreneurs attempting to serve consumers better than their rivals do, by offering lower prices, better goods, or goods not previously offered at all. It is therefore compatible with a small number of sellers and is not measured by their number. This is the basis of the Austrian objection to the textbook model of "perfect competition", in which no participant does anything that would ordinarily be called competing.

==See also==
* [[Free market]]
* [[Capitalism]]
* [[Price]]
* [[Competition]]
* [[Entrepreneur]]
* [[Exchange]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Spontaneous order

2026-08-16T05:47:47Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian literature with sourced citations to the Liberty Archive

'''Spontaneous order''' is order that arises from the interaction of many individuals pursuing their own purposes, without any of them intending the resulting pattern and without direction from above. Adam Ferguson's formulation, which [[Friedrich Hayek]] took as the motto of the idea, is that such institutions are the result of human action but not of human design.

The concept is central to the [[Austrian School]] because it identifies a third possibility between things that are natural and things that are deliberately made, and most of the institutions economics studies fall into it.

==Menger on the origin of money==

[[Carl Menger]] supplied the model case. [[Money]] is not plausibly explained as a natural phenomenon, and the older theory that it was established by a ruler or a social compact merely relocates the puzzle. Menger showed instead how money emerges without anyone intending it: in barter a trader improves his position by accepting a good he does not want himself if it is more saleable than what he holds, since it eases his next exchange. As traders converge on the most saleable goods for this reason, those goods become general media of exchange. No one set out to invent money; each was solving his own problem.<ref name="menger">[[Carl Menger]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/principles-of-economics/ ''Principles of Economics''] (1871).</ref>

The same pattern was applied by Menger and later writers to language, law, custom and the [[division of labor]].

==Hayek: knowledge and the limits of design==

[[Friedrich Hayek]] developed the idea into an argument about knowledge. The information needed to coordinate an economy is particular, local, often tacit, and continually changing. It exists only in dispersed form across millions of people and is not available to any mind or committee in aggregate form. [[Price]]s work as a mechanism for conveying just enough of it: a rise tells everyone using a good to economise on it without telling them why, and the adjustment proceeds without anyone possessing the whole picture.<ref name="ieo">[[Friedrich Hayek]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/individualism-and-economic-order/ ''Individualism and Economic Order''].</ref>

Central direction fails on this account not because planners are stupid or wicked but because the knowledge they would need does not exist in a form anyone could be given. This is a different objection from Mises's [[economic calculation|calculation]] argument, though the two are complementary and are often run together.

Hayek marked the contrast with a pair of Greek terms: ''cosmos'', a grown order, against ''taxis'', a made order such as a firm or an army. A grown order can be far more complex than anything designed, because it is not limited by what one mind can hold; but for the same reason it cannot be given specific ends, and the demand that the market produce a particular distribution asks of a cosmos something only a taxis could deliver.

==Misreadings==

Spontaneous order is regularly mistaken for two claims it does not make. It does not say that undesigned outcomes are always good: Hayek held that grown institutions are subject to selection over time, not that whatever emerges is thereby justified, and traditions can persist that no longer serve. Nor does it say that deliberate organisation is illegitimate. Firms are designed orders, and the argument concerns the level at which design is possible, not whether anyone may plan anything.

==See also==
* [[Carl Menger]]
* [[Friedrich Hayek]]
* [[Money]]
* [[Price]]
* [[Economic calculation]]
* [[Division of labor]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Labor theory of value

2026-08-16T05:47:43Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian literature with sourced citations to the Liberty Archive

The '''labor theory of value''' (sometimes the '''cost theory of value''') holds that a [[good]] derives its [[value]] from the quantity of [[labor]] required to produce it. It was held in various forms by classical economists including [[Adam Smith]] and [[David Ricardo]], and was taken over by [[Karl Marx]] as the foundation of his theory of exploitation.<ref name="Murphy_Labor">[[Robert Murphy]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/jls/20-1-3/ The Labor Theory of Value: A Critique of Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy].</ref>

Its rejection is one of the founding acts of the [[Austrian School]]. The marginalist account of value that replaced it is not a refinement of the labour theory but its reversal.

==The problem it could not solve==

The classical economists could not explain why water, which is indispensable, is nearly free, while diamonds, which are not, are dear. Nor could they explain why a good produced at great expense may fetch nothing if no one wants it. Both difficulties arise from the same source: the theory runs causation from cost to value, and so has nothing to say about goods whose cost and usefulness point in opposite directions.

==The marginalist reversal==

[[Carl Menger]]'s answer was that value is not a property inhering in goods but an importance attributed to them by valuing people, and that people never value "water" or "diamonds" as such. They value particular units for particular purposes, at the margin, so the relevant question is what depends on the specific unit in question.<ref name="menger">[[Carl Menger]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/principles-of-economics/ ''Principles of Economics''] (1871).</ref>

This inverts the causal order. Value does not flow from cost; cost is itself a value phenomenon. The factors of production are valued because of the anticipated value of the [[consumer good]]s they can be used to make, so [[price]]s of inputs are ''imputed'' from expected prices of outputs rather than the reverse. Labour is one such input and is valued the same way, which is why a labourer's wage tends toward the discounted value of what his work is expected to add.

The theory's residual plausibility comes from a genuine but secondary fact: costs already incurred cannot determine value, but expected value does govern which costs people are willing to incur, so in a settled industry price and cost of production do tend to move together. That correlation is an effect, not the cause.

==Böhm-Bawerk's critique of Marx==

[[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk]] gave the classic Austrian criticism in ''Karl Marx and the Close of His System''. He argued that Marx's system is internally inconsistent: the first volume of ''Das Kapital'' has commodities exchanging in proportion to labour time, while the third concedes that they exchange at prices of production which diverge from labour values wherever the ratio of capital to labour differs between industries, as it generally does. The transformation offered to reconcile the two, Böhm-Bawerk held, does not reconcile them but abandons the original proposition while retaining its vocabulary.<ref name="bb">[[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system/ ''Karl Marx and the Close of His System''].</ref>

He also objected to the derivation itself. Marx arrives at labour as the common substance of exchangeable goods by abstracting away every other property they share, but the abstraction is not forced: scarcity and usefulness survive it too, and nothing in the argument selects labour except the conclusion it is wanted for.

==Consequences for exploitation==

Because the wage tends toward the discounted marginal value product of labour, [[interest]] on capital appears in the Austrian account as the discount arising from [[time preference]] rather than as a deduction from what workers produced. The employer who pays wages now for output realised later is advancing present goods against future goods, and the difference is the price of time rather than a share withheld. The Marxian charge of exploitation therefore does not survive the change of value theory, which is why the dispute over the labour theory was never a narrow technical matter.

==See also==
* [[Value]]
* [[Utility]]
* [[Marginal utility]]
* [[Subjective theory of value]]
* [[Time preference]]
* [[Karl Marx]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Interventionism

2026-08-16T05:47:39Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian literature with sourced citations to the Liberty Archive

'''Interventionism''' is the economic policy of a government that retains [[private property]] and the market economy but intervenes by decree in the operation of particular markets, in an attempt to correct alleged flaws of [[free market]] [[capitalism]].<ref>[[Robert Murphy]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/lessons-for-the-young-economist/ ''Lessons for the Young Economist''], 2010, page 255.</ref> Familiar instruments include [[taxes]], [[price controls]], [[tariff]]s, licensing, eminent domain, subsidy, and a state monopoly of the money supply through a [[central bank]].

[[Ludwig von Mises]] treated interventionism as a distinct third system, to be analysed on its own terms rather than as a mixture of [[capitalism]] and [[socialism]]. His conclusion was that it is not a stable third way at all.

==The interventionist dynamic==

Mises's central argument is that an intervention characteristically fails on the terms of those who imposed it, and that the failure creates the political occasion for a further intervention.

The standard illustration is a maximum [[price]] on a good below the market price. The lower price raises the quantity buyers wish to purchase and reduces the quantity sellers find it worthwhile to supply, so the good becomes scarce at the controlled price. The shortage is then attributed not to the control but to hoarding or profiteering, and is met with rationing, with controls on the good's inputs, and eventually with controls on the industries supplying those inputs. Each measure disturbs a further set of markets and generates the argument for the next.

The government therefore faces a recurring choice: abandon the original intervention, or extend it. If it always extends, the sphere of decree grows until production is directed by the authorities in substance while ownership remains private in name. Mises regarded the German war economy as the model of that end state and argued that it amounts to [[socialism]] in a second form, reached without formal expropriation.<ref name="critique">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/critique-of-interventionism-a/ ''A Critique of Interventionism''].</ref>

==Why the middle is unstable==

The claim is not that intervention always makes everyone worse off, nor that every intervention must escalate. It is that intervention cannot achieve what its advocates want it to achieve, because the market phenomena it overrides are the outcome of the same [[consumer]] valuations the intervention leaves in place. A [[price control]] does not repeal the [[scarcity]] that produced the price; it suppresses the signal and the incentive by which the scarcity would have been relieved.

For the same reason Austrians treat the shortages, [[malinvestment]]s and crises that follow intervention as consequences of the intervention rather than as market failures demonstrating the need for more of it. The disagreement with mainstream policy analysis is largely about which of these two readings the evidence supports.

==Distinguished from capitalism==

Because interventionism preserves private ownership, its results are commonly attributed to the market, and Austrians insist on the distinction: a regulated, subsidised and cartelised industry is not an instance of capitalism performing badly but of intervention performing as the theory predicts. This is the basis of the Austrian reading of the [[Great Depression]] and of the [[Great Recession]], in both of which the prior expansion of credit by a [[central bank]] is treated as the cause of the boom whose collapse was then blamed on private enterprise.

==See also==
* [[Capitalism]]
* [[Socialism]]
* [[Price control]]
* [[Central bank]]
* [[Austrian Business Cycle Theory]]
* [[Malinvestment]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Contract

2026-08-16T05:47:36Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian literature with sourced citations to the Liberty Archive

A '''contract''' is an agreement by which people transfer titles to [[property]]. In everyday usage it names a binding promise, usually written; in libertarian legal theory the promise is not the essential thing, and the difference has consequences for which agreements may be enforced and how.

==The title-transfer theory==

[[Murray N. Rothbard]] argued that a contract is enforceable only insofar as it transfers title to an alienable good. On this account a contract is not a promise that the law compels a person to keep; it is a conveyance, possibly conditional or deferred, of something the transferor owns. What makes non-performance actionable is therefore not the breaking of one's word but the retention of property that now belongs to somebody else.<ref name="ethics">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ ''The Ethics of Liberty''].</ref>

Two consequences follow, and both are counter-intuitive on the promise view.

* '''A bare promise creates no obligation enforceable by force.''' If a person promises to meet a friend and does not, he has behaved badly, but no title has moved and there is nothing to recover. Breaking a promise is not theft.
* '''Taking payment and failing to deliver is enforceable,''' because money was transferred on a condition that has not been met. This is also why [[fraud]] is analysed as theft rather than as a separate wrong.

==Inalienability==

Because a contract transfers title, it can transfer only what its maker can actually alienate. Rothbard held that a person's will cannot be alienated: he can transfer property, and he can agree to a penalty for non-performance, but he cannot make himself the property of another. A voluntary slavery contract is therefore not merely wicked but void, since the thing it purports to convey is not conveyable.

The same reasoning limits specific performance of personal service. An employer whose employee walks out may recover property conveyed conditionally, but he may not compel the labour itself, because labour was never his to own.

==Contract without the state==

Because [[anarcho-capitalism|anarcho-capitalists]] deny the state a monopoly on adjudication, the enforcement of contracts is one of the standard objections put to them, and a substantial literature answers it by pointing to arrangements that already work this way: private arbitration, the historical law merchant developed by traders across jurisdictions, credit reporting, bonding and the ordinary discipline of reputation in repeated dealings.

==See also==
* [[Property]]
* [[Fraud]]
* [[Exchange]]
* [[Aggression]]
* [[Private law society]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Utilitarianism

2026-08-16T05:43:32Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian and libertarian literature; correct unsourced claims and add citations

'''Utilitarianism''' is the moral doctrine holding that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse.<ref name="Mill_what_utilitarianism_is">[[John Stuart Mill]]. ''Utilitarianism'', II. What Utilitarianism Is.</ref> In its classical form, given by Jeremy Bentham and [[John Stuart Mill]], pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends, and everything else is desirable as a means to them.

The doctrine matters here because the two dominant defences of the [[free market]] in the Austrian and libertarian traditions divide precisely over whether to accept it.

==Mises's utilitarianism==

[[Ludwig von Mises]] was a utilitarian, and his defence of [[liberalism]] is explicitly consequentialist. He held that [[economics]] as a science is value-free and can establish only that a given means will or will not attain a given end; it cannot pronounce ends good or bad. What it can show is that social cooperation under the [[division of labor]] and private ownership of the means of production achieves the ends nearly everyone actually holds, and that the proposed alternatives defeat them.

Mises therefore did not argue that [[socialism]] is unjust. He argued that it cannot work, because it abolishes the [[economic calculation|calculation]] that the direction of production requires, and that those who advocate it are mistaken about means rather than depraved in their ends.<ref name="humanaction_ch2">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-ii-the-epistemological-problems-of-the-sciences-of/ II. The Epistemological Problems of the Sciences of Human Action], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref> This gives the argument its distinctive shape: it appeals to no premise about rights and asks the opponent only to want what he already says he wants.

==Rothbard's rejection==

[[Murray N. Rothbard]] regarded this as an insufficient foundation and argued for [[Natural law|natural rights]] instead. His objections were that a utilitarian defence of the market is hostage to the facts, so that a demonstration that some intervention did raise welfare would oblige the utilitarian to accept it; that it requires interpersonal comparisons of [[utility]], which Austrians hold to be impossible since utility is ordinal and not measurable; and that it cannot condemn an injustice suffered by a few for the benefit of many, which is exactly the case where a moral principle is needed.<ref name="ethics">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ ''The Ethics of Liberty''].</ref>

Rothbard's alternative derives property titles from self-ownership and the appropriation of unowned resources, and judges institutions by whether they respect those titles regardless of the consequences.

==The standing disagreement==

The division persists and is one of the genuine fault lines in the tradition. Utilitarians reply that natural-rights derivations rest on premises no less contestable than the ones they replace, and that a doctrine indifferent to consequences is a poor guide to institutions. Some writers, including [[Henry Hazlitt]] in ''The Foundations of Morality'', have sought a middle position in rule utilitarianism, judging general rules rather than individual acts by their consequences and thereby recovering much of the stability that rights are wanted for.

==See also==
* [[Natural law]]
* [[Utility]]
* [[Ludwig von Mises]]
* [[Murray N. Rothbard]]
* [[Ethics]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Minarchism

2026-08-16T05:43:28Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian and libertarian literature; correct unsourced claims and add citations

'''Minarchism''' is the position that the [[state]] should be limited to protecting persons and [[property]] against [[aggression]], and should do nothing else. Its characteristic list of legitimate functions is short: defence against invasion, police against domestic aggressors, and courts to adjudicate disputes. The term is generally attributed to [[Samuel Edward Konkin III]], who coined it to distinguish limited-state libertarians from [[anarcho-capitalism|anarchist]] ones.<ref>Gordon, David. [https://www.lewrockwell.com/2008/09/david-gordon/the-kochtopus-vs-murray-n-rothbard/ "The Kochtopus vs. Murray N. Rothbard"], 2008.</ref>

Minarchism is often called the ''night-watchman state'' theory, after a phrase used dismissively by Ferdinand Lassalle and adopted by its defenders.

==The argument==

The minarchist case begins where the [[anarcho-capitalism|anarcho-capitalist]] case does, with the claim that [[aggression]] is illegitimate, and diverges over what follows. Minarchists hold that protection against aggression is the one service that cannot be supplied competitively without producing the very thing it is meant to prevent: competing agencies with the power to use force would, on this view, either fight or combine, and a single agency is preferable to either outcome. A limited state is therefore accepted not as a good in itself but as the least bad institutional answer to the problem of enforcement.

[[Robert Nozick]] gave the best-known version of the argument in ''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' (1974), attempting to show that a minimal state could arise from a condition of competing protective agencies through steps that violate no one's rights, and that no more than a minimal state can be justified.

==The Rothbardian objection==

[[Murray N. Rothbard]] and later [[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]] rejected the position on the ground that it exempts one agency from the rule it applies to everyone else. A state funded by [[taxation]] takes property without consent, and a state maintaining a territorial monopoly on adjudication does so by prohibiting competitors from offering a service they are otherwise entitled to offer. On this reading a "limited" state is not a small amount of aggression but a licensed one, and the limits are not enforceable, since the body that interprets them is the body they constrain.<ref name="ethics">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ ''The Ethics of Liberty''].</ref>

The historical form of the objection is that no minimal state has stayed minimal.

==Who counts as a minarchist==

The label is applied loosely and often anachronistically. [[Ludwig von Mises]] and [[Friedrich Hayek]] defended a strictly limited state on consequentialist grounds and are commonly described as minarchists, though neither used the word and both were writing as classical liberals rather than as participants in a libertarian intramural debate. [[Ayn Rand]] argued for a government confined to police, armed forces and courts, financed voluntarily, but rejected the libertarian movement and its terminology. Care is needed in attributing the position to writers who predate it.

==See also==
* [[Anarcho-capitalism]]
* [[Classical liberalism]]
* [[Libertarianism]]
* [[State]]
* [[Non-aggression principle]]
* [[Liberty]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Liberty

2026-08-16T04:39:47Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian and libertarian literature; correct unsourced claims and add archive citations

'''Liberty''' is the condition of a person who is free from [[coercion]] by others. In the [[classical liberal]] and libertarian traditions it is defined negatively, as the absence of [[aggression]] against a person or his [[property]], rather than positively as the possession of the means to do what one wishes.

==The negative conception==

On the negative conception, a person's liberty is diminished only by the actions of other people, and specifically by the initiation of force or its threat. Poverty, ignorance, illness and bad luck may all narrow what a person can accomplish, but they do not make him unfree, because no one is compelling him. The point of the distinction is not to deny that hardship matters but to keep a claim about rights separate from a claim about resources: if liberty meant the ability to do things, then one person's liberty could require another's labour, and liberties so defined would routinely conflict.

This is what allows classical liberals to hold that everyone's liberty can be secured simultaneously. Rights understood as claims against interference can be held by all at once; rights understood as claims to goods cannot.

==Liberty and the state==

[[Classical liberalism]] popularised the view that liberty is best secured by strictly limiting the role of the [[state]], on the ground that the state is itself the most capable aggressor. [[Ludwig von Mises]] argued the case on consequentialist grounds, holding that a society of free labour and private ownership of the means of production produces general prosperity and that the alternatives destroy it.<ref name="liberalism">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/liberalism-in-the-classical-tradition/read/ ''Liberalism in the Classical Tradition''].</ref>

The concept proved popular enough that movements hostile to it began claiming the word, which is why nineteenth-century "liberal" and twentieth-century "liberal" name nearly opposite positions in the United States, and why writers in this tradition often qualify the term as ''classical'' liberalism.

==Disagreement about how far the argument goes==

How much state a commitment to liberty permits is disputed within the tradition, and the dispute does not track membership of the [[Austrian School]]. The Austrian School is a school of economics rather than a political programme, and its members have held a wide range of political positions: [[Ludwig von Mises]], [[Friedrich Hayek]], [[Israel Kirzner]] and [[Fritz Machlup]] were classical liberals who accepted a limited state, while the [[anarcho-capitalism|anarcho-capitalist]] position, which holds that the state's protective functions can and should be supplied on the [[market]], derives principally from [[Murray N. Rothbard]] and those who followed him.

The two camps agree on the definition of liberty above and disagree about an empirical and institutional question: whether an agency with a territorial monopoly on defence and adjudication protects liberty on net, or violates it while claiming to protect it. [[Minarchism|Minarchists]] take the first view and [[anarcho-capitalism|anarcho-capitalists]] the second.

==See also==
* [[Classical liberalism]]
* [[Coercion]]
* [[Aggression]]
* [[Minarchism]]
* [[Anarcho-capitalism]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Fraud

2026-08-16T04:39:43Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian and libertarian literature; correct unsourced claims and add archive citations

'''Fraud''' is the obtaining of another person's [[property]] by false representation. In libertarian legal theory it is grouped with [[aggression]] rather than treated as a separate category of wrong, because the property so obtained was never voluntarily transferred: the defrauder secures consent to a transfer by misrepresenting the thing being transferred, and consent given on those terms conveys no title.

==Why fraud counts as theft==

[[Murray N. Rothbard]] argued that fraud is "implicit theft". A voluntary [[exchange]] transfers title because each party agrees to give up one thing in return for another. Where a party obtains goods by representing that he will deliver something he does not deliver, or by misdescribing what he hands over, the condition on which title was surrendered has not been met. The recipient therefore holds property that remains, in justice, the other party's, and recovering it is restitution rather than an act of aggression.<ref name="ethics">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ ''The Ethics of Liberty''].</ref>

This is why the [[non-aggression principle]] can be stated in terms of force alone without leaving fraud unaccounted for. Fraud is not an additional exception to the principle; it is an application of it.

==What fraud is not==

The definition is narrower than everyday usage, and three distinctions do most of the work.

* '''A lie is not necessarily fraud.''' False representation becomes fraud only when property is obtained by means of it. Lying with no transfer of property may be dishonest, but it is not a violation of anyone's rights on this account.
* '''A broken promise is not automatically fraud.''' Under the title-transfer theory of [[contract]] that Rothbard defended, a mere promise conveys no title and its breach is not theft. Failing to keep an appointment is not fraud. Failing to deliver goods already paid for is, because the money was transferred conditionally on delivery.
* '''A bad bargain is not fraud.''' A buyer who regrets a purchase, or who paid more than others would have, has not been defrauded. The question is whether the thing exchanged was misrepresented, not whether the terms were favourable.

==Remedy==

Because fraud is analysed as theft, the libertarian remedy is restitution to the victim rather than a fine payable to the state, and the measure is the property wrongly obtained rather than a penalty set by statute. Disputes about the appropriate multiple of restitution, and about how fraud should be proved, are live questions in the libertarian legal literature.

==See also==
* [[Aggression]]
* [[Property]]
* [[Non-aggression principle]]
* [[Contract]]
* [[Exchange]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Utility

2026-08-16T04:36:44Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian literature: replace dictionary definitions with sourced treatment, add archive citations

'''Utility''', in economics, is the capacity of a [[good]] to remove felt uneasiness. In [[praxeology]] the term means the importance an acting person attaches to a thing on account of the belief that it can remove felt uneasiness.<ref name="humanaction_ch7sec1">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-vii-action-within-the-world/ VII. Action Within The World], 1. The Law of Marginal Utility, ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref> Alongside this subjective sense there is a technological notion of objective utility, meaning simply a thing's capacity to bring about a certain effect; the two must not be confused, and it is the subjective sense that economics employs.

==Subjective value==

The Austrian treatment begins from [[Carl Menger]]'s solution to the classical [[value]] paradox. Classical economists, seeking the source of value in the cost or labour embodied in a good, could not explain why water is indispensable and cheap while diamonds are useless and dear. Menger's answer was that people never value "water" or "diamonds" as such. They value particular units available for particular purposes, and they value them according to the end that the specific unit in question serves.<ref name="menger">[[Carl Menger]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/principles-of-economics/ ''Principles of Economics''] (1871).</ref>

==The law of marginal utility==

Because the acting person satisfies the most urgently felt want first, each additional unit of a homogeneous supply is devoted to an end less urgent than the last. The importance attached to a unit therefore falls as the supply increases. This is the law of marginal utility, and in the Austrian formulation it is not an empirical regularity about psychology or physiology but a deduction from the structure of [[action]] itself: it follows from the fact that a person who ranks ends acts on the higher ranked one first.

The unit whose loss the actor would regard as least damaging is the marginal unit, and it is this margin, not the total supply, that governs valuation. Water is cheap because the relevant margin serves an unimportant end, not because water in general is unimportant.

==Ordinal, not measurable==

Austrians hold that utility is ranked but not measured. A person can prefer A to B; there is no operation by which he can report that A yields 2.7 times the satisfaction of B, because there exists no unit of satisfaction. Value scales are therefore ordinal, and the arithmetic performed on utility in much of neoclassical economics is held to have no referent.

Two consequences follow, and both are characteristically Austrian:

* '''No interpersonal comparison.''' If utility is not measurable within one person, it cannot be summed across persons. The Austrian objection to [[utilitarianism|utilitarian]] policy arguments, and to welfare economics generally, rests on this rather than on any indifference to welfare.
* '''Demonstrated preference.''' [[Murray N. Rothbard]] argued that preference is knowable only through choice actually made. A scale of values is meaningful as revealed in action, not as introspected or surveyed, so economics may draw on what a person did and not on what he says he would do.<ref name="mes_values">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/man-economy-and-state-with-power-and-market/read/5-further-implications-a-ends-and-values/ 5. Further Implications: A. Ends and Values], ''[[Man, Economy, and State]]''.</ref>

==Relation to indifference==

Because valuation is demonstrated in choice, Austrians treat indifference as something that cannot be exhibited in action: a person who acts has by that act ranked one option above another. Indifference curves, which take indifference as observable data, are consequently rejected as a foundation for [[demand]] theory, and demand is derived instead from ordinal preference rankings.

==See also==
* [[Marginal utility]]
* [[Value]]
* [[Scarcity]]
* [[Praxeology]]
* [[Subjective theory of value]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Scarcity

2026-08-16T04:36:39Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian literature: replace dictionary definitions with sourced treatment, add archive citations

All means are '''scarce''', that is, limited with respect to the ends they could possibly serve. Scarcity is the condition that makes economizing necessary, and with it choice, [[value]] and [[economics]] itself.

==Means and general conditions of welfare==

If something is available in unlimited abundance it need not be the object of any [[action]]. Air in most situations is in unlimited abundance; it is therefore not a means and is not employed as a means to the fulfilment of ends. It need not be allocated, as [[time]] is, to the satisfaction of the more important ends, since it is sufficiently abundant for all human requirements. Air, though indispensable, is thus not a means but a general condition of human action and human welfare.

Scarce means must be allocated by the actor to serve certain ends and to leave other ends unsatisfied. This act of choice may be called economizing the means to serve the most desired ends.<ref name="Rothbard_scarcity">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/man-economy-and-state-with-power-and-market/read/2-first-implications-of-the-concept/ 2. First Implications of the Concept], ''[[Man, Economy, and State]]''.</ref>

The distinction is not a quibble. It marks the boundary of the subject: economics has nothing to say about air as such, and a great deal to say about clean air in a particular place at a particular time, because the latter is scarce and must be economized while the former need not be.

==Scarcity is not shortage==

Scarcity in the economic sense is a permanent feature of the world and is not the same as a shortage. A shortage is a specific and temporary condition in which the quantity demanded exceeds the quantity supplied at the prevailing [[price]], and in a [[free market]] it is resolved by price adjusting. Scarcity is not resolved by anything, and would persist in the wealthiest imaginable society, because ends are unlimited while the means of attaining them are not. Sustained shortages are therefore evidence of [[price control|prices prevented from adjusting]] rather than of scarcity having worsened.

==Scarcity and property==

Because means are scarce, two people can want to put the same means to incompatible uses, and this possibility of conflict is what [[property]] rights exist to resolve. On the Austrian account property is not a convention imposed on an otherwise harmonious world; it is the institution by which a world of scarce means is made available for peaceful use, by assigning to each scarce thing an owner entitled to determine its employment. Where a good is genuinely non-scarce, no property question arises, which is the starting point of the Austrian argument that ideas are not scarce in the relevant sense and so raise different questions from physical goods.<ref name="ip">See [[Intellectual property]] and [[Against Intellectual Property]] for the development of this argument.</ref>

==See also==
* [[Utility]]
* [[Action axiom]]
* [[Property]]
* [[Price control]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Links==
* [[Wikipedia:Scarcity|Scarcity]] on Wikipedia

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Market

2026-08-16T04:36:35Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian literature: replace dictionary definitions with sourced treatment, add archive citations

'''Market''' is the process by which the [[exchange]] of [[good]]s and services takes place among people acting under the [[division of labor]]. In the Austrian tradition the market is defined not as a place, nor as an institution, nor as the aggregate of buyers and sellers, but as a ''process'' constituted by their actions.

==The market as a process==

[[Ludwig von Mises]] made this the foundation of his treatment: the market is not a thing or a collective entity but a process, driven by the interplay of the actions of individuals cooperating under the division of labor. It has no purposes of its own, and the forces determining its state are the [[value]] judgments of those individuals and the actions they take on the strength of them.<ref name="humanaction_ch15">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xv-the-market/ XV. The Market], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

This is a substantive claim rather than a definitional preference. If the market is a process, then its characteristic phenomena — [[price]]s, [[profit]] and loss, the structure of [[production]] — are outcomes of continuous adjustment rather than properties of a state of rest, and the analytical task is to trace how the adjustment proceeds rather than to describe the conditions under which it would cease.

==Catallactics==

Mises used the older term ''catallactics'' for the analysis of market phenomena, from the Greek verb meaning to exchange and also to admit into the community and to turn from enemy into friend. He preferred it to "economics" because it names the subject matter directly: the study of exchange ratios and of the market process that generates them.<ref name="humanaction_ch14">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xiv-the-scope-and-method-of-catallactics/ XIV. The Scope and Method of Catallactics], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

==Equilibrium as a tool, not a description==

Austrians make heavy use of equilibrium constructions while denying that they describe reality. Mises's [[evenly rotating economy]] is an [[imaginary construction]]: an economy in which the same transactions repeat endlessly, all [[uncertainty]] has been removed, and consequently there is neither [[profit]] nor loss and no function for the [[entrepreneur]]. Its purpose is precisely to isolate, by its absence, what entrepreneurship contributes to a real economy.

The contrast with the mainstream treatment is sharp. Where general equilibrium theory takes the equilibrium state as the object of analysis and treats deviations as frictions, Austrians take the disequilibrium process as the object and treat equilibrium as a mental tool that would, if ever reached, abolish the phenomena being explained.

==Competition==

[[Competition]] on this account is a rivalrous activity rather than a market structure. It consists in entrepreneurs attempting to serve consumers better than their rivals do, by offering lower prices, better goods, or goods not previously offered at all. It is therefore compatible with a small number of sellers and is not measured by their number. This is the basis of the Austrian objection to the textbook model of "perfect competition", in which no participant does anything that would ordinarily be called competing.

==See also==
* [[Free market]]
* [[Capitalism]]
* [[Price]]
* [[Competition]]
* [[Entrepreneur]]
* [[Exchange]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Capitalism

2026-08-16T04:36:30Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian literature: replace dictionary definitions with sourced treatment, add archive citations

'''Capitalism''' is the system of social cooperation under the [[division of labor]] in which the material means of production are privately owned, and in which [[production]] is directed by [[entrepreneur]]s who acquire those factors on the [[market]] and are rewarded or ruined by the judgment of [[consumer]]s. Austrian economists generally prefer the terms ''[[free market]]'' or ''market economy'', treating "capitalism" as a name given to the system by its critics rather than one chosen by its defenders.

==The name==

The word entered general use through the socialist literature of the nineteenth century, above all through [[Karl Marx]], and carried from the beginning the implication that the system serves the owners of [[capital good|capital]] at the expense of everyone else. [[Ludwig von Mises]] accepted the term while rejecting that implication, arguing that it names the only arrangement under which the [[consumer]] is sovereign, and that its historical achievement was not luxury for the few but "mass production for the needs of the masses."<ref name="humanaction_ch21_sec2">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xxi-work-and-wages/ XXI. Work and Wages], 2. Joy and Tedium of Labor, ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

==Consumer sovereignty==

The distinguishing feature of capitalism, on the Austrian account, is not the existence of [[profit]] but the mechanism by which profit and loss are assigned. Entrepreneurs bid for factors of production in anticipation of what consumers will later be willing to pay. Those who anticipate well earn profits and gain command over more resources; those who anticipate badly suffer losses and lose that command. Ownership is therefore continuously reallocated toward those who have served consumers, and no owner's position is secure against the preferences of buyers.

This is what Mises meant by describing the market as a democracy in which every penny confers a vote, and it is the basis of the Austrian claim that the [[entrepreneur]] is an agent of the consumer rather than a master of the worker.<ref name="humanaction_ch15">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xv-the-market/ XV. The Market], ''[[Human Action]]''.</ref>

==Private ownership of the means of production==

Austrian economists treat [[Private ownership of the means of production|private ownership of the means of production]] as the defining institution, because it is the precondition for [[economic calculation]]. Where the factors of production are not owned and exchanged, there are no genuine [[price]]s for them; where there are no prices, there is no way to compare the countless technically possible ways of producing a thing and select the least wasteful. Mises's [[economic calculation problem|calculation argument]] against [[socialism]] is for this reason simultaneously an argument about what capitalism ''is'': not a system distinguished by greed or by machinery, but one distinguished by the presence of a functioning price system for capital.<ref name="socialism">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/socialism-an-economic-and-sociological-analysis/ ''Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis''].</ref>

==Capitalism and the intellectuals==

Mises devoted a short book, ''The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality'', to the question of why a system that raised general living standards so sharply attracts such persistent hostility from writers, artists and academics. His explanation was that a market society assigns status by consumer valuation rather than by caste or credential, and that those who believe themselves undervalued by it are inclined to blame the system rather than the verdict.<ref name="acm">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-anti-capitalistic-mentality/ ''The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality''].</ref>

==Distinguished from what is often called capitalism==

Austrians draw a sharp line between the market economy and arrangements in which the state allocates privileges to established firms. [[Interventionism]], [[corporatism]] and the various forms of state-granted [[monopoly]] are, on this view, not degrees of capitalism but departures from it, and the business failures they produce are routinely misattributed to the market. The distinction matters because it determines what a [[financial crisis]] is taken to demonstrate.

==See also==
* [[Free market]]
* [[Economic calculation]]
* [[Entrepreneur]]
* [[Socialism]]
* [[Interventionism]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Aggression

2026-08-16T04:36:25Z

ArchiveBot: Rewrite from the Austrian literature: replace dictionary definitions with sourced treatment, add archive citations

'''Aggression''' is the initiation of physical force against other persons or their [[property]], the threat of such force, or [[fraud]] committed against them. The principle that such initiation is always illegitimate is the [[non-aggression principle]], the central axiom of [[libertarianism]] in the tradition of [[Murray N. Rothbard]].

==The definition==

Three elements do the work.

* '''Initiation.''' Only the ''first'' use of force is aggression. Force used to repel or to obtain restitution for an aggression already committed is defensive, and the principle does not condemn it. The whole content of the principle lies in the distinction between starting and answering.
* '''Physical force.''' The principle concerns invasions of person and property, not offence, dislike, competitive injury, or refusal to deal. A merchant ruined by a rival who serves customers better has suffered a loss but not an aggression, because nothing of his was invaded.
* '''Person or property.''' Because aggression is defined against property titles, the principle is not self-contained: it yields determinate answers only once it is settled what belongs to whom. Rothbard therefore grounds it in a theory of appropriation and self-ownership rather than treating non-aggression as a free-standing intuition.

[[Fraud]] is classed with force on the ground that it is a species of theft: the defrauder obtains property under an agreement whose terms he does not intend to fulfil, and so takes title he was never voluntarily given.

==Foundations==

Rothbard developed the principle from self-ownership and the appropriation of unowned resources through labour, arguing in ''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]'' that these yield a complete set of property titles and therefore a determinate answer to every question of what counts as invasion.<ref name="ethics">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ ''The Ethics of Liberty''].</ref>

[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]] offered a different derivation, [[argumentation ethics]], which holds that anyone who argues for a norm has already presupposed his opponent's control of his own body, so that a defence of aggression contradicts the conditions of its own utterance.<ref name="hoppe">[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/theory-of-socialism-and-capitalism-a/ ''A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism''].</ref>

==Application to the state==

The principle is the basis of the [[anarcho-capitalism|anarcho-capitalist]] critique of the [[state]]. [[Taxation]] takes property without the owner's consent; [[conscription]] disposes of his person; a territorial monopoly on adjudication is maintained by prohibiting competitors. Each is aggression under the definition above, and the libertarian conclusion is that the state's characteristic activities are not exempted from the rule applied to everyone else. [[Minarchism|Minarchists]] accept the principle but hold that a strictly limited state can be financed and maintained without violating it, and the disagreement between the two positions is largely about whether that is possible.

==Disputed cases==

The principle is easier to state than to apply, and the boundaries are contested within the libertarian literature. Pollution, [[risk]]-imposition, blackmail, child neglect, and the status of threats short of imminent attack are all cases where libertarians who agree on the principle disagree on the verdict, generally because they disagree about the underlying property titles rather than about non-aggression itself.

==See also==
* [[Non-aggression principle]]
* [[Coercion]]
* [[Violence]]
* [[Property]]
* [[Fraud]]
* [[Libertarianism]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Austrian Economics Wiki:Link repointing

2026-08-16T04:27:31Z

ArchiveBot: Update with final figures and the archive-first resolution policy

The 2014 corpus this wiki was restored from carried roughly 3,800 mainspace links to '''mises.org'''. Very few of them still reached what they were written to point at: mises.org restructured after 2014, and the old URLs now either return a 404 or, more often, redirect to a generic landing page. That second failure is the harmful one. A link labelled ''Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth'' answering with the mises.org front page looks healthy to a link checker and is useless to a reader.

This page records what was done about it, so the automated edits in the page histories are accountable.

== What was changed ==

In August 2026, roughly 3,000 link replacements across 700 articles repointed the dead citations to archived copies of the material they originally cited. Edits are attributed to [[User:ArchiveBot|ArchiveBot]] and marked as bot edits. Of the 2,843 distinct mises.org URLs in mainspace, 2,088 were resolved and 755 were left alone.

Links were resolved to one of two archives, preferring the first:

* '''[https://freecapitalists.org/ the Liberty Archive]''' — the modern full-text library. It takes priority wherever it holds the cited work. Legacy identifiers made this exact rather than approximate: the archive catalog keeps the same document and product identifiers the 2014 site used, so <code>/resources/1164</code> resolves to ''The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality'' and <code>/store/Americas-Great-Depression-P63.aspx</code> to ''America's Great Depression''. Journal citations resolve to the issue, author listings to the author's page, and citations of individual ''Human Action'' chapters to that chapter's reading page rather than to a scan of the whole book.
* '''[https://mises.freecapitalists.org/ mises.freecapitalists.org]''' — a copy of the pre-2014 mises.org site, served from its original database, used where the archive has no equivalent. Mises Daily columns are the main case: legacy paths such as <code>/daily/</code>, <code>/story/</code>, <code>/freemarket_detail.aspx</code> and <code>/misesreview_detail.aspx</code> still resolve there to the specific article that was cited.

== What was deliberately not changed ==

A wrong link is worse than an old one, so the process never guessed:

* Every candidate was fetched and checked before rewriting. A page that answered with a generic index title, or with a body too short to be an article, was rejected rather than rewritten. This matters because the failure being repaired is a page that answers ''200'' without serving what was asked for.
* No fuzzy title matching was used. Every resolution went through an exact identifier or an exact file path recorded in the original site's own database. Links that could not be resolved that way were left alone — 755 URLs, mostly under <code>/media/</code>, <code>/rothbard/</code>, <code>/store/</code> and <code>/etexts/</code>, plus 311 to the old Mises Blog, which has no archived copy here.
* No link was deleted. Nothing was removed on suspicion of being dead.
* Identifier spaces that look interchangeable were not treated as such. On the snapshot, <code>/document/3797</code> and <code>/library/3797</code> are different items; only the first was used.

Only the URL was touched. Link text, citation templates, and surrounding prose are unchanged, so an edit is easy to read in a diff and easy to revert.

== Reproducing it ==

The tooling is public and version-controlled at [https://github.com/DavidVeksler/wiki.freecapitalists.org wiki.freecapitalists.org]: <code>scripts/repoint_mises_links.py</code> builds and verifies the plan, and <code>scripts/repointLinks.php</code> applies it as a MediaWiki maintenance script, doing a read-modify-write against live wikitext so that concurrent edits are not overwritten.

[[Category:Austrian Economics Wiki]]

Zoning

2026-08-16T04:26:36Z

ArchiveBot: Repoint 1 dead mises.org link to the archived original (automated; see Austrian Economics Wiki:Link repointing)

'''Zoning''' (especially in city planning) is the division of an area into zones, to restrict the number and types of buildings and their uses, also known as '''zoning laws'''.<ref name="Dictionary_Zoning">[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/zoning "Zoning"], ''Dictionary.com'', referenced 2012-12-04.</ref>

==Analysis==
People like to maintain and not upgrade the value of their real estate holdings. One way to do this is through entrepreneurial action (including [[insurance]]). A person
can purchase a home in a large scale condominium development, for instance, where all owners are precluded from activities (painting a house with polka dots, ripping it down and putting in a cement factory) which might conceivably lower property values. Alternatively, a restrictive covenant can be signed with neighbors to the same end.

But this costs money, time and effort. There are ‘transaction’ costs involved. Frequently it is much easier to rely on the political process. If a law is passed requiring a minimum one acre lot size for single family dwellings, hordes of ‘undesirables’ can be kept out. For the only chance of the poor successfully bidding against wealthy people is in the form of multiple dwelling units. They can ‘gang up’ on the rich by more intensive land settlement. But if this is precluded by zoning laws, that option is not available to them. Better yet, inaugurate the no growth philosophy, ostensibly for environmental ends; this obstructs any new building, for whatever purpose, the better to maintain property values. Why rely on an ‘imperfect’ market when legislative enactments can attain such ends?

City planners (who owe employment to the existence of zoning laws) argue that this system keeps ‘incompatible’ land uses separated from one another. But private property rights can achieve the same ends, without the use of force and compulsion. The reason filling stations do not locate in cul-de-sacs is that there is too little traffic to support them there. Likewise, cement factories are prohibited by marketplace considerations from setting up shop in downtown areas. High real estate prices relegate them to the periphery. When land use bureaucrats err, they do so on a colossal, city-wide scale. They lose millions for the citizenry but not a penny of their own personal funds. The benefits of marketplace zoning, as is illustrated most drastically by the failure of the Soviet economic system, is that private investors, who risk their own money, tend to be more careful with it. The drawbacks of central planning apply to cities as well as to countries.<ref name="Hoppe_Property">Hans Hermann Hoppe and Walter Block. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/on-property-and-exploitation/ "On Property and Exploitation"] (pdf), ''International Journal of Value-Based Management'', 2002. Referenced 2012-12-04.</ref>

==Criticisms==

===Violation of property rights===
Zoning laws are a violation of property rights. They involve forcibly imposing a restriction on legitimate private-property use through legislative fiat. A person, who has acquired property through homesteading or through voluntary trade with another person who legitimately owned the property, should rightly be able to use his property in any way that does not intrude upon the property rights of others.<ref name="ONeill_Zoning">Ben O'Neill. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/3506 "How Zoning Rules Would Work in a Free Society"], ''Mises Daily''. Referenced 2012-12-05.</ref>

===Corruption===
Controversy over zoning laws is aggravated by the fact that coercive zoning laws must inevitably involve arbitrary bureaucratic discretion. Changes in communities — such as growth in population, changing demography, or growing or diminishing affluence — can give rise to new demands for certain kinds of property and property uses, and the restrictions on property development and use must therefore be adapted to suit changing demands.

Because zoning problems involve continually changing local conditions, bureaucrats and politicians are inevitably vested with substantial discretionary power in the creation and enforcement of restrictions. As with other forms of political power vested in the government, this discretionary power is inevitably exercised in favor of those groups who support the power of the decision makers. Since such laws invest discretionary control over property development and use in "governmental representatives," these laws allow political parties and other political interest groups to extort funding from wealthy developers — funding that is usually forthcoming.

In addition to being inherently corrupt, this practice of extorting money from property developers often leads to a ''quid pro quo'' in which governments use coercion to assist wealthy developers in acquiring land and trampling on the legitimate property rights of others (through [[eminent domain]] laws or other coercive means). One commonly hears the complaint that local governments are in the pockets of developers, but it is rarely appreciated that this is an inevitable consequence of the government's attempts to extort support from developers through coercive zoning laws. This is just one manifestation of the inevitable [[Regulatory capture|regulatory]] and political capture that occurs when governments attempt to control private business.<ref name="ONeill_Zoning" />

===High prices===
Several studies suggest that zoning, and other land use controls are at least in part responsible for high housing prices.<ref name="Glaeser_Impact">Edward L. Glaeser, Joseph Gyourko. [http://www.nber.org/papers/w8835.pdf?new_window=1 "The Impact of Zoning on Housing Affordability"] (pdf, [http://www.nber.org/papers/w8835 abstract]), ''National Bureau of Economic Research'', March 2002. Referenced 2012-12-04.</ref><ref name="Glaeser_Why">Edward L. Glaeser, Joseph Gyourko and Raven E. Saks. [http://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2005/HIER2061.pdf "Why Have Housing Prices Gone Up?"] (pdf), ''Harvard Institute of Economic Research'', Discussion Paper Number 2061, February 2005. Referenced 2012-12-04.</ref><ref name="Fischel_zoning">Fischel, W. A. 1985. "The economics of zoning laws: A property rights approach to American land use controls." Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. See [http://books.google.de/books?id=wlKAfvuP59EC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false preview]. Referenced 2012-12-04.</ref><ref name="Rothwell_Effects">Jonathan T Rothwell. [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1154146 "The Effects of Density Regulation on Metropolitan Housing Markets"] (abstract, [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1414419_code1058412.pdf?abstractid=1154146&mirid=1 [pdf]), June 4, 2009. Referenced 2012-12-04.</ref>

===Effects on communities and businesses===
Other studies have argued that by reducing opportunities for affordable housing, households of modest means are excluded, resulting in increased racial segregation.<ref name="Rothwell_Density">Jonathan Rothwell, Douglas S. Massey. [http://www.thecyberhood.net/documents/papers/uar09.pdf "The Effect of Density Zoning on Racial Segregation in U.S. Urban Areas"] (pdf), ''Princeton University'', New Jersey, July 2009. Referenced 2012-12-04.</ref>

Zoning laws force people to have their business only in certain locations. This drives up the price of property for businesses, making it harder to start a new business. The result is that big business is favored over upstarts. Walmart and Home Depot can afford to buy as much commercial land as they need to build a store. And they don't have to worry about a bunch of people selling similar items locally. This makes it even more difficult for the poor to get out of their poverty.<ref name="Camplin_Zoning">Troy Camplin. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4264 "Zoning Laws Destroy Communities"], ''Mises Daily'', April 30, 2010. Referenced 2012-12-04.</ref>

===Emergency situations===
Marc Scribner argued that zoning laws have also impact in emergency situations. In the aftermath of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, much of New Orleans and many coastal communities in Louisiana and Mississippi remained under water for weeks. Approximately 240,000 evacuees fled to the nearest largely unscathed major city: Houston. Houston lacked many of the zoning and land-use regulations common in most other urban areas. This peculiarity greatly assisted Houston's ability to absorb the thousands of Gulf Coast evacuees.

Thanks to the city's liberal land-use policies, Houston enjoyed lower real estate prices, increased availability of affordable housing, lower population concentration and more opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Zoning laws had put up artificial roadblocks to the construction of affordable rental units during the preceding decades in communities along the Gulf Coast. This made homelessness even worse for low- to moderate-income residents after Katrina and Rita made landfall. Houston's liberal land-use regulations and thus its enhanced ability to absorb new residents helped mitigate many of the problems often associated with a massive influx of refugees.

In Louisiana and Mississippi, emergency temporary housing was zoned out of many of the worst-hit areas, even as local politicians accused the [[Federal Emergency Management Agency]] (FEMA) of mismanagement. Local officials refused to ease existing restrictions and ratcheted up land-use and building regulations. Supporters of these stronger measures claimed that they would help prevent the same level of destruction in the future, but the short-term consequences were dire for those hardest hit.<ref name="Scribner_Katrina">Marc Scribner. [http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/31/houston-new-orleans-katrina-opinions-contributors-marc-scribner.html "Hurricane Katrina, Houston And The Humanitarian Case Against Zoning"], ''Forbes'', 08.31.10. Referenced 2012-12-04.</ref>

==Voluntary zoning==
Property owners within a given neighborhood can contractually agree to impose restrictions on themselves.

In some cases, restrictive covenants may mimic the kinds of restrictions present in zoning laws and may therefore be used as a means of ''voluntary'' zoning. Property owners may agree to limit developments on their land to a certain height as in existing zoning laws; they may agree to paint their properties in a similar color scheme, as with some housing complexes; or they may agree to restrict the use of their property to particular uses, such as residential use.

It is no mystery why property owners would restrict their own property rights. For example, they might enter into restrictive covenants in order to secure similar restrictions on their neighbors. A property owner would also have regard not only to his own desired usage of his property, but also to the likely desires of prospective purchasers and the resultant effect on the market value of his property.

Instead of relying on ''quid pro quo'' restrictions, a system of voluntary zoning would also allow people to purchase restrictive covenants from a willing party. For example, a man with a strong aversion to dogs in his neighborhood could seek to purchase a restrictive covenant preventing dogs from living on his neighbors' properties even if he does not desire any particular restrictive covenant being imposed on his own property (obviously he will not allow dogs there himself, but he does not need a restrictive covenant to do this).

Voluntary zoning through private restrictive covenants already exists in areas where government has not imposed zoning laws. Such covenants have shown themselves to be perfectly adequate to protect property owners against adverse development by others. Voluntary agreements for restrictions on the use of property also exist in apartment and townhouse developments where property owners govern common areas under a corporate arrangement. These arrangements exist even in areas in which there are existing government zoning laws, though they are often crowded out by these laws. Some complexes have restrictions on use (such as rules against pets), some complexes have restrictions on development or alterations, and some have rules requiring a certain uniform color scheme or aesthetic design for all properties.

While some may prefer not to live in complexes such as this, where they are restricted by their neighbors in the use of their property, there can be no moral objection to this from a libertarian perspective so long as these arrangements are undertaken with the consent of property owners. Of course, in many cases, property owners will buy into a scheme with existing restrictions, but in this case the property title purchased is already restricted, and the restrictions therefore become a condition of their purchase.<ref name="ONeill_Zoning" />

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Links==
* [https://mises.org/media/6657/Zoning-and-the-Free-Market Zoning and the Free Market] (audio) by Walter Block, October 2011
* [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/scholar/cobin/ Siegan Brought Up-to-Date: A Critical View of the Expansion of Zoning in Santiago, Chile] (pdf) by John M. Cobin, November 1998
* [https://21stcenturyurbansolutions.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/houston-deregulation-paper1.pdf Houston and Deregulation] (pdf) by Daniel Jacobson, December 2008
* {{md|2077|Zoning is Theft|Jim Fedako|March 2006}}
* {{md|2484|Government Laws Are Not Contracts|Jim Fedako|March 2007}}
* {{md|1872|What We Mean by Decentralization|Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.|July 2005}}
* {{md|1247|Jane Jacobs, The Anti-Planner|Gene Callahan|June 2003}}
* {{md|4232|Historic Preservation vs. Private-Property Rights|Dave Albin|April 2010}}
* [http://www.voluntaryist.com/voluntaryist.pdf Beyond the Wit of Man to Foresee: Voluntaryism and Land Use Controls] (pdf) by Carl Watner (from ''I Must Speak Out''), p. 442-457, June 1996
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Private alternatives to public goods]]
[[Category:Interventions]]
{{Stub}}

Where to study Austrian Economics

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The '''[[Austrian School of Economics]]''' is becoming more and more popular all over the world. This page lists schools and institutions where those interested can get (higher) education in this tradition. Please note that not all of these places can offer a program fully devoted to Austrian Economics, some have only sympathetic faculty members or are free-market-oriented. Programs that officially feature Austrian Economics are marked with an ''(AE)''.

There is no guarantee this data is up-to-date or complete - research before joining any of these! (Also, please note that some programs may feature unexpected amount of mathematics - check the requirements beforehand.)

{| class="wikitable" border="1" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"
| '''University / Institution'''
| Location
| Programs
| Contacts/Notes
|-
!scope="row" colspan="4"| '''North America'''
|-
| [http://web.missouri.edu/~kleinp/ University of Missouri]
| Columbia, Missouri
| PhD
| [mailto:pklein@missouri.edu Peter Klein]
|-
| [http://economics.gmu.edu/courses/econ403 George Mason University]
| Fairfax, Virginia
| courses, [http://www.coordinationproblem.org/2013/01/graduate-study-in-economics-at-gmu-and-the-mercatus-center.html MA and PhD fellowships] ''(AE)''
| [mailto:pboettke@gmu.edu Peter Boettke]
|-
| [http://www.econ.nyu.edu/user/rizzom/austrian/index.html New York University]
| New York, New York
| courses and fellowships ''(AE)''
| [mailto:mario.rizzo@nyu.edu Mario Rizzo]
|-
| University of Chicago
| Chicago, Illinois
| PhD
|
|-
| [http://northcentralcollege.edu/majors/economics North Central College]
| Naperville, Illinois
| Undergraduate
|
|-
| [http://economics.clemson.edu/ Clemson University]
| Clemson, South Carolina
|
| Bob Tollison, Bruce Yandle, Daniel Benjamin, Bob McCormick
|-
| [http://www.econ.uconn.edu/ The University of Connecticut]
| Connecticut
|
| Steve Cunningham, Francis Ahking, Dick Langlois
|-
| [http://www.coss.fsu.edu/economics/ Florida State University]
| Tallahassee, Florida
|
| Bruce Benson, Randy Holcombe, James Gwartney
|-
| Loyola University New Orleans
| New Orleans, Louisiana
|
| Walter Block, Daniel D'Amico, William Barnett
|-
| University of Georgia
| Athens, Georgia
|
| [mailto:DLEE@cbacc.cba.uga.edu Dwight Lee], [mailto:selgin@terry.uga.edu George Selgin]
|-
| University of Guelph
| Guelph, Ontario, Canada
| PhD
| [mailto:Gfox@agec.uoguelph.ca Glenn C. Fox]
|-
| Suffolk University
| Boston, Massachusetts
| see [http://mises.org/pdf/blog/FIN_H435_Syllabus%20_20120116.pdf syllabus]
|
|-
| Harvard University
| Cambridge, Massachusetts
|
|
|-
| University of Mississippi
| Oxford, Mississippi
|
| [mailto:shughart@bus.olemiss.edu William Shughart], [mailto:tollison@bus.olemiss.edu Robert Tollison]
|-
| North Carolina State
| Raleigh, North Carolina
| PhD
| [mailto:rcordato@johnlocke.org Roy Cordato]
|-
| [http://www.wssu.edu/sbe/departments/economics-and-finance/faculty-and-staff-ef.aspx Winston-Salem State University]
| Winston-Salem, North Carolina
| Undergraduate and graduate classes
| [mailto:kondeasag@wssu.edu Alexander Kondeas],[mailto:sadjadizm@wssu.edu Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi], [mailto:richardsoncr@wssu.edu Craig Richardson]
|-
| University of Oklahoma
| Norman, Oklahoma
| PhD, graduate class
| [mailto:dsutter@ou.edu Dan Sutter], Graduate Director
|-
| [http://www.econ.rochester.edu/ University of Rochester]
| Rochester, New York
|
|
|-
| Grove City College
| Grove City, PA
| undergraduate courses
| www.gcc.edu
|-
| Washington University, St. Louis
| St. Louis, Missouri
| undergraduate courses
| [mailto:carden@wueconc.wustl.edu Art Carden]
|-
| [http://charleskochinstitute.org/ Charles Koch Institute]
| Arlington, Virginia
| paid internships and educational opportunities
| [mailto:Stephen.Sweet@charleskochinstitute.org Stephen Sweet]
|-
| [http://www.wofford.edu/ Wofford College]
| Spartanburg, South Carolina
| liberal arts undergraduate education
| [mailto:terrelltd@wofford.edu Timothy Terrell]
|-
| [http://www.theihs.org/humane-studies-fellowships Institute for Humane Studies]
| Arlington, Virginia
| fellowships
| [mailto:agmartin@ihs.gmu.edu Adam Martin] (see also [http://blog.mises.org/19124/ihs-fellowship-opportunities-for-the-mises-community/ this])
|-
!scope="row" colspan="4"| '''Europe'''
|-
| [http://www.urjc.es/estudios/masteres_universitarios/ciencias_juridicas_sociales/escuela_austriaca/index.htm Rey Juan Carlos University] (''Spanish''/''English'')
| Madrid, Spain
| classes, PhD ''(AE)''
| [mailto:huertadesoto@dimasoft.es Huerta de Soto]
|-
| [http://www.emle.org/Subpages_rubric/index.php?rubric=Aix-en-Provence Université Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille III]
| Aix-en-Provence, France
| PhD ''(AE)''
| [mailto:elisabeth_krecke@yahoo.fr Elisabeth Krecké]
|-
| Université d'Angers
| Angers, France
| PhD ''(AE)''
| [http://guidohulsmann.com/Doctoralstudies.html Jörg Guido Hülsmann]
|-
| [http://www.cevroinstitut.cz/en/Section/study/courses+for+international+students/ Cevro Institute]
| Prague, Czech Republic
| classes ''(AE)''
| [mailto:josef.sima@vsci.cz Josef Šíma, Ph.D.]
|-
| [http://www.vse.cz/index-en.php University of Economics, Prague]
| Prague, Czech Republic
| ''(AE)''
| [mailto:josef.sima@vsci.cz Josef Šíma, Ph.D.]
|-
| [http://www.swissmc.ch/Programs/Distance_Learning_Programs/Online_Doctorate_Programs/PhD_in_Economics/Program_Design/ Swiss Management Center]
| Zug, Switzerland
|
|
|-
| [http://catedrarei.ase.ro/ Department of International Business and Economics] (Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest) (''Romanian'')
| Bucharest, Romania
| classes ''(AE)''
| [mailto:radu.musetescu@rei.ase.ro Radu Musetescu], Mihai Vladimir Topan, Cristian Paun, Octavian Jora, Andreas Stamate
|-
| [http://www.ase.ro/engl_site/2010M1/m11.asp Department of Economics] (Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest) (''Romanian'')
| Bucharest, Romania
| classes ''(AE)''
| [mailto:marinescu@gmail.com Cosmin Marinescu], Marius-Cristian Pana and Gabriel Staicu
|-
| [http://www.uni.li/Home/tabid/36/language/en-US/Default.aspx University of Liechtenstein]
| Vaduz, Liechtenstein
| classes ''(AE)''
| [mailto:info@wertewirtschaft.org Rahim Taghizadegan]
|-
| [http://www.wu.ac.at/ Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien] (''German'')
| Vienna, Austria
| classes ''(AE)''
| [mailto:info@wertewirtschaft.org Rahim Taghizadegan]
|-
| [http://wertewirtschaft.org/lehrgang/ Institut für Wertewirtschaft] (''German''/''English'')
| Vienna, Austrian
| courses ''(AE)''
| [mailto:info@wertewirtschaft.org contact]
|-
!scope="row" colspan="4"| '''Central and South America'''
|-
| [http://fce.ufm.edu/ Universidad Francisco Marroquín] (''Spanish'')
| Guatemala City, Guatemala
| Master and PhD ''(AE)''
| [mailto:wgbonet@ufm.edu.gt Wenceslao Giménez-Bonet] (dean, School of Economic Sciences at UFM)
|-
| [http://www.eseade.edu.ar/ ESEADE] (''Spanish'')
| Buenos Aires, Argentina
| PhD ''(AE)''
| [mailto:martin@eseade.edu.ar Martin Krause]
|-
!scope="row" colspan="4"| '''Australia and Oceania'''
|-
| [http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/ University of Canterbury]
| Christchurch, New Zealand
| Master and PhD
| [mailto:eric.crampton@canterbury.ac.nz Eric Crampton]
|-
|}

===Online education===
* [http://www.libertyclassroom.com/learn-austrian-economics/ Liberty Classroom] ''(AE)'', online courses headed by [[Thomas Woods]]
* [http://www.smcuniversity.com/PhD-in-Economics/program-design.html PhD program] ''(AE)'' at the Swiss Management Center (also in [http://www.xn--smcespaol-r6a.com/phd-en-economia.html Spanish])
* [[Mises Academy]] ''(AE)'' at the Mises Institute

==Links==
* [http://www.superscholar.org/rankings/economics/top-austrian-free-market-programs/ Top Schools to Study Austrian Economics] by Peter Boettke
* [http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/where-are-the-best-schools-in-austrian-economics/ Where Are the Best Schools in Austrian Economics?] by Mark Skousen, July 2001
* [http://www.coordinationproblem.org/2011/04/advice-to-undergraduates.html Advice to Undergraduates] by Peter Boettke, April 2011
* [http://mises.org/classroom/gradschool.pdf Graduate Schools] (pdf) by Walter Block
* [http://mises.org/media/5246/Professional-Strategies-and-New-Directions-for-Austrians Professional Strategies and New Directions for Austrians] (audio) by Peter G. Klein, July 2010
* [http://www.fee.org/Audio/AES/FINALAustrian-PeterBoettke-FutureDirectionsofAustrianEconomics.mp3 Future Directions of Austrian Economics] (audio) by Peter Bettke, August 2011
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/austrian-syllabus-project/ The Syllabus Project] of the Mises Institute
* [http://www.economics-finance.org/jefe/current.pdf Symposium on Teaching Austrian Economics] (pdf), 2011
{{See also|Mises University}}
{{See also|MisesWiki:Meetups}}
{{See also|Mises global}}

[[Category:Mises Wiki]]

Violence

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'''Violence''' is the use of physical force against a person or persons without their consent. Typically, the use of violence is for establishing control over a situation, as when a robber pulls a knife on a victim, or the victim pulls a gun on the robber.

[[Threat]]s of violence, especially threats that are credible to the recipient, are sometimes included in the definition of violence, because they have the potential to coerce and therefore deprive the person of liberty to do what he wanted to do. However, there is controversy about exactly what sort of threats warrant defensive violence; ''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]'' argues that it is important to insist "that the threat of aggression be palpable, immediate, and direct; in short, that it be embodied in the initiation of an overt act. Any remote or indirect criterion—any 'risk' or 'threat'—is simply an excuse for invasive action by the supposed 'defender' against the alleged 'threat.'"<ref name=Self>{{cite book|author=Rothbard, Murray|title=The Ethics of Liberty|chapter=Self-Defense|url=http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twelve.asp}}</ref> [[Fraud]] is also sometimes considered equivalent to aggression, in that it does not create valid legal title to the property obtained by that means.

==Aggression and self-defense==
Aggression is unjustified violence. While violence is a concept that can be objectively determined, aggression is subjectively determined. What one person calls aggression, another may regard as self-defense or defense of others. [[Revolutionary violence]], for example, is denounced as criminal by the government but may be viewed as heroic by the rebels' supporters. Likewise, the government's action in arresting those who commit [[victimless crime]]s is regarded as justified by those who believe that a [[democracy|democratically]] elected government's laws should be obeyed, regardless of their merit.

Violence is sometimes viewed as justified on the grounds of negative [[externalities]]. According to this theory, certain behaviors must be deterred through violence because they would harm people's rights to a "fair" social order. There may be a lengthy and uncertain chain of causation that is used to justify the violence; for example, the argument is sometimes made that cannabis possession should be illegal because a person who uses it might neglect a child or get in an automobile accident.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.justice.gov/dea/demand/speakout/05so.htm|publisher=DEA|title=Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization}}</ref> Preventing this possible harm is deemed more important than the rights of those who would have used drugs in a relatively responsible way. A similarly questionable chain of cause-and-effect was used by FBI special-agent-in-charge Owen Harris to justify suppressing coins made of real silver, because they are supposedly more "fake" than the government's [[fiat money]]: "People understand that there is only one legal currency in the United States. When groups try to replace it with coins and bills that don’t hold the same value, it affects the economy. And consumers were using their hard-earned money to buy goods and services, then getting fake goods in return."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/april/dollar_040511|title=Private Tender|author=FBI|date=5 April 2011}}</ref>

[[Utilitarian]]s attempt to weigh the costs and benefits of violence in deciding whether it is justified. The problem is that, as [[Henry Hazlitt]] points out in ''[[Economics in One Lesson]]'', it is very easy to fall prey to the [[fallacy of the broken window]] by failing to take into account ''all'' the effects of violent intervention.<ref>{{cite book|quote=[T]he whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. Nine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful harm in the world today are the result of ignoring this lesson. Those fallacies all stem from one of two central fallacies, or both: that of looking only at the immediate consequences of an act or proposal, and that of looking at the consequences only for a particular group to the neglect of other groups.|url=http://www.fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L2|chapter=The Lesson}}</ref> Although Rothbard favored deontological over consequentialist arguments,<ref>{{cite book|quote=Current free-market economics is all too rife with appeals to gradualism; with scorn for ethics, justice, and consistent principle; and with a willingness to abandon free-market principles at the drop of a cost-benefit hat.|title=For a New Liberty|author=Rothbard, Murray|url=https://freecapitalists.org/books/for-a-new-liberty-the-libertarian-manifesto/|chapter=Decay from Within}}</ref> he devoted Chapter 12 of ''[[Man, Economy, and State]]'' to the economics of violent intervention in the market, examining the negative consequences, both intended and unintended, of various types of government actions.<ref>{{cite book|title=Man, Economy, and State|author=Rothbard, Murray|chapter=The Economics of Violent Intervention in the Market|url=http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap12a.asp}}</ref> The government's monopoly on large-scale organized violence within its territory is its defining characteristic, and Rothbard defined political theory as "the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard168.html|title=Myth and Truth About Libertarianism|author=Rothbard, Murray N.|date=1979|publisher=LewRockwell.com}}</ref>

Advocacy and threats of violence are regulated by the State. It is legal for citizens to advocate that the government institute a program of violence against a certain group, and to vote for that program; but it can be considered [[sedition]], [[treason]], incitement to illegal violence, or another form of illegal conspiracy if citizens advocate anti-government violence and form a group to carry out that agenda. It is also legal for the government to threaten to arrest citizens if they engage in certain behavior, but it is illegal for the citizens to respond in kind by threatening violence against government officials. Hence, for example, the arrest of hedge fund manager Vincent P. McCrudden for making death threats against [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] leaders.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/ex-fund-manager-charged-in-sec-death-threat-blames-retaliation-for-plight.html|title=Hedge Fund Manager Jailed for Death Threats Says Regulators Out to Get Him|publisher=Bloomberg|date=23 March 2011|author=Weidlich, Thom}}</ref> Rothbard stressed the importance of distinguishing between being a conspirator or criminal mastermind and merely exhorting violence without having anything further to do with criminal activities. In his view, since every man is free to adopt or not adopt any course of action he wishes, the person exhorting violence is not responsible for the violence committed; “'Inciting to riot,' therefore, is a pure exercise of a man’s right to speak without being thereby implicated in crime."<ref name=Self/>

Rothbard also points out, "The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of person and property, but dangers to its ''own'' contentment: for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, conspiracy to overthrow the government. Murder is pursued haphazardly unless the victim be a ''policeman'', or ''Gott zoll hüten'', an assassinated Chief of State".<ref>{{cite book|title=Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, and Other Essays|url=http://library.mises.org/books/Murray%20N%20Rothbard/Egalitarianism%20as%20a%20Revolt%20Against%20Nature,%20and%20Other%20Essays.pdf|author=Rothbard, Murray|chapter=War, Peace, and the State|page=131}}</ref> The [[U.S. Sentencing Guidelines]] specify that treason is punishable by life imprisonment<ref>{{ussgref|2M1.1}}</ref>. They also specify that failure to register for the draft during a time when persons are being inducted for compulsory military service is punishable at offense level 12, which for a first-time offender would carry 10-16 months in prison.<ref>{{ussgref|2M4.1}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ussc.gov/Guidelines/2011_Guidelines/Manual_HTML/5a_SenTab.htm|title=Sentencing Table|date=2011|publisher=Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manual}}</ref> They also specify that if a crime is committed against a current or former government officer or employee or his immediate family member, and the offense is motivated by that status, then a major increase in the prison sentence, possibly a doubling or more, is applicable.<ref>{{ussgref|3A1.2}}</ref> {{usc|10|885}} specifies death or any punishment less than death as the penalty for desertion during war.

==Relation to contract==
[[Ludwig von Mises]] regarded the progress toward high civilization as depending on the substitution of relations based on contract for relations based on violence.<ref>{{cite book|title=Socialism|chapter=Violence and Contract|author=von Mises, Ludwig|url=http://mises.org/books/socialism/part1_ch.1.aspx#_sec2}}</ref> Violence can sometimes be used to enforce a contract, as when hired muscle is used to repossess property in settlement of a debt, or physical harm is threatened against the debtor if he does not pay. Statists sometimes point to an implied [[social contract]] that they believe should be enforced by violence if necessary.

Sometimes nonviolent alternatives are available to encourage adherence to social norms. [[Blacklisting]] and [[ostracism]], for example, serve to protect people from those who are known to have a history of misconduct. These methods also punish the violator by making it more difficult or costly for him to engage in transactions, since other participants in the marketplace may require a premium to compensate for the risk of dealing with him, if they are willing to deal with him at all. According to [[Murray Rothbard]], merchants in the [[Middle Ages]] relied on ostracism and [[boycott]]s before arbitration decisions were legally binding. The person who ignored an arbitrator's award would not be able to avail himself of an arbitrator's services until he made good on his debt. Rothbard opines, "Nowadays, modern technology, computers, and credit ratings would make such nationwide ostracism even more effective than it has ever been in the past."<ref>{{cite book|title=For a New Liberty|chapter=The Courts|url=https://freecapitalists.org/books/for-a-new-liberty-the-libertarian-manifesto/|author=Rothbard, Murray}}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Concepts]]

Socialism

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{{RightTOC}}
{{For|the book by Ludwig von Mises|Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis}}

'''Socialism''' is the system of social organization in which private property and the distribution of income are subject to social control; it also refers to the political movements aimed at putting that system into practice.<ref name="Britannica_socialism">Encyclopædia Britannica. [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/551569/socialism "socialism."] Encyclopædia Britannica Online, referenced 2010-07-06.</ref>

{{See also|Communism}}

==Origins==
The origins of socialism as a political movement lie in the [[Industrial Revolution]]. Its intellectual roots, however, reach back almost as far as recorded thought — even as far as Moses, according to one history of the subject. Socialist or communist ideas certainly play an important part in the ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher [[Wikipedia:Plato|Plato]], whose Republic depicts an austere society in which men and women of the "guardian" class share with each other not only their few material goods but also their spouses and children. Early Christian communities also practiced the sharing of goods and labour, a simple form of socialism subsequently followed in certain forms of monasticism. Several monastic orders continue these practices today.

Christianity and Platonism were combined in [[Wikipedia:Utopia (book)|More’s Utopia]], which apparently recommends communal ownership as a way of controlling the sins of pride, envy, and greed. Land and houses are common property on More’s imaginary island of Utopia, where everyone works for at least two years on the communal farms and people change houses every 10 years so that no one develops pride of possession. Money has been abolished, and people are free to take what they need from common storehouses. All the Utopians live simply, moreover, so that they are able to meet their needs with only a few hours of work a day, leaving the rest for leisure.

More’s Utopia is not so much a blueprint for a socialist society as it is a commentary on the failings he perceived in the supposedly Christian societies of his day. Religious and political turmoil, however, soon inspired others to try to put utopian ideas into practice. Common ownership was one of the aims of the brief [[Wikipedia:Münster Rebellion|Anabaptist regime]] in the Westphalian city of Münster during the Protestant Reformation, and several communist or socialist sects sprang up in England in the wake of the [[Wikipedia:English Civil War|Civil Wars (1642–51)]]. Chief among them was the [[Wikipedia:Diggers|Diggers]], whose members claimed that God had created the world for people to share, not to divide and exploit for private profit. When they acted on this belief by digging and planting on land that was not legally theirs, they ran afoul of Oliver Cromwell’s [[Wikipedia:The Protectorate|Protectorate]], which forcibly disbanded them.

Whether utopian or practical, these early visions of socialism were largely agrarian. This remained true as late as the [[French Revolution]], when the journalist [[Wikipedia:François-Noël Babeuf|François-Noël Babeuf]] and other radicals complained that the Revolution had failed to fulfill the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Adherence to "the precious principle of [[equality]]," Babeuf argued, requires the abolition of private property and common enjoyment of the land and its fruits. Such beliefs led to his execution for conspiring to overthrow the government. The publicity that followed his trial and death, however, made him a hero to many in the 19th century who reacted against the emergence of industrial capitalism.<ref name="Britannica_socialism" />

==Economic calculation debate==
{{Main|Economic calculation problem}}
The seeds of the '''calculation debate''' had been planted by a host of economists before [[Ludwig von Mises]] posed the central question "in such a form as to make it impossible that it should ever again disappear." Mises' article, adapted from a lecture of a year earlier, appeared in the spring of 1920 entitled "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" ([http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf pdf]). The famous challenge of Mises was uncompromising and to the point: "Where there is no free market, there is no pricing mechanism: without a pricing mechanism, there is no economic calculation." Two years later the argument was enlarged in a wide-ranging critique of socialism, entitled ''Die Gemeinwirtschaft'' ("Socialism", [https://freecapitalists.org/books/socialism-an-economic-and-sociological-analysis/ html], [https://freecapitalists.org/books/socialism-an-economic-and-sociological-analysis/ pdf]).

The main effect of Mises' arguments has been best summed up by the renowned socialist economist [[Wikipedia:Oskar R. Lange|Oskar Lange]]: "It was [Mises'] powerful challenge that forced the socialists to recognize the importance of an adequate system of economic accounting in a socialist economy. Even more, it was chiefly due to Professor Mises' challenge that many socialists became aware of the very existence of such a problem." But the real effect, was to force the socialists to retreat from a pure advocacy of Marxian socialism to a compromise watered down with "competitive" infusions-market socialism.<ref name="Bradley_socialism">Robert Bradley, Jr. [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/jls/5-1-3/ "Market Socialism: A Subjectivist Evaluation"] (pdf), The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. V, No. 1 (Winter 1981). Referenced 2010-07-06.</ref>

Even if the socialists have been able to create a mighty army of citizens all eager to do the bidding of their masters, what exactly would the socialist planners tell this army to do? How would they know what products to order their eager slaves to produce, at what stage of production, how much of the product at each stage, what techniques or raw materials to use in that production and how much of each, and where specifically to locate all this production? How would they know their costs, or what process of production is or is not efficient?

In any economy more complex than the Crusoe or primitive family level, the socialist planning board would simply not know what to do, or how to answer any of these vital questions. Developing the momentous concept of calculation, Mises pointed out that the planning board could not answer these questions because socialism would lack the indispensable tool that private entrepreneurs use to appraise and calculate: the existence of a market in the means of production, a market that brings about money prices based on genuine profit-seeking exchanges by private owners of these means of production. Since the very essence of socialism is collective ownership of the means of production, the planning board would not be able to plan, or to make any sort of rational economic decisions. Its decisions would necessarily be completely arbitrary and chaotic, and therefore the existence of a socialist planned economy is literally "impossible" (to use a term long ridiculed by Mises's critics).

In the course of intense discussion throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the socialist economists were honest enough to take Mises's criticism seriously, and to throw in the towel on most traditional socialist programs: in particular, the original communist vision that workers, not needing such institutions as bourgeois money fetishism, would simply produce and place their products on some vast socialist heap, with everyone simply taking from that heap "according to his needs."

The socialist economists also abandoned the Marxian variant that everyone should be paid according to the labor time embodied into his product. In contrast, what came to be known as the Lange-Lerner solution, acclaimed by virtually all economists, asserted that the socialist planning board could easily resolve the calculation problem by ordering its various managers to fix accounting prices. Then, according to the contribution of Professor [[Wikipedia:Fred M. Taylor|Fred M. Taylor]], the central planning board could find the proper prices in much the same way as the capitalist market: trial and error. Thus, given a stock of consumer goods, if the accounting prices are set too low, there will be a shortage, and the planners will raise prices until the shortage disappears and the market is cleared. If, on the other hand, prices are set too high, there will be a surplus on the shelves, and the planners will lower the price, until the markets are cleared. The solution is simplicity itself!

Set aside the obvious absurdity of trusting a coercive governmental [[monopoly]] to act somehow as if it were in "[[perfect competition]]" with parts of itself. Another grievous flaw in the Lange model is thinking that general equilibrium, a world of certainty where there is no room for the driving force of entrepreneurship, can somehow be used to depict the real world. The actual world is one not of changeless "givens" but of incessant change and systemic uncertainty. Because of this uncertainty, the capitalist [[entrepreneur]], who stakes assets and resources in attempting to achieve profits and avoid losses, becomes the crucial actor in the economic system, an actor who can in no way be portrayed by a world of general equilibrium. Furthermore, it is ludicrous, as [[Friedrich Hayek|Hayek]] pointed out, to think of general equilibrium as the only legitimate "theory," with all other areas or problems dismissed as mere matters of practicality and degree. No economic theory worth its salt can be worthwhile if it omits the role of the entrepreneur in an uncertain world. The "equations" are not simply excellent theory that faces problems in practice; for in order to be "good," a theory must be useful in explaining real life.

Moreover, in his later rebuttal to the champions of the Pareto-Barone equations, Mises points out that the crucial problem is not simply that the economy is not and can never be in the general equilibrium state described by these differential equations. In addition to other grave problems with the equilibrium model (e.g.: that the socialist planners do not now know their value scales in future equilibrium; that money and monetary exchange cannot fit into the model; that units of productive factors are neither perfectly divisible nor infinitesimal-and that marginal utilities, of different people cannot be equated-on the market or anywhere else), the equations "do not provide any information about the human actions by means of which the hypothetical state of equilibrium" has been or can be reached. In short, the equations offer no information whatever on how to get from the existing disequilibrium state to the general equilibrium goal.

Another grave flaw in the Lange-Taylor trial-and-error approach is that it concentrates on consumer goods pricing. It is true that retailers, given the stock of a certain type of good, can clear the market by adjusting the prices of that good upward or downward. But, as Mises pointed out in his original 1920 article, consumers goods are not the real problem. Consumers, these "market socialists" are postulating, are free to express their values by using money they had earned on a range of consumers' goods. Even the labor market — at least in principle — can be treated as a market with self-owning suppliers who are free to accept or reject bids for their labor and to move to different occupations. The real problem, as Mises has insisted from the beginning, is in all the intermediate markets for land and capital goods. Producers have to use land and capital resources to decide what the stocks of the various consumer goods should be. Here there are a huge number of markets where the State monopoly can only be both buyer and seller for each transaction, and these intra-monopoly, intra-state transactions permeate the most vital markets of an advanced economy — the complex lattice-work of the capital markets. And here is precisely where calculational chaos necessarily reigns, and there is no way for rationality to intrude on the immense number of decisions on the allocation of prices and factors of production in the structure of capital goods.

Mises discussed in [[Human Action]] the "trial-and-error" method, and pointed out that this process only works in the capitalist market. There the entrepreneurs are strongly motivated to make greater profits and to avoid losses, and further, such a criterion does not apply to the capital goods or land market under socialism where all resources are controlled by one entity, the government.

This was a critique, not only of socialism, but of the entire Walrasian [[Wikipedia:General equilibrium theory|general equilibrium model]]. The major [[fallacy]] of the "market socialists," Mises pointed out, is that they look at the economic problem from the point of view of the manager of the individual firm, who seeks to make profits or avoid losses within a rigid framework of a given, external allocation of capital to each of the various branches of industry and indeed to the firm itself. In other words, the "market socialist" manager is akin, not to the real driving force of the capitalist market, the capitalist entrepreneur, but rather to the relatively economically insignificant manager of the corporate firm under capitalism.

They consider the structure of industrial production and the allocation of capital to the various branches and production aggregates as rigid, and do not take into account the necessity of altering this structure in order to adjust it to changes in conditions. They fail to realize that the operations of the corporate officers consist merely in the loyal execution of the tasks entrusted to them by their bosses, the shareholders. The operations of the managers, their buying and selling, are only a small segment of the totality of market operations. The market of the capitalist society also performs those operations which allocate the capital goods to the various branches of industry. The entrepreneurs and capitalists establish corporations and other firms, enlarge or reduce their size, dissolve them or merge them with other enterprises; they buy and sell the shares and bonds of already existing and of new corporations; they grant, withdraw, and recover credits; in short they perform all those acts the totality of which is called the capital and money market. It is these financial transactions of promoters and speculators that direct production into those channels in which it satisfies the most urgent wants of the consumers in the best possible way.

But no "market socialist" has ever suggested preserving or carrying over, much less understood the importance of, the specifically entrepreneurial functions of capitalism:

<blockquote>Nobody has ever suggested that the socialist commonwealth could invite the promoters and speculators to continue their speculations and then deliver their profits to the common chest. Those suggesting a quasi-market for the socialist system have never wanted to preserve the stock and commodity exchanges, the trading in futures, and the bankers and money-lenders as quasi-institutions. One cannot play speculation and investment. The speculators and investors expose their own wealth, their own destiny. This fact makes them responsible to the consumers, the ultimate bosses of the capitalist economy. If one relieves them of this responsibility, one deprives them of their very character. They are no longer businessmen, but just a group of men to whom the director has handed over his main task, the supreme direction of the conduct of affairs. Then they--and not the nominal director--become the true directors and have to face the same problem the nominal director could not solve: the problem of calculation.<ref name="Mises_market_socialism">Ludwig von Mises. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/humanaction/chap26sec5.asp "XXVI. The Impossibility of Economic Calculation under Socialism: Quasi-market"], online version of [[Human Action]], referenced 2010-07-07.</ref></blockquote>

For Mises, in short, the key to the capitalist market economy and its successful functioning is the entrepreneurial forecasting and decision-making of private owners and investors. The key is emphatically not the more minor decisions made by corporate managers within a framework already set by entrepreneurs and the capital markets.

For [[Friedrich Hayek|Hayek]], the major problem for the socialist planning board is its lack of knowledge. Without a market, the socialist planning board has no means of knowing the value-scales of the consumers, or the supply of resources or available technologies. The capitalist economy is, for Hayek, a valuable means of disseminating knowledge from one individual to another through the pricing "signals" of the free market. A static, general equilibrium economy would be able to overcome the Hayekian problem of dispersed knowledge, since eventually all data would come to be known by all, but the ever-changing, uncertain data of the real world prevents the socialist planning board from acquiring such knowledge. The knowledge which is yielded by market-pricing cannot be collected by a central authority or programmed into a mechanical device, not just because it is too complex, but rather because it is knowledge given only in use. Unhampered markets transmit this knowledge, which is otherwise irretrievable, dispersed in millions of people.<ref name="Gordon_Anatomy">David Gordon. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/3652/Grays-Anatomy-Selected-Writings "Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings"], ''Mises Daily'', September 10, 2009. Referenced 2011-03-06.</ref>

Hence, as is usual for Hayek, the argument for the free economy and against statism rests on an argument from ignorance. But to Mises the central problem is not "knowledge." He explicitly points out that even if the socialist planners knew perfectly, and eagerly wished to satisfy, the value priorities of the consumers, and even if they enjoyed a perfect knowledge of all resources and all technologies, they still would not be able to calculate, for lack of a price system of the means of production.

In a critique of socialism by Professor Georg Halm:

<blockquote>Because capital is no longer owned by many private persons, but by the community, which itself disposes of it directly, a rate of interest can no longer be determined. A pricing process is always possible only when demand and supply meet in a market…. In the socialist economy … there can be no demand and no supply when the capital from the outset is in the possession of its intending user, in this case the socialistic central authority. Now it might perhaps be suggested that, since the rate of interest cannot be determined automatically, it should be fixed by the central authority. But this likewise would be quite impossible. It is true that the central authority would know quite well how many capital goods of a given kind it possessed or could procure…; it would know the capacity of the existing plant in the various branches of production; but it would not know how scarce capital was. For the scarcity of means of production must always be related to the demand for them, whose fluctuations give rise to variations in the value of the good in question… If it should be objected that a price for consumption-goods would be established, and that in consequence the intensity of the demand and so the value of the means of production would be determinate, this would be a further serious mistake…. The demand for means of production, labor and capital goods, is only indirect.</blockquote>
Halm then adds that the central authority, contrary to his above concession, would not even be able to find out how much capital it is employing. For capital goods are heterogeneous, and therefore how "can the total plant of one factory be compared with that of another? How can a comparison be made between the values of even only two capital-goods?" In short, while under capitalism such comparisons can be made by means of money prices set on the market for every good, in the socialist economy the absence of genuine money prices arising out of a market precludes any such value comparisons. Hence, there is also no way for a socialist system to rationally estimate the costs (which are dependent on prices in factor markets) of any process of production.

But the decisive rebuttal has been leveled by Mises in Human Action: the [[Soviet Union]] and Eastern European economies were not fully socialist because they were, after all, islands in a world capitalist market. The communist planners were therefore able, albeit clumsily and imperfectly, to use prices set by world markets as indispensable guidelines for the pricing and allocation of capital resources.

Mises's insight was confirmed as early as the mid-1950s, when the British economist Peter Wiles visited Poland, where Oskar Lange was helping to plan Polish socialism. Wiles asked the Polish economists how they planned the economic system. As reported, "What actually happens is that "world prices", i.e. capitalist world prices, are used in all intra-[Soviet] bloc trade. They are translated into rubles ... entered into bilateral clearing accounts."<ref name="Rothbard_calculation_debate">Murray N. Rothbard. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/2401 "The End of Socialism and the Calculation Debate Revisited"], Mises Daily, reposted from ''The Review of Austrian Economics'' in 1991. Referenced 2010-07-07.</ref>

==Other critiques==
Before Ludwig von Mises raised the calculation problem in his celebrated article (see in [https://freecapitalists.org/books/economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth/ full] in 1920, everyone, socialists and non-socialists alike, had long realized that socialism suffered from an '''incentive problem'''. If, for example, everyone under socialism were to receive an equal income, or, in another variant, everyone was supposed to produce "according to his ability" but receive "according to his needs," then, to sum it up in the famous question: Who, under socialism, will take out the garbage? That is, what will be the incentive to do the grubby jobs, and, furthermore, to do them well? Or, to put it another way, what would be the incentive to work hard and be productive at any job?

The traditional socialist answer held that the socialist society would transform human nature, would purge it of selfishness, and remold it to create a New Socialist Man. That new man would be devoid of any selfish, or indeed any self-determined, goals; his only wish would be to work as hard and as eagerly as possible to achieve the goals and obey the orders of the socialist State. Throughout the history of socialism, socialist ultras, such as the early Lenin and Bukharin under "War Communism," and later Mao Tse-tung and Che Guevara, have sought to replace material by so-called "moral" incentives. This notion was properly and wittily ridiculed by Alexander Gray as "the idea that the world may find its driving force in a Birthday Honours List (giving to the King, if necessary, 165 birthdays a year)." At any rate, the socialists soon found that voluntary methods could hardly yield them this robotic New Socialist Man, nor could the most determined and bloodthirsty methods. And it is a testament to the spirit of freedom that cannot be extinguished in the human breast that the socialists continued to fail dismally, despite decades of systemic terror.

Ever since 1917, or at least since Stalin's great leap forward into socialism in the early 1930s, the defenders of the possibility of socialism had one final, fallback argument. When all the arguments had been hashed over, the defenders of socialism could simply fall back on one point: Well, '''socialism exists''', doesn't it? When all is said and done, it exists, and therefore it must be, for one reason or another, possible. Mises must clearly be wrong, even if the "practical" arguments of Hayek or Robbins, arguments of mere degrees of efficiency, need to be soberly considered.

This triumphal conclusion now rings hollow, since the economies of the [[Soviet Union]] and the other socialist bloc countries have now manifestly broken down. And it also turns out that the Soviet GNP and production figures that have been taken at face value for decades have been nothing but a pack of lies, designed to deceive not the United States, but the Soviet managers' own ruling elite.

But apart from all that, this sort of seemingly decisive empiricist counter to the Misesian critique reveals the perils of using allegedly simple and brute "facts" to rebut theory in the sciences of human action. For why must we assume that the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries ever really enjoyed full and complete socialism? There are many reasons to believe that, try as they might, the communist rulers were never able to impose total socialism and central planning. For one thing, it is now known that the entire Soviet economy and society has been shot through with a vast network of [[black market]]s and evasions of controls, fueled by a pervasive system of bribery known as ''[[Wikipedia:Blat (term)|blat]]'' to allow escape from those controls. Managers who could not meet their annual production quotas were approached by illegal entrepreneurs and labor teams to help them meet the quotas and get paid off the books. And black markets in foreign exchange have long been familiar to every tourist. Long before the Eastern European collapse of communism, these countries stopped trying to stamp out their black markets in hard currency, even though they were blatantly visible in the streets of Warsaw, Budapest, and Prague. Without uncontrolled black markets fueled by bribery, the communist economies may well have collapsed long ago. This historical point has also been bolstered by [[Wikipedia:Michael Polanyi|Michael Polanyi's]] "span of control" theory, which denies the possibility of effective central planning from a rather different viewpoint than Mises's.<ref name="Rothbard_calculation_debate" />

===Polylogism===
Until the middle of the nineteenth century no one ventured to dispute the fact that the logical structure of mind is unchangeable and common to all human beings. All human interrelations are based on this assumption of a uniform logical structure. Men enter into discussions; they speak to each other; they write letters and books; they try to prove or to disprove. Some men can think deeper and more refined thoughts than others. There are men who unfortunately cannot grasp a process of inference in long chains of deductive reasoning. But as far as a man is able to think and to follow a process of discursive thought, he always clings to the same ultimate principles of reasoning that are applied by all other men. There are people who cannot count further than three; but their counting, as far as it goes, does not differ from that of Gauss or Laplace. Daily, it is true, people violate logical principles in reasoning. But whoever examines their inferences competently can uncover their errors.

Yet, in the course of the nineteenth century has this been contested. [[Karl Marx|Marx]] and the Marxians, foremost among them the "proletarian philosopher" [[Wikipedia:Joseph Dietzgen|Dietzgen]], taught that thought is determined by the thinker's class position. What thinking produces is not truth but "ideologies." This word means, in the context of Marxian philosophy, a disguise of the selfish interest of the social class to which the thinking individual is attached. It is therefore useless to discuss anything with people of another social class. Ideologies do not need to be refuted by discursive reasoning; they must be unmasked by denouncing the class position, the social background, of their authors. Thus Marxians do not discuss the merits of physical theories; they merely uncover the "[[Wikipedia:Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]]" origin of the physicists.

The Marxians have resorted to '''[[polylogism]]''' because they could not refute by logical methods the theories developed by "bourgeois" economics, or the inferences drawn from these theories demonstrating the impracticability of socialism. As they could not rationally demonstrate the soundness of their own ideas or the unsoundness of their adversaries' ideas, they have denounced the accepted logical methods. The success of this Marxian stratagem was unprecedented. It has rendered proof against any reasonable criticism all the absurdities of Marxian would-be economics and would-be sociology. Only by the logical tricks of polylogism could etatism gain a hold on the modern mind.

Polylogism is so inherently nonsensical that it cannot be carried consistently to its ultimate logical consequences. No Marxian was bold enough to draw all the conclusions that his own epistemological viewpoint would require. The principle of polylogism would lead to the inference that Marxian teachings also are not objectively true but are only "ideological" statements. But the Marxians deny it. They claim for their own doctrines the character of absolute truth. Thus Dietzgen teaches that "the ideas of proletarian logic are not party ideas but the outcome of logic pure and simple." The proletarian logic is not "ideology" but absolute logic. Present-day Marxians, who label their teachings the ''[[Wikipedia:Sociology of knowledge|sociology of knowledge]]'', give proof of the same inconsistency.

We may reasonably assume as hypothesis that man's mental abilities are the outcome of his bodily features. Of course, we cannot demonstrate the correctness of this hypothesis, but neither is it possible to demonstrate the correctness of the opposite view as expressed in the theological hypothesis. We are forced to recognize that we do not know how out of physiological processes thoughts result. We have some vague notions of the detrimental effects produced by traumatic or other damage inflicted on certain bodily organs; we know that such damage may restrict or completely destroy the mental abilities and functions of men. But that is all. It would be no less than insolent humbug to assert that the natural sciences provide us with any information concerning the alleged diversity of the logical structure of mind. Polylogism cannot be derived from physiology or anatomy or any other of the natural sciences.

Neither Marxian nor Nazi polylogism ever went further than to declare that the logical structure of mind is different with various classes or races. They never ventured to demonstrate precisely in what the logic of the proletarians differs from the logic of the bourgeois, or in what the logic of the Aryans differs from the logic of the Jews or the British. It is not enough to reject wholesale the Ricardian theory of comparative cost or the Einstein theory of relativity by unmasking the alleged racial background of their authors. What is wanted is first to develop a system of Aryan logic different from non-Aryan logic. Then it would be necessary to examine point by point these two contested theories and to show where in their reasoning inferences are made which—although correct from the viewpoint of non-Aryan logic—are invalid from the viewpoint of Aryan logic. And, finally, it should be explained what kind of conclusions the replacement of the non-Aryan inferences by the correct Aryan inferences must lead to. But all this never has been and never can be ventured by anybody. Polylogism, whether Marxian or Aryan, or whatever, has never entered into details.<ref name="Mises_Polylogism">Ludwig von Mises. [http://mises.org/etexts/mises/og/chap6.asp "Omnipotent Government: The Peculiar Characteristics of German Nationalism"] from ''Omnipotent Government'', 6. Polylogism. Referenced 2010-07-09.</ref>

{{Main|Polylogism}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Bibliography==
* {{cite encyclopedia
|last=Heilbroner|first=Robert|authorlink=Wikipedia:Robert Heilbroner
|editor-last=Henderson|editor-first=David R.|editor-link=Wikipedia:David R. Henderson
|title=Socialism
|url=http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Socialism.html
|encyclopedia=[[Wikipedia:The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics|The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics]]
|year=2007
|publisher=[[Wikipedia:Liberty Fund|Liberty Fund]]
|location=Indianapolis, Indiana
|isbn=978-0-86597-665-8
|oclc=123350134
|pages=466-468
}}
* {{Cite book
|last=Hoppe|first=Hans-Hermann|authorlink=Hans-Hermann Hoppe
|title=A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism
|publisher=[[Mises Institute|Ludwig von Mises Institute]]
|place=Auburn, Alabama
|year=2007
|url=https://freecapitalists.org/books/theory-of-socialism-and-capitalism-a/
|isbn=978-1-933550-73-2
|oclc=664723901
}}
* {{Cite book
|last=Mises|first=Ludwig von|authorlink=Ludwig von Mises
|title=Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis
|publisher=[[Mises Institute|Ludwig von Mises Institute]]
|place=Auburn, Alabama
|year=2009
|url=https://freecapitalists.org/books/socialism-an-economic-and-sociological-analysis/
|isbn=978-1-933550-51-0
|oclc=747266802
}}

==Links==
* {{wplink}}
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/1937 Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian] by George Reisman, November 2005
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/2318 Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism] by Peter G. Klein, November 2006
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/intellectuals-and-socialism/ The Intellectuals and Socialism] (pdf) by F.A. Hayek, 1949
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4830 Socialism and Famine] by Henry Hazlitt, August 1964
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/47 National Socialism] by Ralph Reiland, September 1998
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/1023 Socialism vs. Market Exchange] by Ludwig von Mises, August 2002
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4530 Socialism versus European Democracy] by Ludwig von Mises, 1943
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/2893 Nationalism and Socialism] by Faustino Ballve, March 2008
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=507 Nazism is Socialism] by Adam Young, September 2001
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4066 The Nature of Socialism] by Mateusz Machaj, January 2010
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/2370 Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism] by Ludwig von Mises, 1950
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4590 Socialist Calculation] by Friedrich A. Hayek (excerpted from ''[https://freecapitalists.org/books/individualism-and-economic-order/ Individualism and Economic Order]'')
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4686 Socialism as a Reaction to State Corruption] by Anders Mikkelsen, September 2010
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/1063 Communism in Capital Markets] by Illana Mercer, October 2002
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-8g5S0z5Y4 Collectivism] (video) by [[Milton Friedman]]

[[Category:Ideologies]]

Slavery

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'''Slavery''' is a system in which one must [[labour]] under the orders of another under the threat of violence.<ref name="violence">Murray N. Rothbard. [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap2a.asp "1. Types of Interpersonal Action: Violence"], Chapter 2-Direct Exchange, ''[[Man, Economy and State]]'', online edition, referenced 2010-12-12.</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Man vs. the State|author=Spencer, Herbert|quote=All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another's desires.}}</ref> Slavery is therefore a form of [[binary intervention]] in which the master compels the slave to engage in a certain kind of [[production]]. Slavery is "(a) forcing people to work at tasks the slavemaster wishes, and (b) paying them either pure subsistence or, at any rate, less than the slave would have accepted voluntarily. In short, forced labor at below free-market wages." Examples include [[conscription]], anti-strike laws, the tax system, subpoenas and jury duty, and compulsory commitment for alleged [[mental illness]].<ref>{{cite book|author=Murray Rothbard|url=https://freecapitalists.org/books/for-a-new-liberty-the-libertarian-manifesto/|quote=Part of the essence of slavery, after all, is forced work for someone at little or no pay. But the income tax means that we sweat and earn income, only to see the government extract a large chunk of it by coercion for its own purposes. What is this but forced labor at no pay?|title=For a New Liberty|chapter=Involuntary Servitude}}</ref>

Slavery is by definition a hegemonic relationship, meaning that it is sustained through violence or threats of violence. The slave himself is an economic [[factor of production]] from the master's perspective.<ref name="violence" /> This is in contrast with a voluntary employer-employee relationship, where the employee's labor, not the employee himself, is a factor of production for the employer.

==Conscription==
Conscription is a specific form of slavery which requires a person to undergo military training and perform military duties (including war). It is commonplace in many countries around the world, such as [[South Korea]], [[Israel]], and [[Singapore]].

==References==
<references/>

==Links==
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/5076/Ten-Reasons-Not-to-Abolish-Slavery Ten Reasons Not to Abolish Slavery] by Robert Higgs, March 2011

{{stub}}

[[Category:Interventions]]

Sentencing theory

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ArchiveBot: Repoint 1 dead mises.org link to the archived original (automated; see Austrian Economics Wiki:Link repointing)

'''Sentencing theory''' is the philosophy governing the determination of what response should be taken against an [[Aggression|aggressor]] of justly held life, [[liberty]] or [[property]] after he has been apprehended and it has been proven that he committed the [[crime]]. Sentencing theories include [[retribution]] (punishment), [[restitution]], [[deterrence]], and [[rehabilitation]]. In practice (and in theory) law has a tendency to implement a mixture of several or all of the theories. According to [[Murray Rothbard]], "The libertarian believes that a criminal loses his rights to the extent that he has aggressed upon the rights of another, and therefore that it is permissible to incarcerate the convicted criminal and subject him to [[involuntary servitude]] to that degree."<ref>{{cite book|url=https://freecapitalists.org/books/for-a-new-liberty-the-libertarian-manifesto/|chapter=The Courts|author=Rothbard, Murray|date=1973|title=For a New Liberty}}</ref> [[Ludwig von Mises]] writes:<ref>{{cite book|title=Liberalism|author=Mises, Ludwig von|url=https://mises.freecapitalists.org/liberal/ch1sec13.asp|chapter=The State and Antisocial Conduct|date=1927}}</ref>
{{cquote|[[Liberalism]] neither wishes to nor can deny that the coercive power of the state and the lawful punishment of criminals are institutions that society could never, under any circumstances, do without. However, the liberal believes that the purpose of punishment is solely to rule out, as far as possible, behavior dangerous to society. Punishment should not be vindictive or retaliatory. The criminal has incurred the penalties of the law, but not the hate and sadism of the judge, the policeman, and the ever lynch-thirsty mob.}}

==Public good==
Deterrence and incapacitation are sometimes described as [[public good]]s since they are [[indivisible]] and [[nonexcludable]]. [[John Hasnas]] argues that like [[lighthouse]]s, [[television]], and [[internet]], crime prevention can be supplied non-politically.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://freecapitalists.org/journals/scholar/hasnas/|title=The Obviousness of Anarchy|author=Hasnas, John}}</ref>

==Optimal crime rate==
[[Economic calculation]] problems arise in sentencing, as with other government services. The "parsimony provision" of {{usc|18|3553}} provides, for instance, that "The court shall impose a sentence sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to comply with the purposes" of sentencing. The parsimony provision does not specify ''how much'' deterrence, protection of the public, and rehabilitation courts should strive to impose a sentence that is sufficient to provide. No [[cost-benefit analysis]] is prescribed. [[Laurent Carnis]] notes that the classical school of crime "searches for the optimal number of crimes for society (Becker 1968; Ehrlich, 1996). This optimal number is reached when the government authorities have minimized the social cost: the [[marginal cost]] equals the [[marginal revenue]]. It is supposed that the marginal cost for society of suffering the crime is the same as the cost to avoid it. For this optimal level of crime, the authorities, on behalf of society, define a level of tolerance. Society must tolerate this amount of crime to avoid waste."<ref>{{cite journal|title=Pitfalls of the Classical School of Crime|author=Carnis, Laurent|journal=Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics|volume=7|number=4|date=Winter 2004|pages=7-18|url=https://freecapitalists.org/journals/qjae/qjae7-4-2/}}</ref>

Neoclassical theory holds that losses from crime will be perceived differently among social and economic groups within any society. Therefore, it is up to the political process to determine how the interests of various groups will be reconciled or which groups will be able to impose their will on the rest of society.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Two Irreconcilable Theories of Justice: Social Engineering vs. Ethics of Property|date=2011|volume=22|pages=399-436|author=Carnis, Laurent|journal=Journal of Libertarian Studies|url=https://freecapitalists.org/journals/jls/22-1-20/}}</ref> [[Libertarian]] theory holds that in a free market, people would voluntarily decide what resources should be allocated to crime prevention, and that the resulting allocation would more closely approximate what is optimal for maximizing [[utility]].

===Practices of governmental judicial systems===
In governmental judicial systems, it is deemed important for the courts to at least pay lip service to the parsimony provision. In ''Ministro-Tapia'', No. 05-5101 (2d Cir. Nov. 28, 2006), the appellate court stated that "if a district court were explicitly to conclude that two sentences equally served the statutory purpose of § 3553, it could not, consistent with the parsimony clause, impose the higher." In ''U.S. v. Rosa'', the district court was reversed after it stated that the sentence it was imposing was harsher than necessary.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://appellate.typepad.com/appellate/2007/04/ca2_the_parsimo.html|title=CA2: The Parsimony Provision Does Matter, After All|date=11 April 2007|publisher=Appellate Law and Practice}}</ref> The upshot of this is that courts will have to be careful not to explicitly make such statements.

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Sentencing theory]]

Secession

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'''Secession''' is the voluntary assertion of a people for separation from a higher government, historically resulting from a series of grievances. It is a central idea in the [[Classical liberalism|classical liberal]] understanding of political order, as elucidated by [[Ludwig von Mises]] in ''[https://freecapitalists.org/books/nation-state-and-economy/ Nation, State, and Economy]'' (1919): <blockquote>No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.</blockquote>

==Links==
* [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/jls/11-1-2/ Secession Reconsidered] (pdf) by Robert W. McGee, 1994
* [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/jls/17-4-3/ The Constitutional Right of Secession in Political Theory and History] (pdf) by Andrei Kreptul, 2003
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/1204 Economic Secession Won't Succeed] by Gene Callahan and Paul Birch, April 2003
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/3427 Secession Is in Our Future] by Clifford F. Thies, April 2009
* [http://mises.org/quotes.aspx?action=subject&subject=Secession The Quotable Mises] - on the subject of secession

{{stub}}
[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:Governments]]
[[Category:Ideologies]]
[[Category:Issues]]

Saving

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{{Stub}}

To increase [[production]], man must form [[capital]]. To create it, he must restrict his [[consumption]] and transfer his [[labor]] for that period to producing immediately-satisfying consumers’ [[good]]s.

The restriction of consumption is called '''saving''', and the transfer of labor and land to the formation of capital goods is called [[investment]].<ref name="Rothbard_Saving">Murray N. Rothbard. [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap1c.asp#9._The_Formation "9. The Formation of Capital"], [[Man, Economy and State]], online edition, referenced 2009-07-09.</ref>

In a modern economy, large amounts of saved money are usually not hoarded, but rather are used to fund establishment and expansion of business operations.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L24|title=Economics in One Lesson|author=Hazlitt, Henry|chapter=The Assault on Saving|quote=But when money is invested it is used to buy capital goods–houses or office buildings or factories or ships or motor trucks or machines. Any one of these projects puts as much money into circulation and gives as much employment as the same amount of money spent directly on consumption. “Saving,” in short, in the modern world, is only another form of spending.}}</ref>

==Saving and Capital==
It is evident that, for any formation of [[capital]], there must be '''saving''' — a restriction of the enjoyment of consumers’ goods in the present — and the [[investment]] of the equivalent resources in the production of capital goods. This enjoyment of consumers’ goods — the satisfaction of wants — is called [[consumption]]. The saving may result from an increase in the available supply of consumers’ goods. Saving involves the restriction of consumption compared to the amount that could be consumed; it does not always involve an actual reduction in the amount consumed over the previous level of consumption.

Because [[capital]] is perishable, it must be renewed, if man wishes to enjoy the fruits of higher production. Saving must be repeated to preserve the structure of capital, over and over.<ref name="Rothbard_Saving_Capital">Murray N. Rothbard. [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap1d.asp "9. The Formation of Capital"], [[Man, Economy and State]], online edition, referenced 2009-07-09.</ref>

As Mises put it, "saving and the resulting accumulation of capital goods are at the beginning of every attempt to improve the material conditions of man; they are the foundation of human civilization. Without saving and capital accumulation there could not be any striving toward non-material ends."<ref name="Mises_saving">Ludwig von Mises. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xv-the-market/ "2. Capital Goods and Capital"], [[Human Action]], online version, referenced 2009-07-10.</ref>

==Saving and the Interest rate==
The act of saving is a means through which man can achieve his ultimate goal, which is bettering his situation. Saving implies giving up some benefits at present - this is the [[price]] paid for the attainment of the end sought. The value of the price paid is called cost, and costs are equal to the value of the satisfaction which one must forego to attain the end aimed at.

The return on savings must be in excess of the cost of savings. If the costs are too high - if savings can’t better an individual’s life and well being - then saving will not be undertaken.

Consequently, the return on savings must be above the premium for man to agree to save. A positive [[time preference]] (i.e., the existence of a premium) precludes the natural emergence of a zero interest rate. Should a zero interest rate be imposed, this will abort all savings and lead to the destruction of the production structure. The premium of having goods now versus having them in the future is getting smaller with the increase in their stock. This, in turn, means that the required return on savings will be lower. An increase in the pool of funding sets the platform for lower [[interest rate]]s.

Apart from time preferences, the purchasing power of money and business risk are important elements in the formation of interest. However, their importance is assessed in reference to the fundamental factor, which is time preference. For instance, if one dollar buys one apple and the agreed interest rate is 10%, then in one-year’s time the lender of the apple would expect to get back 1.1 apples. The lender of the apple will also be happy to accept $1.1 since this sum will permit him to purchase 1.1 apples.

Let's say the purchasing power of money falls, and the price of an apple increases by 10% to $1.1. Now the lender will not accept $1.1 in one year time, since $1.1 will only buy him one apple. He will require $1.21 to agree to lend since $1.21 will secure the lender 1.1 apples.<ref name="Shostak_saving">Frank Shostak. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/1596 "The Subsistence Fund"], Mises Daily, August 2004, referenced 2010-04-23.</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Links==
* [[Wikipedia:Saving|Saving]] on Wikipedia
* [http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Saving.html Saving] by Laurence J. Kotlikoff
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/function-of-saving-the-eugen-von-bohm-bawerk/ The Function of Saving] by [[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk]]
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/1882 Is There a Glut of Saving?] by Frank Shostak
* [http://mises.org/EFANDI/CH4.ASP The Economic Role of Saving and Capital Goods] Ludwig von Mises
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/3203 Did the Fed, or Asian Saving, Cause the Housing Bubble?] by Robert P. Murphy, November 2008
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/5202/The-Fed-Obliterates-the-Savings-Ethic The Fed Obliterates the Savings Ethic] by Doug French, April 2011
* [http://www.fee.org/library/detail/the-truth-about-savings-and-consumption The Truth about Savings and Consumption] (with video), ''FEE'', July 2013
* {{md|6547|Is Saving Money Bad for the Economy?|Gregory Bresiger|October 2013}}

[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Russia

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{{Stub}}

{{Infobox Country
|Box title = Country summary
|Row 1 title = Capital
|Row 1 info = Moscow
|Row 2 title = Borders
|Row 2 info = [[Azerbaijan]] 284 km, [[Belarus]] 959 km, [[China]] (southeast) 3,605 km, China (south) 40 km, [[Estonia]] 290 km, [[Finland]] 1,313 km, [[Georgia]] 723 km, [[Kazakhstan]] 6,846 km, [[North Korea]] 17.5 km, [[Latvia]] 292 km, [[Lithuania]] (Kaliningrad Oblast) 227 km, [[Mongolia]] 3,441 km, [[Norway]] 196 km, [[Poland]] (Kaliningrad Oblast) 432 km, [[Ukraine]] 1,576 km
|Row 3 title = Government type
|Row 3 info = federation
|Row 4 title = Population
|Row 4 info = 140,041,247 (July 2010 est.)<ref name="CIA_RU">CIA - The World Factbook. [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/countrytemplate_rs.html "Russia"], from The World Factbook. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|Row 5 title = Population growth
|Row 5 info = -0.467% (2010 est.)<ref name="CIA_RU" />
|Row 6 title = Life expectancy
|Row 6 info = 66.03 years<ref name="CIA_RU" />
|Row 7 title = Unemployment
|Row 7 info = 8.4% (2009 est.)<ref name="CIA_RU" />
|Row 8 title = [[Wikipedia:Index of Economic Freedom|Index of Economic Freedom]]
|Row 8 info = 143<ref name="Heritage_RU">Heritage Foundation. [http://www.heritage.org/Index/Country/Russia "Russia"], Economic Freedom Score. A lower ranking is better; but please be careful when comparing between different countries or years. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|Row 9 title = [[Wikipedia:Corruption Perceptions Index|Corruption Perceptions Index]]
|Row 9 info = 146<ref name="Transparency_RU">Transparency International. [http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table "Russia"], Corruption Perceptions Index 2009. A lower ranking is better; but please note that the numbers cannot be compared between countries or years due to different methodology. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|Row 10 title = [[Wikipedia:Doing Business Report|Doing Business ranking]]
|Row 10 info = 120<ref name="Business_RU">Doing Business. [http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/ "Russia"], Doing Business 2010 (part of The World Bank Group). A lower ranking is better; but please be careful when comparing between different countries or years. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
}}

Founded in the 12th century, the Principality of Muscovy, was able to emerge from over 200 years of Mongol domination (13th-15th centuries) and to gradually conquer and absorb surrounding principalities. In the early 17th century, a new Romanov Dynasty continued this policy of expansion across Siberia to the Pacific. Under PETER I (ruled 1682-1725), hegemony was extended to the Baltic Sea and the country was renamed the Russian Empire. During the 19th century, more territorial acquisitions were made in Europe and Asia. Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 contributed to the Revolution of 1905, which resulted in the formation of a parliament and other reforms. Repeated devastating defeats of the Russian army in World War I led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the imperial household. The Communists under Vladimir LENIN seized power soon after and formed the USSR. The brutal rule of Iosif STALIN (1928-53) strengthened Communist rule and Russian dominance of the '''[[Soviet Union]]''' at a cost of tens of millions of lives. The Soviet economy and society stagnated in the following decades until General Secretary Mikhail GORBACHEV (1985-91) introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to modernize Communism, but his initiatives inadvertently released forces that by December 1991 splintered the USSR into '''Russia''' and 14 other independent republics. Since then, Russia has shifted its post-Soviet democratic ambitions in favor of a centralized semi-authoritarian state whose legitimacy is buttressed, in part, by carefully managed national elections, former President PUTIN's genuine popularity, and the prudent management of Russia's windfall energy wealth. Russia has severely disabled a Chechen rebel movement, although violence still occurs throughout the North Caucasus.<ref name="CIA_RU" />

{{See also|Soviet Union}}

==Economical characteristics==
* '''Currency''': Ruble (ISO code: RUB)
* Central bank '''[[Wikipedia:Discount rate|discount rate]]''': 13% (31 December 2008)<ref name="CIA_RU" />
* Commercial banks '''lending rate''': 12.23% (2008 average)<ref name="CIA_RU" />
* '''Stock of money''' ([[Money supply#M1|M1]]): $252.5 billion (31 December 2008)<ref name="CIA_RU" />
* '''Quasi money''' (with M1 makes [[Money supply#M2|M2]]): $318.4 billion (31 December 2008)<ref name="CIA_RU" />

===Notable events:===
* [[Banking crisis]]: 1862-1863, 1875, 1896, August 1995, 1998-1999<ref name="Reinhart_crisis">Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff. [http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8973.html "This Time is Different"], ''Princeton University Press'', ISBN 978-0-691-14216-6, p. 380. (The list does not claim to be complete.) Referenced 2011-07-21.</ref>
* [[Hyperinflation]]: 1918-1924, 1993
* Years in [[inflation]]: 13.8% (share of years 1800-2009 with annual inflation above 20 per cent per annum)
* [[Public default]]: 1839, 1885, 1918-1986, 1991-1997, 1998-2000 (external), 1917-1918, 1947, 1957, 1998-1999 (domestic)<ref name="Reinhart_histories">Carmen M. Reinhart. [http://www.princeton.edu/economics/seminar-schedule-by-prog/macro-s10/papers/Reinhardt-Chartbook.pdf "This Time is Different Chartbook: Country Histories on Debt, Default, and Financial Crises"] (pdf), March 3, 2010, p. 96. (The list does not claim to be complete.) Referenced 2011-07-21.</ref>

===Statistics===
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" style="text-align:center"
| Statistic / Year
! 1999
! 2000
! 2001
! 2002
! 2003
! 2004
! 2005
! 2006
! 2007
! 2008
|-
! [[GDP]] (million USD)<ref name="WorldBank_GDP_RU">World Bank. [http://open.worldbank.org/countries/ru/indicators%5BNY.GDP.MKTP.CD%5D?date=1999:2009 "Russia: GDP"], from World Bank [http://data.worldbank.org/ Data]. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
| 195 906
| 259 708
| 306 603
| 345 470
| 431 487
| 591 742
| 764 531
| 991 450
| 1 294 930
| 1 679 480
|-
! Govt. debt (% of GDP)<ref name="WorldBank_Debt_RU">World Bank. [http://open.worldbank.org/countries/ru/indicators%5BGC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZS%5D?date=1999:2009 "Russia: government debt"], from World Bank [http://data.worldbank.org/ Data]. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|
|
| 48.984
| 41.353
|
|
| 16.649
| 9.896
| 10.470
| 6.434
|-
! Govt. revenue (% of GDP)<ref name="WorldBank_Revenue_RU">World Bank. [http://open.worldbank.org/countries/ru/indicators%5BGC.REV.XGRT.GD.ZS%5D?date=1999:2009 "Russia: government revenue"], from World Bank [http://data.worldbank.org/ Data]. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|
|
|
| 31.723
| 27.512
| 26.817
|
| 28.708
| 31.457
| 33.365
|-
! Govt. expenses (% of GDP)<ref name="WorldBank_Expenses_RU">World Bank. [http://open.worldbank.org/countries/ru/indicators%5BGC.XPN.TOTL.GD.ZS%5D?date=1999:2009 "Russia: government expenses"], from World Bank [http://data.worldbank.org/ Data]. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|
|
|
| 22.535
| 22.985
| 21.547
|
| 19.510
| 23.101
| 21.330
|-
! Debt to revenue (years)
|
|
|
| 1.304
|
|
|
| 0.345
| 0.333
| 0.193
|}

==References==
<small>Note: statistical data was rounded. Different sources may use different methodologies for their estimates. Debt to revenue is calculated by dividing the two variables from their original ('unrounded') values. It represents how long it would a government take to repay its entire debt if it used its whole revenue for this purpose.</small>
{{Reflist}}

==Links==
* [http://www.cbr.ru/eng/ Central bank] of Russia
* [http://www.enterprisesurveys.org/documents/EnterpriseSurveys/Reports/Russia-2009.pdf Country profile] (pdf) from the Enterprise Studies page (part of the The World Bank Group)
* [http://countrystudies.us/russia/ Studies] from the Library of Congress (1986-1998)
* BBC [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1102275.stm country profile]
* [http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/5469 How China Won and Russia Lost] by Paul R. Gregory and Kate Zhou, December 2009
* [http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/1082319/1/.html Russia plans to slash 100,000 bureaucrat jobs by 2013], ''AFP'', September 2010
* [http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14895597,00.html Russia seeks to stem rise in food prices] by Richard Connor, March 2011
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/calculation-and-coordination-essays-on-socialism-and-transitional-political-economy/ Calculation and Coordination] (pdf) by Peter J. Boettke, 2001, with several essays on Russia
* [https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S36/01/68M81/index.xml?section=topstories Field experiment finds significant electoral fraud in Moscow] by Michael Hotchkiss, February 2013
* [http://mises.ca/posts/articles/what-soviet-medicine-teaches-us/ What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us] by Yuri Nicholas Maltsev, October 2013

* [[Wikipedia:Russia|Russia]] on Wikipedia
[[Category:Russia]]

Rent control

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''Rent control''' refers to the fixing of a ceiling on residential rental rates within a particular legal jurisdiction. The practice is meant to aid those with lower incomes in finding and keeping affordable housing. Like other forms of [[central planning]], such as the minimum wage, rent control has led to numerous unintended consequences including shortages of residential rental properties, the rapid deterioration of residential apartment buildings, and urban blight.{{Fact}}

==Consequences==
In a free market, prices adjust based on the relationship of supply and demand. When demand for housing increases, the prices for housing also tend to rise, both in buildings for sale, as well as rental units. The increased prices send a signal to entrepreneurs that higher profits can be had in building new housing or converting existing buildings. In turn, prices will trend downward as new units become available.

When prices are fixed and demand increases due to rising birth rates and immigration, as happened in New York City following the Second World War, fewer property owners will decide to invest in housing. The inevitable consequence will be fewer units for rent. Because investors realize a diminishing rate of return they must cut costs in order to remain in business. Building maintenance represents a large fixed cost, so there are incentives in reducing those expenditures. Deterioration soon follows as leaky faucets and torn carpets go unrepaired.

In '''''A Critique of the Legal and Philosophical Case for Rent Control''''', Austrian economist [[Walter Block]] notes that rent control reduces tenant mobility<ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/books/a-critique-of-the-legal-and-philosophical-case-for-rent-control/ A Critique of the Legal and Philosophical Case for Rent Control] (pdf) by Walter Block, Journal of Business Ethics 40: 75–90, 2002</ref>. When an individual moves into an apartment and his rent becomes fixed at the present rate, he stands to have higher rates if or when he chooses to relocate. Because of this, individuals and families often stay in units for extended periods of time. This has the simultaneous effect of restricting labor markets by reducing the flow of labor into areas where demand is high.

==Cities with Rent Control==
Currently four U.S. States, and the District of Columbia, have cities or municipalities which impose rent control measures<ref>[http://www.landlord.com/rent_control_laws_by_state.htm Landlord.com website], last accessed 09-20-2011</ref>. Major U.S. cities include: Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco in CA; College Park, MD; and New York City, Albany, and Buffalo in NY.

Note: New Jersey has more than one hundred cities which impose rent control.

==Studies==
Cambridge, Massachusetts maintained a very strict form of rent regulation from 1971 to 1994, when rent controls were removed by statewide initiative. Cambridge is composed of both affluent and modest income neighborhoods, and has a very large older housing stock. According to a 2003 study, investment increased by approximately 20% over what would have been the case if rent control had been maintained. These investment increases occurred across a wide variety of settings; both affluent and modest income neighborhoods experienced an "investment boom".<ref name="Pollakowski_Cambridge">Henry O. Pollakowski. [http://nmhc.files.cms-plus.com/ContentFiles/ThirdPartyGuide/cr_36.pdf "Rent Control and Housing Investment: Evidence from Deregulation in Cambridge, Massachusetts"] ([http://www.nmhc.org/ThirdPartyGuidance.cfm?ItemNumber=57769 summary]), ''MIT Center for Real Estate'', Journal of Housing Economics, No. 36 May 2003. Referenced 2013-10-06.</ref> A National Bureau of Economic Research paper concluded that "The end of rent control raised the overall valuation of Cambridge's housing stock by $1.8 billion between 1994 and 2004, more than $1 billion of which was due to spillovers to never-controlled houses.<ref name="Autor_Spillovers">David H. Autor, Christopher J. Palmer, Parag A. Pathak. [http://www.nber.org/digest/oct12/w18125.html "Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge Massachusetts"] (detailed summary; [http://www.nber.org/papers/w18125 actual paper]), ''National Bureau of Economic Research'', NBER Working Paper No. 18125, Issued in June 2012. Referenced 2013-10-06.</ref>

Another study found that contrary to its stated intent, restrictive rent control in Cambridge and Brookline decreased the supply of available rental housing during the 1980s and spurred gentrification - the process by which a mixed-income diverse set of residents is supplanted by an influx of more advantaged newcomers. The study reveals the following adverse effects of rent control over time:
# rent control fosters the removal of existing apartments from the market;
# rent control discourages the development of more private rental housing;
# rent control induces underutilization (waste) of rental space by tenants;
# the combined effect of declining numbers of apartments and underutilization displaces a significant number of tenants from the local housing market; and
# in the competition to secure increasingly scarce apartments, advantaged households typically prevail over disadvantaged ones, resulting in gentrification.

Rent control produces the opposite of the promised results; it is an initially well-intentioned but ultimately destructive housing policy that actually reduces supply, hurts the poor and displaces the needy.<ref name="Goetze_Poor">Rolf Goetze. [http://www.frpo.org/documents/Rent%20Control%20&%20The%20Poor.pdf "Rent Control: Affordable Housing For The Privileged, Not The Poor"], 'A Study of the Impact of Rent Control In Cambridge, Massachusetts'. GeoData Analytics, August 1994. Referenced 2013-10-06.</ref>

A 1991 Report to Congress on Rent Control, by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded that under rent control:
# Housing quality usually deteriorates.
# Benefits of rent control are poorly targeted.
# A significant number of well-to-do renters live in rent-controlled apartments and enjoy substantial benefits while many low income renters receive little or no benefits.
# Some landlords of rent-controlled properties have low incomes but nevertheless bear the burden of rent control transfers. Thus it appears that current rent control policies are highly inefficient, inequitable, and ineffective mechanisms for helping lower income tenants.
# Rent control reduces mobility.<ref name="HUD_econtrol">[http://www.frpo.org/documents/HUD%20Report%20Congress%20Rent%20Control.pdf "Report to Congress on rent control"] (pdf), ''U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development'', 1991. Referenced 2013-10-06.</ref>

A 2013 study of rent control during World War II concluded that rent control played an important role in the increase in home ownership.<ref name="Fette_Front">Daniel K. Fetter. [http://www.wellesley.edu/sites/default/files/assets/departments/economics/files/fetter_rentcontrol_ww2.pdf "The Home Front: Rent control and the rapid wartime increase in home ownership"] (pdf), Wellesley College and NBER, September 25, 2013. Referenced 2013-10-06.</ref>

An overview of economic research literature by Blair Jenkins points to a conclusion against rent control, yet as of 2001, about 140 jurisdictions in the United States persisted in some form of the intervention.<ref name="Jenkins_Control">Blair Jenkins. [http://econjwatch.org/articles/rent-control-do-economists-agree "Rent Control: Do Economists Agree?"] (summary, [http://econjwatch.org/file_download/238/2009-01-jenkins-reach_concl.pdf pdf]), ''Econ Journal Watch'', Volume (Issue): 6(1), Pages: 73-112, Published: January 2009. Referenced 2013-10-06.</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Bibliography==
* {{Cite journal
|last=Block|first=Walter|authorlink=Walter Block
|title=A Critique of the Legal and Philosophical Case for Rent Control
|journal=Journal of Business Ethics
|volume=40|issue=1
|year=2002
|pages=75-90
|doi=10.1023/A:1019952703506
|url=https://freecapitalists.org/books/a-critique-of-the-legal-and-philosophical-case-for-rent-control/
}}
* {{cite encyclopedia
|last=Block|first=Walter|authorlink=Walter Block
|editor-last=Henderson|editor-first=David R.|editor-link=Wikipedia:David R. Henderson
|title=Rent Control
|url=http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html
|encyclopedia=The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
|year=2007
|publisher=[[Wikipedia:Liberty Fund|Liberty Fund]]
|location=Indianapolis, Indiana
|isbn=978-0-86597-665-8
|pages=442-445
}}
* {{Cite book
|editor-last=Block|editor-first=Walter|editor-link=Walter Block
|editor2-last=Olsen|editor2-first=Edgar|editor2-link=
|title=Rent Control: Myths & Realities
|publisher=[[Wikipedia:Fraser Institute|The Fraser Institute]]
|place=Vancouver
|year=1981
|url=http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/RentControlMythsRealities.pdf
|isbn=0-88975-033-5
}}

==Links==
* [http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/rent-my-flat-black-market-edition Rent My Flat (Black Market Edition)] by Andrew Heaton, August 2013
* [http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/how-rent-controls-hurt-the-poor How Rent Controls Hurt the Poor] by Allan Brownfield, March 1975
* [http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/rent-control-and-the-penultimate-solution Rent Control and the Penultimate Solution] by Scott Gardner, June 1993
* [http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-folly-of-rent-control The Folly of Rent Control] by James A. Maccaro, January 1990
* [http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/three-fallacies-of-rent-control Three Fallacies of Rent Control] by Robert Batemarco, June 1997
* [http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/01/beware-comeback-rent-control/4291/ Beware the Comeback of Rent Control] by Peter A. Tatian, January 2013
* [http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/landlords-create-vacancies-to-beat-rent-control-laws/Content?oid=2143457 Landlords create vacancies to beat rent-control laws], ''San Francisco Examiner'', September 2008
* [http://lahd.lacity.org/lahdinternet/Portals/0/Rent/RSO_Study_Exec_Summary_wCover.pdf Economic Study of the Rent Stabilization Ordinance and the Los Angeles Housing Market] (pdf), City of Los Angeles Housing Department, 2009
* [http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-274.html How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing] by William Tucker, May 1997
* {{wplink}}
** {{w|Rent control in the United States}}, {{w|Rent control in New York}}
** {{w|Rent control in England and Wales}}, {{w|Rent control in Scotland}}
* [http://www.policylink.org/site/c.lkIXLbMNJrE/b.6644939/k.9948/Rent_Control/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp Rent control] from PolicyLink

[[Category: Economic concepts]]
{{Stub}}

Pretrial detention

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'''Pretrial detention''' is the jailing of a defendant pending trial, usually because he is deemed dangerous or a flight risk.{{Fact}}

==Views==
[[Murray Rothbard]] writes, "The policeman who apprehends a criminal and arrests him, and the judicial and penal authorities who incarcerate him before trial and conviction — all should be subject to the universal law. In short, if they have committed an error and the defendant turns out to be innocent, then these authorities should be subjected to the same penalties as anyone else who kidnaps and incarcerates an innocent man. Immunity in pursuit of their trade should no more serve as an excuse than Lieutenant Calley was excused for committing atrocities at My Lai in the course of the Vietnam war."<ref>{{cite book|chapter=The Courts|author=Rothbard, Murray|title=For a New Liberty|url=https://freecapitalists.org/books/for-a-new-liberty-the-libertarian-manifesto/}}</ref> Even those who are granted pretrial release are sometimes subject to onerous restrictions on their liberty, such as curfews and firearm prohibitions.<ref>{{uscsub|18|3142|c}}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Links==
* {{w|Remand (detention)}} at Wikipedia

[[Category:Law]]

Praxeology

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'''Praxeology''' is the science of human [[action]]. The term was coined and defined as "The science of human action" in 1890 by [[Alfred Espinas]] in the Revue Philosophique, but the most common use of the term is in connection with the work of [[Ludwig von Mises]] and the [[Austrian Economics|Austrian School of economics]].

==Purposefulness of action==
Praxeology is the scientific study of human [[action]], which is ''purposeful behavior''. A human acts whenever he uses ''means'' to achieve an ''end'' that he or she subjectively values. Human action is thus [[Teleology|teleological]] or intentional; a person acts for a ''reason''. Therefore not all human behavior is action in the praxeological sense: purely reflexive or unconscious bodily movements (such as coughing when exposed to tear gas) are not examples of action. Praxeology starts from the undeniable axiom that human beings exist and act, and then logically [[deductive reasoning|deduces]] implications of this fact. These deduced propositions are true ''a priori''; there is no need to test them in the way that a physicist might test a proposed "law" of Nature. So long as a praxeological statement has been derived correctly, it must necessarily contain as much truth as the original axioms.<ref name="Study_praxeology">Robert P. Murphy [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/guidechap1.asp "A Study Guide to Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market"], online version, referenced 2009-06-15.</ref>

For example, when we throw a ball, we do not reason that it is guided in a ''teleological'' way by some mystical spirit or "prime mover." Instead we use the laws of mechanics and [[causality]] to examine the position, velocity, and forces acting on the ball, in order to predict the future position and velocity of the ball.

On the other hand, one does not reason that there is some sort of direct, causal relation between traffic lights turning green, and bodies beginning to cross the road. These are individuals acting with purpose crossing the road, who, only when the lights turn green, reason that it is safe to cross and then proceed to do so. The reckless individual who is late for work may rush across the road regardless of what the traffic lights show.<ref name="Mallick_example">Abhinandan Mallick. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/3731 "How I Found the Austrian School"], Mises Daily, posted on 2009-10-09, referenced 2009-10-10.</ref>

==Categories==
The categories of praxeology, the general, formal theory of human action, as outlined by [[Murray Rothbard]]<ref>Murray N. Rothbard. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/praxeology-reply-to-mr-schuller/ "Praxeology: Reply to Mr. Schuller"], ''[[American Economic Review]]'', December 1951, pp. 943-46, referenced 2009-05-20.</ref>"

* A. The Theory of the Isolated Individual ([[Robinson Crusoe economy|Crusoe]] Economics)
* B. The Theory of [[Trade|Voluntary Interpersonal Exchange]] (Catallactics, or the Economics of the Market)
** 1. Barter
** 2. With Medium of Exchange
*** a. On the Unhampered Market
*** b. Effects of Violent [[Intervention]] with the Market
*** c. Effects of Violent Abolition of the Market ([[Socialism]])
* C. The Theory of War--Hostile Action
* D. The Theory of Games (e.g., [[John von Neumann|von Neumann]] and [[Oskar Morgenstern|Morgenstern]])
* E. Unknown

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Links==
* [http://praxeology.tv/ Praxeology.tv] Educational resources
* [http://praxeology.net/praxeo.htm What the Hell is Praxeology?] on Praxeology.net
* [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard38.html Praxeology: The Methodology of Austrian Economics] ([https://freecapitalists.org/books/praxeology-the-methodology-of-austrian-economics/ PDF]) by [[Murray N. Rothbard]]
* {{wplink}}

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Omnipotent Government

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'''Omnipotent Government''' is a 1944 book by [[Ludwig von Mises]]. It explains and denounces the trends toward the total state, and demonstrates that [[Communism]] and [[Nazism]] were both species of [[interventionism]].

==Links==
{{Store|https://freecapitalists.org/books/omnipotent-government-the-rise-of-the-total-state-and-total-war/|Omnipotent Government|https://mises.org/store/Omnipotent-Government-Digital-Book-P10545.aspx|Omnipotent Government - Digital Book}}

* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/omnipotent-government-the-rise-of-the-total-state-and-total-war/ Resources page] (including full text)
** [https://freecapitalists.org/books/omnipotent-government-the-rise-of-the-total-state-and-total-war/ HTML version]
** [http://library.mises.org/books/Ludwig%20von%20Mises/Omnipotent%20Government%20The%20Rise%20of%20the%20Total%20State%20and%20Total%20War.pdf PDF version]
** [http://library.mises.org/books/Ludwig%20von%20Mises/Omnipotent%20Government%20The%20Rise%20of%20the%20Total%20State%20and%20Total%20War.epub ePub]

[[Category:Writings of Ludwig von Mises]]
{{Stub}}

Objections

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{{stub}}

= Objections to capitalism, liberty and anarcho-capitalism =

This page can start by listing common objections and concerns, and link to more detailed sections to analyze and answer the problem.

As far as addressing such objections in discussions, it is often useful to start with definitions.

Merriam-Webster's definition of capitalism is perfectly serviceable, but less formal definitions (capitalism: the system of property rights and voluntary cooperation) can be useful in lay discussions.

Liberty or freedom also often deserves some clarification. There are two distinct concept: un-coerced exercise of free-will (negative conception of freedom) and access (positive conception of freedom, as in freedom from hunger, need, etc). The same distinction also exists in discussions about rights (negative rights, as the right not to be coerced, and positive rights, as the right to healthcare).

It is also often useful to clarify the person's conception of government: voluntary (on the basis of a Social Contract and such) or coercive (but necessary). All criticisms of capitalism rest on a baseline (capitalism compared to what) and it is a mistake to assume a perfect but unrealistic alternative (nirvana fallacy). If the person thinks government is voluntary, they are not objecting to capitalism (property rights and voluntary cooperation), so the discussion should focus on whether government is truly legitimate and voluntary. But if the person thinks government an exercise of coercion, then a different set of arguments open up (does allowing coercion in society improve ethics and outcomes?).

Other terms worth clarifying include self-interest, altruism, greed, public or social good, society, and rational/irrational.

= Capitalism does not produce public goods =

See [[Public goods]].

The case of [http://vimeo.com/4798314 science]. Terence Kealey offers three arguments: The first one is a recent OECD comparative analysis of growth between countries with regards to the amount of government funding of science. It shows no positive effect in countries with heavier government funding, whereas it shows positive effects when there is more private R&D investment. The second one is that economic growth trends historically did not improve when government become involved (before/after comparison). The third is the disappearance of "secret publication" of science in favor of the current open model well before governments became involved in science (ie. scientists themselves find it advantageous to share, it is not a disincentive as suggested by the "public goods" argument).

Also, anyone can say that any nonrivalrous, non-excludable good is a public good. That doesn't mean it should be produced at taxpayer expense. If, say, the Republicans want Ronald Reagan's signature to appear in skywriting over Washington, DC on President's Day, they can't prevent members of the public who made no contribution to a private skywriting fund from seeing it. But that is a far cry from demonstrating that society will benefit more from that use of resources than it would from alternative uses.

On the other hand, sometimes what people think are public goods actually are not. An example would be lighthouses. If a harbor is privately owned, and those who use the harbor can be required to pay a fee, then the lighthouse that guides ships safely to the harbor, and is paid for by the harbor owner, can be considered a private good. The free market will tend to cause such situations to come to pass.

= Capitalism under-produces what society needs =

More details TBD

= Capitalism exploits workers =

A variation of this objection is that people in difficult situation cannot afford to exercise choice. Employer can take advantage of people when there is unemployment. A counter-argument is that in many cases, workers have a great deal of bargaining power. Consider, for example, the voice actors for ''The Simpsons'', who receive millions of dollars a year for 22 weeks' worth of work. They can shut down the show by refusing to accept what is offered.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2011/10/deadline-near-in-the-simpsons-pay-cut-standoff/|title=Deadline Near in ‘The Simpsons’ Pay Cut Standoff|date=7 October 2011|publisher=ABC News}}</ref> That is an extreme example, but there are many types of employees who are, to some degree or another, difficult to replace and therefore in a good position to drive a hard bargain on salary. It is not for nothing that the Hacker Test contains these two items:<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/hacker.htm|title=The Hacker Test - Version 1.0}}</ref>
{{quote|0241 Is your job secure?<br>0242 ... Do you have code to prove it?}}
Those who aren't in a good bargaining position probably need the "exploitative" job that is offered, because the whole reason they are in such a bad bargaining position is that they don't have better options they can point to and say, "Look, this employer is offering me $x. Can I have a raise up to what the market is paying someone with my knowledge, skills and abilities?" Those employees need a job that will keep body and soul together while they seek education, training, experience, or whatever else will make them more productive (in the consumer's opinion, as expressed by his willingness to pay a certain amount for the work product) per unit of labor invested, and therefore more valuable in the job market. If those opportunities for self-improvement are not available to that worker, then he will probably need that job on a more permanent basis, and it would more permanently diminish his standard of living to take it away.

= Capitalism plunders the environment =

= Capitalism doesn't protect consumers from ruthless businessmen =

= Capitalism leads to monopolies and cartels =

It is important to understand what constitutes a monopoly and under what conditions it leads to monopolistic effects (lower quality and higher prices).
What are the forces which encourage concentration?
What are the forces which encourage fragmentation?
How does one define an "industry" or "sector"? What are substitution effects?

Also, it is interesting to look at historical data on monopolies, in light of the above analysis. Which problems occurred? Which forces actually came into play?

For one, identifying a monopoly requires defining the scope of the market. If defined arbitrarily narrowly, it will apparently lack adequate substitutes. Is the iPhones in the market for large-screen touch-based smartphones, consumer smartphones, cellphones, communication devices, or social networking tool?

But more importantly, competitive forces (both actual competition, potential competition, and indirect competition) are sufficient to regulate how much control a company (or a cartel of colluding companies) can get over the market. Despite its dominance of a market, the company will always feel the pressure to perform well or else it will lose customers to rival companies. Anti-competitive conditions can only arise legally from the government (and illegally through other kinds of force, like the mafia). Such government-granted monopolies are indeed harmful to consumers and the market.

Mainstream economists have this theory of so-called "natural monopolies", whereby if a company manages to get far ahead in a capital intensive business with economies of scale, it creates a very difficult situation for competitors and allowing a long-term monopoly (which has bad effects on prices and quality). This theory is often used to justify government stepping in with anti-trust regulations, to "fix the market" and regulate the "unavoidable" monopoly (therefore actually sustains the monopoly).
But as Thomas DiLorenzo explains in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2HXyfe_tCE presentation], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwH8unDcdMY another presentation], and [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/rae/rae9-2-3/ paper], and history shows that such sustained natural monopolies do not exist in practice. All sustained monopolies to date can be traced back to some unfair advantage secured through government (diamonds, cable TV, phone service, railroads, ...).
Also, he explains that the supposed problem of "excessive duplication" is also a consequence of a pre-existing public utility. Because of their lack of pricing, economic calculation is impossible so trade-off cannot be made on a rational basis. Even so, this can be mitigated with "competition for the field", whereby utility companies bid for a monopoly contract which is open on auction again every few years.

= Capitalism may have worked in the past, but modern society is different =

This argument came up in different forms in Milton Friedman's Free to Choose video program for instance, by opponents of the free-market. The argument is usually not very specific, but posits that capitalism is not applicable due to changed circumstances. For examples, more population, more complex inter-dependencies, more industrialization.

= Individuals make predictable mistakes =

= Individuals lack information and expertise =

= Objections to anarchy =

Roderick Long has a good [https://freecapitalists.org/books/libertarian-anarchism-responses-to-ten-objections/ paper](pdf) and [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/document/1250 talk] which address top objections.

== Government is voluntary, people can migrate ==

This argument states that by staying in a country, the individuals consent to the government.

But this suffers from logical leap; the fact that "people can leave" does not allow one to conclude that a system is voluntary. If people choose A over B, we can only conclude that they prefer A over B.

In particular, even if situation A involves some downsides (very low risk of being murdered, low risk of being mugged or burglarized, or almost certainty of being taxed), demonstrating a preference of A over B does not mean that those interactions are voluntary. We can only conclude that all things considered (loss of social network, cost of moving, loss of employment, and coercive violations of property rights such as crime and taxation), moving to situation B is not worthwhile.

Let me stimulate your thinking on this problem:
*If the state is voluntary because you can move, then the mafia is voluntary too since you can change neighborhood or city.
::::Counter argument: So then why do you stay in a mafia-infested neighborhood or city, if you have other options? At what point might your acquiescence to the situation, when you have other options, be reasonably deemed voluntary? What about [[personal responsibility]] to remove oneself and one's property from harm's way? Libertarians, after all, advocate competition and consumer choice as safeguards against abuse, and believe that each person has a responsibility to provide for his own defense. That means that it is the libertarian's responsibility to either escape or fend off aggression when the means are available. To fail to exercise a preferable option that was available is to voluntarily acquiesce to a worse situation.
::::::To clarify, do you mean that the mafia in a neighborhood is indeed voluntary for the people who stay there? Do you believe that the victims of mafias do not take any steps to hide or protect their property? What is the minimal action (short of leaving) which demonstrates in your mind that the mafia is coercive?
*If the state is voluntary, then are there limits to the state?
::Was the confiscation of Jew property in Germany voluntary?
:::Counter argument: Why did the Jews live in Germany, rather than in a country like the U.S. with stronger protections for property rights? The libertarian position is that when you travel abroad, you do so at your own risk.<ref>{{cite web|quote=We call upon the United States government to adhere rigidly to the principle that all U.S. citizens travel, live, and own property abroad at their own risk.|url=http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/platform.html|title=National Platform of the Libertarian Party|date=May 2004|chapter=International Travel and Foreign Investments}}</ref> Why would the logic behind that principle not apply also to Jews who choose to live in Germany?
::::::Can you clarify? Do you mean the confiscation was indeed voluntary and there are no limits to the state?
*If the state is voluntary, like a club, then why is it monopolistic on a territory?
::Counter argument is homeowner associations and gated communities.
::::::Homeowners associations and gated communities can peacefully merge and split, unlike governments. Also, there is a very clear proof of all the owners voluntarily joining the club when it is formed. The same cannot be said for countries.
*The lynchpin of a voluntary association is that it is formed with unanimous consent.
::No state demonstrates this feature. On the other hand, plenty of voluntary associations do: clubs, homeowners associations, ...
:::Counter argument: If every person who lives in a state's territory is there because he chooses not to leave, is that not the same kind of unanimous consent that exists in a club or homeowners association? In either a club or HOA, if you fail to pay your dues, there will be some sort of penalty; e.g. the club may say, "Turn in your membership card; it's our property" or the HOA may say, "You're in violation of the HOA requirement of your property deed; either pay up or sell your house to someone who will pay, or we'll take legal action." Either way, you're forfeiting that which you were allowed to keep only for as long as you followed their rules.

== Government is voluntary, people can vote ==

That's a simple non-sequitur. The mode of decision does not affect whether joining this "club" is voluntary or not.

Imagine that your co-workers decide to start a union, but you are not interested in joining. They decide on a democratic mode of elections and decide that every employee should pay union dues, including you.

More generally, the feedback and incentives provided by vote are much weaker than that provided by freedom of association (choosing which club you join, choosing which product to purchase). This is especially visible with government, being that it offers such a wide bundle of unrelated "services" (currency, law-making, arbitration, police, army, education, postal service, unemployment aid, low-income aid, old-age aid, sickness aid, deposit insurance, ...). The votes are not even on individual services. Furthermore the votes are on promises, whereas purchases are on finished products and services, or on contracts (pre-order).

It is often assumed that politicians have a right to break their promises if their ideology changes or it is necessary to make political compromises. Certainly there is no means provided for in law by which a citizen can sue his representative for breach of contract if he violates campaign promises. The only remedy provided by the system is to vote him out of office. This would be like if a McDonald's manager could accept a consumer's money for a hamburger, refuse to provide the hamburger (or, instead of giving the hamburger to the customer, giving it to a friend of the manager), and then say that the consumer has no right to complain because, after all, he can choose a different restaurant next time.

In the private sector, the consumer is also entitled to a refund for agreed-upon products not being provided; in the public sector, he is not. There is nothing to prevent a consumer from getting repeatedly ripped off as he bounces back and forth between two different restaurants, each of which keep taking his money without providing what was promised. In the U.S. electoral system, those two restaurants are the two major parties. The third parties are like small restaurants that, after receiving the customer's money, later say, "Sorry, we invested the money as best we could in producing a meal, but ultimately didn't have enough cash to succeed, and now the money is gone. However, if enough people buy hamburgers from us the next time around, we might have enough money to succeed."

A quick answer for knee-jerk internet comments, is "Which vote of yours led to the NSA tapping major internet companies and spying on citizens?". Another one is "If the government represent voters, then certainly voters should be responsible for their government's choices, such as a foreign policy killing in the order of a million innocent Iraqis. Are you ready to stand trial for your role in this crime?"

== Government is needed to define the law ==

Here are some points to stimulate thought on this problem:
*Languages (for the most part) emerge without centralized government definition
*Governments are in a state of anarchy with regards to each other (no "super-government" defining international law). There is more strife and violence within countries these days (e.g. the bloody civil wars in Africa) than between countries.
:*Counter-argument: International relations are to some extent dominated by a few great powers that impose their will on the rest of the world. The countries that have been willing to engage in free trade with one another, such as the [[Benelux]] or [[World Trade Organization]] members, have tended to also form supranational federations to establish and enforce rules governing trade. One might argue that this means they found such federations necessary in order to pursue their goals of freer trade.
*There are already multiple sets of law (from country to country, state to state, city to city), what is the optimal number and how would we know that number?
:*Counter-argument: Theoretically, if the voters become discontent with their current number of sets of laws, they will require their elected officials to change the number or impose tighter central control over local governments.

== Government is needed to provide law enforcement services ==

== Government is needed to provide national defense services ==

== Without government, we would kill each other (Hobbesian world) ==

The emergence of arbitration services and norms is more likely, as it is less costly.
See historical examples of arbitration in ancient Greece, in modern black markets for drugs. TODO: provide references.

== Government is needed to control and protect the national borders ==
Actually, the State provokes foreigners to want to retaliate against it for its acts of aggression (including propping up tyrannical regimes to serve as puppet governments that will do domestic politicians' bidding), and the citizens get caught in the crossfire as they are hit by terrorist attacks, taxed to pay for foreign wars, subjected to intrusive searches at airports, etc. We would do well to heed what Morris and Linda Tannehill wrote in ''[[The Market for Liberty]]'':<ref>{{cite book|title=The Market for Liberty|chapter=Foreign Aggression|pages=128|author=Tannehill, Morris and Linda}}</ref>
{{quote|Government can't defend its citizens, and it is foolish and sacrificial for the citizens to defend a coercive monopoly which not only enslaves them but makes a practice of provoking conflicts with other coercive monopolies-i.e., with other governments. ''In the matter of foreign aggression, government is far more of a liability than an asset,'' and people would be much better off with a free-market system of defense.}}

=Typical examples=
Here are a few essays which illustrate many of the objections to capitalism:

[http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/02/28/like-unicorns-the-free-market-is-a-myth/ Like unicorns, the 'free market' doesn't exist]

=References=
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Argumentation]]

Murray Rothbard

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[[File:Murray Rothbard.jpeg|thumb|right|Murray Rothbard]]
{{Quote|On the free market, everyone earns according to his productive value in satisfying consumer desires. Under statist distribution, everyone earns in proportion to the amount he can plunder from the producers.|Murray N. Rothbard|''[[Power and Market]]''}}

'''Murray Newton Rothbard''' (March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an economist, scholar, intellectual and polymath who made major contributions in [[economics]], political philosophy ([[libertarianism]] in particular), economic history and legal theory. He developed and extended the Austrian School of economics based on the earlier pioneering work of [[Ludwig von Mises]]. Rothbard eventually established himself as the principal Austrian theorist in the latter half of the twentieth century and applied Austrian analysis to historical topics such as the [[Great Depression]] of 1929 and the history of American banking.

Rothbard combined Austrian economics with a fervent commitment to individual liberty. He developed a unique synthesis that combined themes from nineteenth-century American individualist-anarchists such as [[Lysander Spooner]]<ref name="Rothbard_Spooner">Murray N. Rothbard. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/lysander-spooner-libertarian-pietist/ "Introduction by Murray N. Rothbard"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref> and [[Benjamin Tucker]] with Austrian economics. A new political philosophy was the result, and Rothbard devoted his remarkable intellectual energy, over a period of some forty-five years, to developing and promoting his style of libertarianism. In doing so, he became a major American public intellectual.

Building on the Austrian School's concept of [[spontaneous order]], support for a [[free market]] in [[money creation|money production]] and condemnation of [[central planning]],<ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/books/a-free-market-monetary-system-and-the-pretense-of-knowledge/ ''Free Market Money System''] by F.A. Hayek</ref> Rothbard advocated abolition of [[coercion|coercive]] government control of the economy. He considered the [[monopoly]] force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term well-being of the populace, labeling [[State (polity)|the State]] as nothing but a "a bandit gang writ large"—the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.<ref>[http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twentytwo.asp The Ethics of Liberty], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref name="Hans-Hermann Hoppe">{{cite web|url=http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/hoppeintro.asp|title=The Ethics of Liberty|author=[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]]|publisher=[[Ludwig von Mises Institute]]}}</ref><ref>[http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1423 Repudiating the National Debt], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard200.html To Save Our Economy From Destruction], Murray Rothbard</ref>

Rothbard concluded that all services provided by [[monopoly]] [[government]]s could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. He viewed many regulations and laws ostensibly promulgated for the "public interest" as self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats engaging in dangerously unfettered self-aggrandizement, as they were not subject to competitive pressures that would temper greed and self-interest with the need to produce goods and services that people actually ''wanted'' to pay for. Rothbard held that there were inefficiencies involved with government services and asserted that [[price mechanism|market disciplines]] would eliminate them, if the services could be provided by competition in the private sector.<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard40.html The Great Society: A Libertarian Critique], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard53.html The Noble Task of Revisionism], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard37.html The Fallacy of the 'Public Sector'], Murray Rothbard</ref>

Rothbard was equally condemning of state [[Corporatocracy|corporatism]]. He criticized many instances where business elites co-opted government's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals.<ref>''For a New Liberty'', Chapter 3</ref>

He argued that [[taxation]] represents coercive theft on a grand scale, and "a compulsory [[monopoly]] of force" prohibiting the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers.<ref name="Hans-Hermann Hoppe"/><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard24.html Tax Day], Murray Rothbard</ref> He also considered [[central bank]]ing and [[fractional reserve banking]] under a monopoly [[fiat money]] system a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial [[embezzlement|fraud]], antithetical to [[Libertarianism|libertarian]] principles and ethics.<ref>Rothbard, Murray. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/mystery-of-banking-the/ ''The Mystery of Banking''] Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2008. p. 111</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-2737288_ITM |title=Has fractional-reserve banking really passed the market test? (Controversy). |date=January 2003 |format= |work= Independent Review|accessdate=}}</ref><ref>[http://www.fff.org/freedom/0999c.asp The Case for the 100% Gold Dollar], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>See also Murray Rothbard articles: [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard191.html Private Coinage]; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard190.html Repudiate the National Debt]; and [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard181.html Taking Money Back]</ref> Rothbard opposed military, political, and [[economic interventionism]] in the affairs of other nations.<ref name="Rothbard on War">[http://www.antiwar.com/orig/rothbard_on_war.html Rothbard on War], excerpts from a 1973 [[Reason (magazine)|Reason Magazine]] article and other materials, published at [[Antiwar.com]], undated.</ref><ref name="For a New Liberty">Murray N. Rothbard ''[https://freecapitalists.org/books/for-a-new-liberty-the-libertarian-manifesto/#p263 For a New Liberty]'', p. 265.</ref>

==Life and career==
Murray Rothbard was born March 2, 1926, the son of David and Rae Rothbard. He was a brilliant student even as a young child; and his academic record at Columbia University, where he majored in mathematics and economics, was stellar. In the Columbia economics department, Rothbard did not receive any instruction in Austrian economics, and Mises was no more than a name to him. In a course on price theory given by [[George Stigler]], however, he encountered arguments against such then popular measures as price and rent control. These arguments greatly appealed to him; and he wrote to the publisher of a pamphlet that Stigler and [[Milton Friedman]] had written on rent control.

===Economist===
The publisher in question was the [[Foundation for Economic Education|Foundation for Economic Education]]; and visits to this group’s headquarters led Rothbard to a meeting with Ludwig von Mises. Rothbard was at once attracted to Mises’s laissez-faire economics, and when Mises’s masterwork ''[[Human Action]]'' appeared in 1949, it made a great impression on him. He was henceforward a praxeologist: here in Mises’s treatise was the consistent and rigorous defense of a free economy for which he had long been in search. He soon became an active member of Mises’s seminar at [[New York University]]. Meanwhile, he continued his graduate studies at Columbia, working toward his Ph.D. His mentor was the eminent economic historian Joseph Dorfman, and Rothbard received the degree in 1956, with a thesis on The Panic of 1819 that remains a standard work (''[[The Panic of 1819|The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies]]'' is based on it).

As he deepened his understanding of laissez-faire economics, he confronted a dilemma. The arguments for market provision of goods and services applied across the board. If so, should not even protection and defense be offered on the market rather than supplied by a coercive monopoly? Rothbard realized that he would either have to abandon laissez-faire or embrace individualist anarchy. The choice, arrived at in the winter of 1949, was not difficult.

Rothbard soon attracted the attention of the [[William Volker Fund]], the main group that supported classical liberal scholars in the 1950s and early 1960s. He began a project to write a textbook to explain Human Action in a fashion suitable for college students; a sample chapter he wrote on money and credit won Mises’s approval. As Rothbard continued his work, he transformed the project. The result, ''[[Man, Economy, and State]]'' (1962), was a central work of Austrian economics.

Rothbard was entirely in accord with Mises’s endeavor to deduce the whole of economics from the axiom of action, combined with a few subsidiary postulates. In much more detail than Mises had done, he carried out the deduction; and in the process, he contributed major theoretical innovations to [[praxeology]]. He showed that the socialist [[Economic calculation|calculation]] argument applies, not only to a governmentally controlled economy, but to a single private firm owning the entire economy as well. It too could not calculate. He also integrated [[Frank Fetter]]’s<ref name="Herbener_Fetter">Jeffrey Herbener. [http://mises.org/about/3231 "Frank A. Fetter (1863-1949): A Forgotten Giant"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref> theory of rent with Austrian capital theory; and argued that a [[monopoly]] price could not exist on the free market. Further, he offered a brilliant criticism of Keynesian economics, and he anticipated much of the "rational expectations" revolution for which [[Robert Lucas, Jr.]] later won a Nobel Prize.

As Rothbard originally planned ''Man, Economy, and State'', it was to include a final part that presented a comprehensive classification and analysis of types of government intervention. The section also subjected to withering criticism the standard canons of justice in taxation; a brief but brilliant passage refuted in advance the anti-market arguments based on "luck" that were to prove so influential in the later work of [[Wikipedia:John Rawls|John Rawls]] and his many successors. Unfortunately, the part appeared in the original edition only in a severely truncated form. Its full publication came only in 1972, under the title ''Power and Market''. The complete version of ''Man, Economy, and State'', as Rothbard originally intended it to appear, is now available from the [[Mises Institute]].

This masterly work was far from exhausting Rothbard’s contributions to economic theory. In a major paper, "[[Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics]]" (1956), he showed that if one takes seriously the fact that utility is ordinal and not cardinal, then the anti-market views of most modern welfare economists must be abandoned. Strict application of demonstrated preference allows one to say that the participants to a voluntary exchange expect ex ante to benefit. Further than this, the economist, so long as he remains value-free, cannot go. His main papers on economic theory are available in the posthumously published two-volume collection ''[[The Logic of Action]]'' (1997).

Rothbard devoted close attention to monetary theory. Here he emphasized the virtues of the classical [[gold standard]] and supported 100% reserve banking. This system, he held, would prevent the credit expansion that, according to the Austrian theory of the business cycle developed by Mises and [[Friedrich Hayek]], led to inevitable depression. He summarized his views for the general public in the often-reprinted pamphlet ''[[What Has Government Done to Our Money?]]'' (1964) and also wrote a textbook, ''[[The Mystery of Banking]]'' (1983).

Rothbard showed the illumination that Austrian theory could bring to economic history in [[America’s Great Depression]]. Far from being a proof of the failures of unregulated capitalism, the 1929 Depression illustrates rather the dangers of government interference with the economy. The economic collapse came as a necessary correction to the artificial boom induced by the [[Federal Reserve System]]’s monetary expansion during the 1920s. The attempts by the government to "cure" the downturn served only to make matters worse.

In making this argument, Rothbard became a pioneer in "Hoover revisionism". Contrary to the myths promoted by [[Herbert Hoover]] himself and his acolytes, Hoover was not an opponent of big government. Quite the contrary, the economic policies of the "Engineer in Politics" prefigured the [[New Deal]]. Rothbard’s view of Hoover is now widely accepted.

For Rothbard, banking policy was a key to American economic history. Like [[Wikipedia:Jules Michelet|Michelet]], he believed that history is a resurrection of the flesh; and his discussions are no dry-as-dust presentations of statistics. He was always concerned to identify the particular actors and interests behind historical decisions. The struggle between the competing [[J. P. Morgan]] and [[John D. Rockefeller]] banking circles figures again and again in his articles in this field, collected in his ''[[A History of Money and Banking in the United States]]'' (1999).

== Austrian School writings ==

The [[Austrian School]] attempts to discover axioms of human action (called "[[praxeology]]" in the Austrian tradition). It supports [[free market economics]] and criticizes [[command economy|command economies]]. Influential advocates were [[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk]], [[Friedrich Hayek]], and [[Ludwig von Mises]]. Rothbard argued that the entire Austrian economic theory is the working out of the logical implications of the fact that humans engage in purposeful action.<ref>Grimm, Curtis M.; Hunn, Lee; Smith, Ken G. Strategy as Action: Competitive Dynamics and Competitive Advantage. New York Oxford University Press (US). 2006. p. 43</ref> In working out these axioms he came to the position that a monopoly price could not exist on the free market. He also anticipated much of the “[[rational expectations]]” viewpoint in economics.

In accordance with his free market views Rothbard argued that individual protection and national defense also should be offered on the market, rather than supplied by government’s [[coercive monopoly]]. Rothbard was an ardent critic of [[Keynesian]] economic thought<ref>See Robthbard's essay "[[Keynes the Man]]", originally published in ''[[Dissent on Keynes: A Critical Appraisal of Keynesian Economics]]'', Edited by Mark Skousen. New York: Praeger, 1992, 171–198; Online edition at The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]].</ref> as well as the [[utilitarian]] theory of [[philosopher]] [[Jeremy Bentham]].<ref>See Rothbard's essay, "Jeremy Bentham: The Utilitarian as Big Brother" published in his work, ''Classical Economics''.</ref>

In ''Man, Economy, and State'' Rothbard divides the various kinds of state intervention in three categories: "autistic intervention", which is interference with private non-exchange activities; "binary intervention", which is forced exchange between individuals and the state; and "triangular intervention", which is state-mandated exchange between individuals. According to [[Sanford Ikeda]], Rothbard's typology "eliminates the gaps and inconsistencies that appear in Mises's original formulation."<ref>Ikeda, Sanford, ''Dyamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism'', Routledge UK, 1997, 245.</ref><ref>Murray Rothbard, [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap14.asp Chapter 2 "Fundamentals of Intervention"] from ''Man, Economy and State'', [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]].</ref>

Rothbard also was knowledgeable in history and political philosophy. Rothbard's books, such as ''Man, Economy, and State'', ''[[Power and Market]]'', ''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]'', and ''[[For a New Liberty]]'', are considered by some to be classics of [[natural law]] and [[libertarian]] thought, combining [[libertarian]] [[natural rights]] philosophy, anti-government [[anarchism]] and a [[free market]] perspective in analyzing a range of contemporary social and economic issues. He also possessed extensive knowledge of the history of economic thought, studying the pre-[[Adam Smith]] free market economic schools, such as the [[Scholastics]] and the [[Physiocrats]] and discussed them in his unfinished, multi-volume work, ''[[An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought]]''.

Rothbard writes in ''Power and Market'' that the role of the economist in a free market is limited, but the role and power of the economist in a government which continually intervenes in the market expands, as the interventions trigger problems which require further diagnosis and the need for further policy recommendations. Rothbard argues that this simple self-interest prejudices the views of many economists in favor of increased government intervention.<ref>Peter G. Klein, [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/2318 Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism], [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]], November 15, 2006</ref><ref>[http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap19.asp Man, Economy, and State, Chapter 7-Conclusion: Economics and Public Policy], [[Ludwig Von Mises Institute]].</ref>

Rothbard also created "Rothbard's law" that "people tend to specialize in what they are worst at. [[Henry George]], for example, is great on everything but land, so therefore he writes about land 90% of the time. [[Milton Friedman|Friedman]] is great except on money, so he concentrates on money."<ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/journals/aen/aen11-2-1/ Interview with Murray N. Rothbard], [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]], Summer 1990.</ref>

===Self-ownership===
In ''The Ethics of Liberty'', Rothbard asserts the right of total [[self-ownership]], as the only principle compatible with a moral code that applies to every person—a "universal ethic"—and that it is a [[natural law]] by being what is naturally best for man.<ref>Rothbard, Murray Newton. The Ethics of Liberty. NYU Press. 2003. pp. 45 - 45</ref> He believed that, as a result, individuals owned the fruits of their labor. Accordingly, each person had the right to exchange his property with others. He believed that if an individual mixes his labor with unowned land then he is the proper owner, and from that point on it is private property that may only exchange hands by trade or gift. He also argued that such land would tend not to remain unused unless it makes economic sense to not put it to use.<ref>Kyriazi, Harold. Reckoning With Rothbard (2004). ''American Journal of Economics and Sociology'' 63 (2), 451</ref>

===Egalitarianism===
The title essay of Murray Rothbard’s 1974 book ''[[Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays]]'' held that “Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences.” In it Rothbard wrote, “At the heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no structure of reality; that all the world is a [[tabula rasa]] that can be changed at any moment in any desired direction by the mere exercise of human will.”<ref>George C. Leef, [http://www.thefreemanonline.org/departments/book-review-egalitarianism-as-a-revolt-against-nature-and-other-essays-by-murray-rothbard-edited-by-david-gordon/# Book Review of Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays by Murray Rothbard, edited by David Gordon (2000 edition)], [[The Freeman]], July 2001.</ref><ref>Murray Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard31.html Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays], essay published in full at [[Lewrockwell.com]], 2003. See also Rothbard’s essay [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/3007 The Struggle Over Egalitarianism Continues], the 1991 introduction to republication of "Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor", [[Ludwig Von Mises Institute]], 2008.</ref> Rothbard also expressed his views that statists suppressed academic research on race in order to support their goal of using the state to enforce egalitarian goals.<ref>Murary Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch75.html Race! That Murray Book], [[LewRockwell.com]], December 1994.</ref>

In a 1963 article called the “Negro revolution” Rothbard wrote that “the Negro Revolution has some elements that a libertarian must favor, others that he must oppose. Thus, the libertarian opposes compulsory segregation and police brutality, but also opposes compulsory integration and such absurdities as ethnic quota systems in jobs.”<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2136&chapter=195367&layout=html&Itemid=27 The Negro Revolution], New Individualist Review, Volume 3, Number 1, Summer 1963.</ref> According to Rothbard biographer [[Justin Raimondo]], Rothbard considered [[Malcolm X]] to be a “great black leader” and [[Martin Luther King]] to be favored by whites because he “was the major restraining force on the developing Negro revolution.” Rothbard also compared [[Lyndon Baines Johnson|U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson]]’s use of troops to crush urban rioters in 1968 after King’s assassination to Johnson’s use of American troops against the [[Vietnam War|Vietnamese]].<ref>[[Justin Raimondo]], ''An Enemy of the State'', p. 167-168, Prometheus Books, 2000.</ref>

===Anarcho-capitalism===
Rothbard began to consider himself a private property anarchist in the 1950s and later began to use "[[anarcho-capitalism|anarcho-capitalist]]".<ref name="Crocetta">Roberta Modugno Crocetta, [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/scholar/roberta/ Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism in the contemporary debate. A critical defense], [[Ludwig Von Mises Institute]].</ref><ref>Michael Oliver, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html 'Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard], originally published in "The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal", February 25, 1972.</ref> He wrote: "Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism."<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html "Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard"] ''The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal'' (February 25, 1972)</ref> In his anarcho-capitalist model, a system of protection agencies compete in a free market and are voluntarily supported by consumers who choose to use their protective and judicial services. Anarcho-capitalism would mean the end of the state [[monopoly on force]].<ref name="Crocetta"/>

Rothbard was equally condemning of relationships he perceived between big business and big government. He cited many instances where business elites co-opted government's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals. He wrote in criticism of Ayn Rand's "misty devotion to the Big Businessman" that she: "is too committed emotionally to worship of the Big Businessman-as-Hero to concede that it is precisely Big Business that is largely responsible for the twentieth-century march into aggressive statism..."<ref>''For A New Liberty'' (1973), p. 17</ref> According to Rothbard, one example of such cronyism included grants of monopolistic privilege the railroads derived from sponsoring so-called conservation laws.<ref>''For A New Liberty'' (1973), Power and Market ch. 3</ref>

===Free market money===
{{See also|Free banking|Gold standard|Criticism of fractional reserve banking}}
Rothbard believed the [[monopoly power]] of government over the issuance and distribution of [[money]] was inherently destructive and unethical. The belief derived from [[Ludwig von Mises]] and [[Friedrich Hayek]]'s [[Austrian Business Cycle Theory|Austrian theory]] of the [[business cycle]], which holds that undue [[credit expansion]] inevitably leads to a gross misallocation of capital resources, triggering unsustainable [[credit bubble]]s and, eventually, [[economic depression]]s. He therefore strongly opposed [[central banking]] and [[fractional reserve banking]] under a [[fiat money]] system, labeling it as "legalized counterfeiting"<ref>[http://www.fff.org/freedom/0999c.asp The Case for a 100% Gold Dollar], Murray Rothbard</ref> or a form of institutionalized [[embezzlement]] and therefore inherently [[fraud]]ulent.<ref>"It should be clear that modern [[fractional reserve banking]] is a [[shell game]], a [[Ponzi scheme]], a [[fraud]] in which fake warehouse receipts are issued and circulate as equivalent to the cash supposedly represented by the receipt." Rothbard, Murray. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/mystery-of-banking-the/ ''The Mystery of Banking''], pp. 96-97, 89-94</ref><ref name="What is Money">[http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north769.html What is Money?], [[Gary North]]</ref> He characterized the government-enforced prohibition on citizens using [[gold as money|commodity currencies]] as legal tender a compulsory [[Ponzi scheme]], a [[Ponzi scheme]] from which no citizen could escape.<ref name="What is Money"/><ref>Rothbard, Murray. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/mystery-of-banking-the/ ''The Mystery of Banking''], pp. 96-97, 89-94</ref>

He strongly advocated [[full reserve banking]] ("100 percent banking")<ref>[https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/3480 The Case Against the Fed], Murray Rothbard: 'A [[gold standard|gold-coin standard]], coupled with instant liquidation for any bank that fails to meet its contractual obligations, would bring about a [[free banking]] system so “[[hard currency|hard]]” and sound, that any problem of [[monetary inflation|inflationary]] credit or [[counterfeit money|counterfeiting]] would be minimal. It is perhaps a “second-best” solution to the ideal of treating [[fractional-reserve banking|fractional-reserve bankers]] as [[embezzlement|embezzlers]], but it would suffice at least as an excellent solution for the time being, that is, until people are ready to press on to [[full reserve banking|full 100 percent banking]].'</ref> and a voluntary, nongovernmental [[gold standard]]<ref>See also these Rothbard articles: [https://freecapitalists.org/books/what-has-government-done-to-our-money/ What Has Government Done to Our Money?], [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/1829 The Case for the 100% Gold Dollar]; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/cartelization.pdf The Fed as Cartel], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard191.html Private Coinage], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard190.html Repudiate the National Debt]; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard181.html Taking Money Back], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard163.html Anatomy of the Bank Run], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard128.html Money and the Individual]</ref> or, as a second best solution, [[free banking]] (which he also called "free market money").<ref>Rothbard, Murray. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/mystery-of-banking-the/ ''The Mystery of Banking''], Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2008. p. 111, 278</ref>

In relation to the current [[central bank]]-managed [[fractional reserve banking|fractional reserve]] [[fiat currency]] [[debt-based monetary system|system]], he stated the following:<ref>Rothbard, Murray. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/mystery-of-banking-the/ ''The Mystery of Banking''], p. 261</ref>

{{quote|Given this dismal monetary and banking situation, given a 39:1 pyramiding of checkable deposits and currency on top of gold, given a Fed unchecked and out of control, given a world of fiat moneys, how can we possibly return to a sound noninflationary market money? The objectives, after the discussion in this work, should be clear: (a) to return to a gold standard, a commodity standard unhampered by government intervention; (b) to abolish the Federal Reserve System and return to a system of free and competitive banking; (c) to separate the government from money; and (d) either to enforce 100 percent reserve banking on the commercial banks, or at least to arrive at a system where any bank, at the slightest hint of nonpayment of its demand liabilities, is forced quickly into bankruptcy and liquidation. While the outlawing of fractional reserve as fraud would be preferable if it could be enforced, the problems of enforcement, especially where banks can continually innovate in forms of credit, make free banking an attractive alternative.}}

==Other pursuits==
Rothbard ranged far beyond economics in his historical work. In a four-volume series, ''[[Conceived in Liberty]]'' (1975-1979), he presented a detailed account of American colonial history that stressed the libertarian antecedents of the [[American Revolution]]. As usual, he challenged mainstream opinion. He had little use for [[Wikipedia:New England#New England and political thought|New England Puritanism]], and the virtues and military leadership of [[George Washington]] did not impress him. For Rothbard, the [[Articles of Confederation]] were not an overly weak arrangement that needed to be replaced by the more centrally focused [[United States Constitution|Constitution]]. Quite the contrary, the Articles themselves allowed too much central control.

Although Rothbard usually found himself in close agreement with Mises, in one area he maintained that Mises was mistaken. Mises contended that ethical judgments were subjective: ultimate ends are not subject to rational assessment. Rothbard dissented, maintaining that an objective ethics could be founded on the requirements of human nature. His approach, based on his study of [[Wikipedia:Aristotelianism|Aristotelian]] and [[Wikipedia:Thomism|Thomist philosophy]], is presented in his major work ''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]'' (1982), his major study of [[political philosophy]].

In his system of political ethics, [[self-ownership]] is the basic principle. Given a robust conception of self-ownership, a compulsory government monopoly of protective services is illegitimate; and Rothbard endeavors to refute the arguments to the contrary of supporters of a minimal state, [[Robert Nozick]] chief among them. He contributes important clarifications to problems of libertarian legal theory, such as the nature of contracts and the appropriate standard of punishment. He explains why Mises’s instrumental argument for the market does not fully succeed, though he finds much of value in it; and he criticizes in careful detail Hayek’s view of the rule of law.

===Noninterventionism===
Believing like [[Randolph Bourne]] that "war is the health of the state" Rothbard opposed aggressive foreign policy. He criticized imperialism and the rise of the American empire which needed war to sustain itself and to expand its global control. His dislike of U.S. imperialism even led him to eulogize and lament the [[CIA]]-assisted execution of [[Marxist]] revolutionary [[Che Guevara]] in 1967, proclaiming that "his enemy was our enemy".<ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/journals/lar/3-3-1/ ''Ernesto Che Guevara R.I.P.''] by Murray Rothbard, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought, Volume 3, Number 3 (Spring-Autumn 1967)</ref> Rothbard believed that stopping new wars was necessary and knowledge of how government had seduced citizens into earlier wars was important. Two essays expanded on these views "War, Peace, and the State" and "[[The Anatomy of the State]]". Rothbard used insights of the [[elitism]] theorists [[Vilfredo Pareto]], [[Gaetano Mosca]], and [[Robert Michels]] to build a model of state personnel, goals, and ideology.<ref>Joseph R. Stromberg, [http://antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=4296 Murray Rothbard on States, War, and Peace: Part I] (also see [http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=4420 Part II]), [[Antiwar.com]], originally published June 2000.</ref><ref>See both essays, Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard26.html War, Peace, and the State], first published 1963; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard62.html Anatomy of the State], first published 1974, both at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref> In an obituary for historian [[Harry Elmer Barnes]] Rothbard explained why historical knowledge is important:<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard165.html Harry Elmer Barnes, RIP], from "Left and Right" final issue, 1968, republished at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref>

{{quote|Our entry into World War II was the crucial act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the country a permanent garrison state, an overweening military-industrial complex, a permanent system of conscription. It was the crucial act in creating a mixed economy run by Big Government, a system of state-monopoly capitalism run by the central government in collaboration with Big Business and Big Unionism.}}

Rothbard discussed his views on the principles of a libertarian foreign policy in a 1973 interview: "minimize State power as much as possible, down to zero, and [[isolationism]] is the full expression in foreign affairs of the domestic objective of whittling down State power." He further called for "abstinence from any kind of American military intervention and political and economic intervention."<ref name="Rothbard on War"/> In ''For a New Liberty'' he writes: "In a purely libertarian world, therefore, there would be no 'foreign policy' because there would be no States, no governments with a monopoly of coercion over particular territorial areas."<ref name="For a New Liberty"/>

In "War Guilt in the Middle East" Rothbard details Israel's "aggression against Middle East Arabs," confiscatory policies and its "refusal to let these refugees return and reclaim the property taken from them."<ref>Murray Rothbard, [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/lar/3-3-4/ War Guilt in the Middle East], "Left and Right", Vol. 3 No. 3 (Autumn 1967) ([http://mises.org/rothbard/1967-1969.asp cited here].)</ref> Rothbard also criticized the “organized Anti-Anti-Semitism” that critics of the state of Israel have to suffer.<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch6.html Pat Buchanan and the Menace of Anti-anti-semitism], December 1990, from ''The Irrepressible Rothbard'', published at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref> Rothbard criticized as [[state terrorism|terrorism]] the actions of the United States, Israel, and any nation that "retaliates" against innocents because they cannot pinpoint actual perpetrators. He held that no retaliation that injures or kills innocent people is justified, writing "Anything else is an apologia for unremitting and unending mass murder."<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard110.html Who Are the Terrorists?], first published in the ''[[Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian Party]] News'', March/April 1986, reproduced at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref>

===Political views===
Rothbard modified the famous dictum of [[Karl Marx|Marx]]: he wished both to understand and change the world. He endeavored to apply the ideas he had developed in his theoretical work to current politics and to bring libertarian views to the attention of the general public. One issue for him stood foremost. Like [[Randolph Bourne]], he maintained that "war is the health of the state"; he accordingly opposed an aggressive foreign policy.

His support for nonintervention in foreign policy led him to champion the [[Old Right (United States)|Old Right]]. [[John T. Flynn]]<ref name="Raimondo_Flynn">Justin Raimondo. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/2890 "Who is John T. Flynn?"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref>, [[Garet Garrett]]<ref name="Tucker_Garett">Jeffrey A. Tucker. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/2751 "Who Is Garet Garrett?"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref> and other pre-World War II "isolationists" shared Rothbard’s belief in the close connection between state power and bellicose foreign policy.

The situation was quite otherwise with postwar conservatism. Although Rothbard was an early contributor to [[William F. Buckley, Jr.|William Buckley]]’s [[National Review]], he rejected the aggressive pursuit of the Cold War advocated by Buckley and such members of his editorial staff as [[James Burnham]] and [[Frank S. Meyer]]. He broke with these self-styled conservatives and thereafter became one of their strongest opponents. For similar reasons, he condemned their [[Neoconservatism|neoconservative]] successors. He followed a pragmatic policy of temporary alliances with whatever groups were, at a given time, opposed to militarism and foreign adventures. He set forward the basis for his political stance in a key essay, "[[Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty]]". This appeared in an important scholarly journal, [[Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought|Left and Right]] ([http://mises.org/journals/left-right.asp main page]), which he established. This contained major essays on [[Historical revisionism|revisionist history]] and foreign policy, but unfortunately lasted only from 1965-1968.

In an effort to widen the influence of libertarian thought in the academic world, Rothbard founded the [[Journal of Libertarian Studies]] ([http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=3 main page]) in 1977. The journal began auspiciously with a symposium on Robert Nozick’s [[Anarchy, State, and Utopia]]. Down to the present, it has remained the most important journal hospitable to libertarian ideas.

Rothbard established in 1987 another journal, the Review of Austrian Economics ([http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=5 main page]), to provide a scholarly venue for economists and others interested in Austrian theory. It too is the key journal in its area of specialty. It has continued to the present, after 1997 under the new name [[Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics]] ([http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=4 main page]).

In his comments on current events, Rothbard displayed an ability to digest vast quantities of information on whatever subject interested him. Whether, e.g., the question was competing factions in [[Afghanistan]] or the sources of investment in oil in the [[Middle East]], he would always have the relevant data at his command. A sample of his columns, taken from the Rockwell Rothbard Report, is available in The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000; [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=174 review]). Another journal that he founded, [[The Libertarian Forum]] ([https://freecapitalists.org/books/complete-libertarian-forum-1969-1984/ main page]), provides his topical comments for the period 1969-1984. He presented a comprehensive popular account of libertarianism in [[For A New Liberty]] (1973; [https://freecapitalists.org/books/for-a-new-liberty-the-libertarian-manifesto/ text], [https://freecapitalists.org/books/for-a-new-liberty-the-libertarian-manifesto/ pdf]).

One last academic triumph remained for Rothbard, though sadly it appeared only after his death. In two massive volumes, [[An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought|Economic Thought Before Adam Smith and Classical Economics]] (1995; volume [https://freecapitalists.org/books/economic-thought-before-adam-smith-an-austrian-perspective-on-the-history-of-economic-thought-volume-i/ I.] and [https://freecapitalists.org/books/classical-economics-an-austrian-perspective-on-the-history-of-economic-thought-volume-ii/ II.] pdf), he presented a minutely detailed and erudite account of the history of economic theory. [[Adam Smith]]<ref name="Rothbard_Smith">Murray N. Rothbard. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/2012 "The Adam Smith Myth"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref>, contrary to general belief, was not the founder of modern economics. His defense of a labor theory of value, modified and continued by his Ricardian successors, shunted economics onto the wrong path. The heroes of Rothbard’s study were the [[School of Salamanca|Spanish scholastics]], who long before Smith had developed a subjective theory of value, and such later figures as [[Richard Cantillon|Cantillon]], [[Anne Robert Jacques Turgot|Turgot]], and [[Jean-Baptiste Say|Say]]. He dissects the heretical religious thought that prefigured Marxism and gives a mordant portrayal of the personality and thought of [[John Stuart Mill]].

Rothbard was closely associated with the [[Mises Institute|Ludwig von Mises Institute]] from its founding in 1982 by [[Lew Rockwell|Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr]]. This organization became the main vehicle for the promotion of his ideas, and he served as its Academic Vice-President.

He taught at [[Polytechnic Institute of New York University|Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute]] from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s; from 1986 to his death on January 7, 1995, he was S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics at the [[University of Nevada, Las Vegas|University of Nevada, Las Vegas]].

The "indispensable framework" for the life and work of this creative genius and polymath was his beloved wife, JoAnn Rothbard. His combination of scholarly achievement and engaged advocacy on behalf of freedom is unmatched.

<small>[http://mises.org/about/3249 Original text] written by David Gordon, used with generous permission of the [[Mises Institute]].</small>

==Curriculum Vitae==

=====Academic Degrees=====
*B.A. Mathematics, Columbia University (1945)
*M.A. Economics, Columbia University (1946)
*Ph.D. Economics, Columbia University (1956)

=====Academic Appointments=====
*Instructor, City College of New York (1948-1949)
*Professor of Economics, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (1963-1985)
*Vice President for Academic Affairs, Ludwig von Mises Institute (1982-1995)
*S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1986-1995)

=====Other Positions=====
*Senior Analyst, William Volker Fund (1951-1962)
*Editor, Left and Right (1965-1968)
*Founder, Center for Libertarian Studies (1976)
*Resident Scholar, The Cato Institute (1977)
*Founder, Journal of Libertarian Studies (1977)
*Editor, Journal of Libertarian Studies (1977-1995)
*Consultant, U.S. Commission on Gold (1981-1982)
*Founder, The Review of Austrian Economics (1987)
*Editor, The Review of Austrian Economics (1987-1995)

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==Links==
* [https://freecapitalists.org/authors/murray-n-rothbard/ Author page and works at the Liberty Archive]
{{wikiquote}}
* Biography
** [http://murrayrothbard.com/ MurrayRothbard.com]
** [http://mises.org/about/3249 Biography of Murray N. Rothbard] at [[Mises.org]]
*** [https://freecapitalists.org/authors/murray-n-rothbard/ Media archive]
*** [https://freecapitalists.org/authors/murray-n-rothbard/ Literature archive]
*** [http://mises.org/articles.aspx?AuthorId=299 Daily Article archive]
** [http://mises.org/content/mnrbib.asp The complete Rothbard bibliography]
** [http://mises.org/content/mnrasidof.asp A Scholar in Defense of Freedom], a bibliographic essay
** [http://murrayrothbard.com/category/about/ Reflections on Murray Rothbard]
*** Tributes and Essays to Rothbard by [http://mises.org/content/blockonmnr.asp Walter Block], [https://freecapitalists.org/books/murray-n-rothbard-economics-science-and-liberty/ Hans Hoppe], [http://mises.org/web/2013 Lew Rockwell], [http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1708 Jeffrey A. Tucker], and [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/4959 Joseph Salerno]
*** {{md|4074|Rothbard the Teacher|[[Doug French]]|May 1995}}
*** {{md|2551|Murray N. Rothbard: In Memoriam|[[Robert Higgs]]|June 2007}}
*** ''Murray N. Rothbard: In Memoriam'' ([https://freecapitalists.org/books/murray-n-rothbard-in-memoriam/ PDF]) Ed. [[Lew Rockwell|Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.]] 1995
** [http://www.wendymcelroy.com/rockwell/mcelroy000706.html "Murray N. Rothbard: Mr. Libertarian"] by [[Wendy McElroy]] July 2000

* Interviews and debates
** [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/aen/aen11-2-1/ "Interview with Murray N. Rothbard"] ''[[The Austrian Economics Newsletter]]'', Summer 1990
** {{md|2215|Friedman Contra Rothbard|[[David Gordon]]|June 2006}}
** [http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/06/murray-rothbard-on-me-and-vice-versa.html "Murray Rothbard on Me and Vice Versa"] by [[David D. Friedman|David Friedman]], June 2011
** [http://notreason.com/2009/06/08/murray-rothbard-on-chomsky-left-anarchists/ "Murray Rothbard on Chomsky, Left Anarchists"] (from ''[[The Libertarian Forum]]'', June 1971 ([https://freecapitalists.org/journals/lf/1971-06/ PDF])

* Other media
** The Mises Circle: [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/document/1805 "Rothbard's Intellectual Entrepreneurship"] lecture by [[Doug French]], August 2006 <small>(published as Mises Daily [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/2281 here])</small>
** Rothbard's [http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=showname&ID=299 Audio Economics Course]
** [http://mises.org/rothspeak/murray.asp Short Clips]

*{{Wikipedia link}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rothbard, Murray N.}}
[[Category:Anarcho-capitalists]]
[[Category:Economists]]
[[Category:Historians]]
[[Category:Political theorists]]

Movimento Libertario (Italian)

2026-08-16T04:26:32Z

ArchiveBot: Repoint 1 dead mises.org link to the archived original (automated; see Austrian Economics Wiki:Link repointing)

{{Infobox political party
|name = Movimento Libertario
|logo = [[File:Logoml.JPG|200px]]
|colorcode = gold
|colors = [[Yellow]] or [[Gold (color)|gold]]
|leader = [[Leonardo Facco]]
|leader2_title = Coordinator
|leader2_name = [[Giorgio Fidenato]]
|spokesperson =
|foundation = {{Start date|24 settembre, 2005 (lanciato come movimento culturale)<br /> Settembre 2007 (fondato come partito-movimento politico)}}
|newspaper = ''[http://www.leonardofaccoeditore.com/enclave/index.htm ''Enclave'']'', ''[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59 ''I Fogli di Enclave'']''
|ideology = [[agorism]], [[anarcho-capitalism]], [[anti-federalism]], [[anti-statism]], [[classical liberalism]], [[euroscepticism]], [[free market]], [[Individualism]], [[laissez-faire]], [[liberism]], [[libertarianism]], [[minarchism]], [[non-interventionism]], [[non-violence]], [[non-voting]], [[Objectivism (Ayn Rand)|objectivism]], [[voluntaryism]]
|headquarters = [[Pordenone]]
|international = [[Internazionale Libertari]]
|european = None
|website = http://www.movimentolibertario.com/
|country = Italy
}}

I termini '''Movimento Libertario''' (acronimo ML) sono qui usati per fare riferimento a un soggetto politico italiano caratterizzato culturalmente da una piattaforma [[libertarianismo|libertarian]], di [[liberalismo classico]] a livello culturale favorevole ad una regolamentazione minima della società italiana, al [[liberismo]] e al [[laissez-faire]] dei mercati, alla strenua difesa dei diritti naturali di [[libertà]] e [[proprietà]] e al [[non-interventismo]] in politica estera.

==Storia==
===Fondazione===

Inizialmente il Movimento Libertario era originariamente solo una associazione culturale italiana per la diffusione e la divulgazione del libertarianismo e del liberalismo classico.

Come associazione culturale, il Movimento Libertario ha avuto inizio il 24 settembre 2005, a [[Treviglio]] con la redazione del "Manifesto e la costituzione del Movimento Libertario" per opera di [[Leonardo Facco]]<ref name="manifesto">Leonardo Facco. [http://digilander.libero.it/cssc/liborg/enclave/MANIFESTO.doc "Manifesto e Statuto del Movimento Libertario"], Treviglio, 24 Settembre, 2005</ref>.

Il Movimento Libertario è diventato in seguito anche un soggetto politico italiano quando venne fondato ufficialmente nel settembre 2007 da Leonardo Facco, [[Giorgio Fidenato]] e [[Marcello Mazzilli]]<ref>[http://opinione.it/articolo.php?arg=14&art=61183 ''La via libertaria alla felicità''] ''L'Opinione'', by Elisa Borghi. 18 maggio, 2007</ref>, al fine di difendere la vita, la libertà e la proprietà di ogni individuo all'interno di un sistema liberista di [[libero mercato]], contro ogni tipo di aggressione e/o di coercizione statale.<ref name="statute">Leonardo Facco, Giorgio Fidenato, Marcello Mazzilli [http://www.movimentolibertario.it/Documenti/Statuto_MLsett-07.pdf "Statuto del Movimento Libertario"], Treviglio, Settembre 2007</ref>

L'Associazione ha sede legale nel Comune di [[Pordenone]]<ref name="statute" />.

===Simbolo===

Il Movimento Libertario ha come simbolo un disco rotondo con un fondo giallo-oro in riferimento al [[sistema aureo]], i suoi colori connotano la sua appartenenza al movimento [[anarco-capitalismo|anarco-capitalista]].

All'interno del simbolo sono presenti le parole (in colore nero) "Proprietà" e "Libertà", e che si riferiscono al diritto naturale ritenuto essenziale da libertari.

Al centro del disco, il simbolo del movimento è un'immagine stilizzata di una balestra nero; l'arma è un omaggio alla vicina [[Svizzera]] e in particolare al leggendario [[Guglielmo Tell]], come simbolo di ribellione fiscale per l'autonomia politica federalista e l'indipendenza delle persone.

Sotto l'immagine compare la scritta "Movimento Libertario", i termini sono usati in riferimento per definire l'entità politica ma anche la natura delle singole azioni umane (Movimento) e quelle teorie che genericamente danno preminenza alla scelta individuale prima di qualsiasi potere politico (Libertario).

===La questione dell'uso del termine "libertario" in Italia===

In Italia il concetto di "movimento libertario" ha un duplice significato.

Storicamente, la prima si riferisce generalmente al movimento [[anarchismo|anarchico]] italiano ed ai movimenti libertari con una ispirazione marxista e anarchica sociale.<ref>{{cite book | last = Woodcock | first = George | title = L'anarchia: storia delle idee e dei movimenti libertari | publisher = Feltrinelli Editore | location = Milano | year = 1966}}</ref>

La tradizione anarchica socialista usa il termine libertario per descrivere se stessi e le loro idee dal 1857.

L'anarchico comunista francese [[Joseph Déjacque]] impiegò il termine libertario in senso politico in una lettera aperta criticando [[Proudhon]].<ref name="Graham">''[[Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas]] - Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939)]'', ed. [[Robert Graham (historian)|Robert Graham]]; includes English translations of Joseph Dejacque’s 1857 letter to Proudhon.</ref><ref name="dejacque">[http://joseph.dejacque.free.fr/ecrits/lettreapjp.htm “De l'être-humain mâle et femelle–Lettre à P.J. Proudhon par Joseph Déjacque”] (in [[French language|French]])</ref>

Déjacque disse Proudhon era "et non LIBERTAIRE liberale", cioè il neologismo, [[libertarismo]] fu coniato appositamente come distinzione rispetto al liberalismo classico, che Proudhon sosteneva in relazione agli scambi economici, in contrasto con l'approccio più comunitarista sostenuto da Déjacque.<ref name="Graham"/><ref name="Déjacque1857concerning">[http://joseph.dejacque.free.fr/etudes/neologisme.htm Pelosse, Valentin (1972). ''Joseph Déjacque e il neologismo libertario'']</ref>

Dal 1858 fino al 1861 Déjacque pubblicò a [[New York]] una rivista chiamata Le Libertaire: Journal du Mouvement social.<ref name="Nettlau">''[http://joseph.dejacque.free.fr/libertaire/libertaire.htm Le Libertaire]—all editions online</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=A Short History of Anarchism |last=Nettlau |first=Max |authorlink=Max Nettlau |year=1996 |pages=75–6, 162}}</ref>

Dal 1890 il termine "libertarismo", è stato spesso usato come sinonimo di anarchismo di sinistra o al socialismo libertario, <ref name="Nettlau"/> ed esclusivamente così fino al 1950 negli [[Stati Uniti]] <ref name=whosalib>{{cite journal |last=Russell |first=Dean |year=1955 |month=May |title=Who Is A Libertarian? |journal=The Freeman |volume=5 |issue=5 |publisher=The Foundation for Economic Education |url=http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/who-is-a-libertarian/ |accessdate=March 6, 2010}}</ref><ref name=AnarchismVSI>Colin Ward, [http://books.google.com/books?id=kksrWshoIkYC ''Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction''], [[Oxford University Press]], 2004, p. 62. "For a century, anarchists have used the word 'libertarian' as a synonym for 'anarchist', both as a noun and an adjective. The celebrated anarchist journal ''Le Libertaire'' was founded in 1896. However, much more recently the word has been appropriated by various American free-market philosophers..."</ref><ref name=LibismAndAnarch>
* Goodway, David. Anarchists Seed Beneath the Snow. Liverpool Press. 2006, p. 4
* MacDonald, Dwight & Wreszin, Michael. Interviews with [[Dwight Macdonald]]. University Press of Mississippi, 2003. p. 82
* Gay, Kathlyn. Encyclopedia of Political Anarchy. ABC-CLIO / University of Michigan, 2006, p. 126
* [[George Woodcock|Woodcock, George]]. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Broadview Press, 2004. (Uses the terms interchangeably, such as on page 10)
</ref>

[[File:Ancapflag.svg|thumb|left|200px|]] Nel 1960, il giurista italiano di filosofia liberale classica, [[Bruno Leoni]]<ref>Antonio Masala, ''Il liberalismo di Bruno Leoni'', Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2003.</ref>, introdusse in [[Italia]], i concetti di [[libertarianism]] facendo riferimento alle teorizzazioni contenute nel libro di [[Murray Newton Rothbard]] ''[[Man, Economy, and State]]''.

Nel 1961, Leoni scrisse in inglese il suo libro ''[[Freedom and the Law]]''<ref>Bruno Leoni, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=920&Itemid=27 ''Freedom and the Law''], New York, Nostrand, 1961</ref>, frutto delle lezioni da lui impartite in California nel 1958.

In questa opera egli sottolinea l'importanza storica della legge (ius civile romano e diritto consuetudinario inglese) ed è molto critico nei confronti della legislazione moderna e l'idea che la legge può essere il semplice risultato di una decisione politica.

Riflessioni sul diritto di Leoni, tra cui la critica ad[[Hans Kelsen]], aiutarono a comprendere meglio le straordinarie potenzialità della [[Scuola Austriaca]] delle Scienze Sociali, che ha avuto origine con [[Carl Menger]], [[Ludwig von Mises]], [[Friedrich von Hayek]]<ref>Carlo Lottieri, ''Bruno Leoni e l'ombra di Hayek. Libertà individuale, common law e Stato moderno'', in Antonio Masala, a cura di, ''La teoria politica di Bruno Leoni'', Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2005, p. 158.</ref> e [[Murray N. Rothbard]].<ref name="austrian">[http://www.opinione.it/articolo.php?arg=2&art=50649 ''L'eredità della scuola austriaca''] ''l'Opinione'', by William Longhi. 29 Aprile 2004.</ref>

Utilizzando l'individualismo metodologico giuridico, l'analisi delle istituzioni e l'origine evolutiva della teoria soggettiva del valore, Leoni ha dimostrato che non solo l'economia ma l'intera riflessione sulla società possono trarre grandi vantaggi dagli insegnamenti di base della scuola austriaca.

Leoni non ha introdotto l'uso del termine "libertario" in Italia in riferimento al libetarianism, ma solo i concetti di questa teoria politica che sostiene la massimizzazione della libertà individuale di pensiero e di azione e la riduzione al minimo o addirittura l'abolizione dello Stato.<ref>[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/libertarianism Definition of libertarianism] in [[Merriam-Webster Dictionary]]</ref><ref name=Stanford>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Vallentyne |first=Peter |editor=Edward N. Zalta |encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |title=Libertarianism |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/libertarianism/ |accessdate=March 5, 2010 |edition=Spring 2009 |date=September 5, 2002 |year=2009 |month=March |id={{ISSN|1095-5054}} |publisher=[[Stanford University]] |location=[[Stanford, CA]]}}</ref> <ref>Professor Brian Martin, [http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/95state.html Eliminating state crime by abolishing the state]; Murray Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard75.html Do You Hate the State?], [[The Libertarian Forum]], Vol. 10, No. 7, July 1977; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/feser2.html What Libertarianism Isn't]; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/alston3.html A Libertarian Cheat Sheet] by Wilton D. Alston; Murrary Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard168.html Myth and Truth About Libertarianism].</ref><ref>Sciabarra, Chris Mathew. [http://books.google.com/books?id=Ly9S2quKl1EC&dq=Total+Freedom:+Toward+a+Dialectical+Libertarianism&source=gbs_navlinks_s ''Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism''], Penn State Press, 2000, p. 193.</ref>

Questi concetti fortemente anti-statalisti e contro il [[monopolismo]] della politica (si veda in particolare il saggio ''Mito e Realtà dei Monopoli'', 1965), sono stati interpretati da molti osservatori italiani e critici intellettuali come una sottospecie di anarchismo italiano (per l'appunto "libertario").<ref>Carlo Lottieri, ''Le ragioni del diritto. Libertà individuale e ordine giuridico nel pensiero di Bruno Leoni'', Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2006.</ref>

Nel 1978 l'economista francese [[Henri Lepage]] con il suo libro ''Demain le capitalisme'' (Domani il capitalismo) sulla base di una panoramica dei pensatori libertarian d'Oltreoceano, introdusse dagli Stati Uniti in [[Europa]] il termine "libertarianismo" con l'evidente intenzione di evitare incomprensioni con il libertarismo tradizionale europeo, ma dopo un decennio di uso del termine nel contesto italiano per definire tali teorie, il termine finì per indicare anche i concetti e i principi del libertarianismo americano.

Quindi il significato del termine "libertario" coesiste nominalmente comunemente quantomeno in Italia con la stessa parola usata per indicare due approcci concettuali differenti non solo dal punto formale, l'anarchismo collettivista tradizionale e il libertarianism americano quale filosofia di mercato libero.

I libertari italiani del Movimento Libertario usano legittimamente il termine ''libertario'' non per riferirsi a idee anarchiche comunitarie di derivazione europea o ai metodi di anarchismo tradizionale, ma ai concetti di principi del liberalismo di mercato che secondo questi, sono ritenuti i più coerenti per giungere alla realizzazione di una società senza Stato.

Usando il termine "libertario" vogliono anche sottolineare e ampliare la distanza culturale italiana ed europea, dalla concezione del liberalismo politico che nel XX° secolo si è espresso per lo più in forma di [[liberalismo democratico]] e di [[statalismo]].

I libertari italiani della ML preferiscono definirsi con l'aggettivo connotativo di anarco-capitalisti, per distinguere se stessi come i sostenitori pro-mercato dai socialisti libertari e dagli anarchici tradizionali.

==Differenza sul concetto di anarchia nel libertario anarco-capitalismo da altre forme di anarchismo==

Il libertarianismo americano, sia nella sua forma anarco-capitalista che nelle sue varie accezioni attribuibili, rivendica la sua presenza entro l'ambito dell'anarchismo, anche se non rinnega le proprie radici liberali classiche, portandole alle sue estreme e radicali considerazioni.<ref name="Norman P. Barry">Norman P. Barry, ''Del liberalismo classico e del libertarianismo'', ELiDiR , Roma, 1993</ref>

L'anarchismo nella filosofia anarco-capitalista è un atteggiamento di [[nonviolenza]], che deriva al fine di eliminare lo Stato di realizzare un mercato libero e una società volontaria di liberi individui.

L'anarchismo non è un fine per negare tutte le regole a differenza del movimento anarchico europeo di matrice tradizionale, ma piuttosto la naturale conseguenza di opposizione al statalismo a fronte di regole basilari razionali e giusnaturali.

L'anarco-capitalismo è un [[anarchismo individualista]]<ref>Adams, Ian. 2002. Political Ideology Today. p. 135. Manchester University Press; Ostergaard, Geoffrey. 2003. Anarchism. In W. Outwaite (Ed.), ''The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought''. p. 14. Blackwell Publishing</ref> ed è una filosofia politica che sostiene l'eliminazione dello Stato Sovrano mettendo l'individuo quale essere sovrano entro un contesto decisionale di libero mercato.

Gli anarchici italiani tradizionali e collettivisti, ritengono che i libertarian appartenenti al Movimento Libertario non siano veri anarchici per la loro visione favorevole alle libertà economiche, quanto piuttosto uno stratagemma dell'élite liberale classica e della classe media per aumentare la disuguaglianza sociale.

Essi ritengono inoltre che l'uso del termine "libertario", sia inopportuno per la natura del movimento all'interno del contesto storico italiano.<ref name="Norman P. Barry" />.

I membri del Movimento Libertario respingono tali manipolazioni circa la loro identità e immagine dato che ritengono che senza le libertà economiche e la difesa della proprietà privata non si possano realizzare e instaurare pacifici rapporti tra individui.

Essi rivendicano per sé la correttezza dell'uso della definizione di "libertario" nel contesto italiano, sottolineando la loro opposizione all'uso di bombe e della violenza tipico dell'anarchismo insurrezionale.

====La critica al movimento anarchico e anarco-collettivista circa le future prospettive della società====

Se l'anarchismo tradizionale considera l'anarco-capitalismo come movimento che tende a voler mantenere le regole senza Stato, a sua volta l'anarco-capitalismo ritiene accettabili solo le regole che deriva dal diritto naturale.

L'anarco-capitalismo critica l'anarchismo tradizionale e l'anarchismo collettivista di origine marxista perché tenderebbero a concentrarsi senza coerenza sugli obiettivi anti-statalisti da un punto formale ma non sostanziale.

Entrambe le forme anarchiche di sinistra pur non fornendo validi e solide prove a favore dei loro modelli sociali di sviluppo post-statuali, sono convinte che un ordine spontaneo basato sulla concorrenza di mercato e lo scambio sia impossibile.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5218:anarco-capitalismo-contro-anarco-nazicomunismo&catid=1:latest-news ''Anarco-capitalismo contro anarco-nazional-comunismo''] ''Enclave'' n°15, 2001, di Guglielmo Piombini. 8 Maggio 8, 2010. in [http://www.movimentolibertario.it/ http://www.movimentolibertario.it/]</ref>

Secondo gli anarcocapitalisti, l'anarchismo tradizionale tende a sviluppare solo sè stesso come un violento obiettivo finale, interpretando il concetto di [[anarchia]] come sinonimo di [[anomia]] senza regole, spaventando inutilmente la gente con la violenza.

I tradizionali anarchici sociali sono incapaci di comprendere le dinamiche naturali di libera scelta dell'economia di mercato e la differenza fondamentale tra l'economia di libero mercato e di capitalismo puro dal modello di stato corporativo o capitalismo di stato.

Secondo gli anarco-capitalisti, l'anarco-comunismo con l'abolizione della proprietà individuale non difenderebbe la libertà di scelta ma la subordinerebbe alle necessità collettive della comunità proprio come lo Stato.

Il Movimento Libertario ritiene che solo l'opzione di anarco-capitalista, basata sulla proprietà privata e il rispetto dei diritti naturali, può consentire una società futura pacifica e una consapevolezza individuale nelle scelte.

Le funzioni attualmente svolte dal [[welfare state]] dovrebbero quindi tornare a libere associazioni, comunità e volontari spirito filantropico.

In una società anarco-capitalista, l'applicazione della legge e tutti gli altri servizi compresi quelli difensivi e di sicurezza possono essere forniti dai concorrenti finanziati su base volontaria come le agenzie di difesa privata piuttosto che attraverso l'imposizione fiscale, attraverso la gestione privata e competitiva fornita in un mercato aperto anche a livello monetario.

Secondo gli anarco-capitalisti le attività economiche personali dovrebbero essere disciplinate dalla [[legge naturale]] del mercato e attraverso il diritto privato piuttosto che attraverso la politica.<ref>Friedman, David D. ''The Machinery of Freedom''. Chapter 42</ref>

I libertari anarco-capitalisti credono che l'unica proficua opzione economica sia attraverso il commercio volontario, la donazione, o il lavoro retribuito privatamente, piuttosto che attraverso l'aggressione o la frode.<ref>[[Paul Avrich|Avrich, Paul]]. ''Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Abridged Paperback Edition (1996), p. 282</ref>

Promuovere un quadro comune di azione e di principi condivisi, non significa che la realtà deve essere necessariamente solo un modello di sviluppo utilitarista anarco-capitalista in senso restrittivo, o necessariamente teleologico-intenzionale come identità anarco-capitalista in termini di presenza principale.

E'possibile che nel contesto generale di accettazione del diritto di proprietà, del libero scambio e dell'assioma di non-aggressione tra gli individui, si possano formare in termini panarchici sul territorio altri modelli futuri relativi a diverse forme di prospettive economico-sociale libertario in concorrenza pacifica tra gli altri a fianco di quelli anarco-capitalisti.

Anche se è assai dubbio che questi futuri modelli di sviluppo alternativi all'anarcocapitalismo possano portare ricchezza e prosperità, la loro presenza non viene negata dagli anarco-capitalisti a patto che in questi vi sia la consapevolezza di un reciproco riconoscimento di base e il rispetto dei principi tra persone e proprietà di enclavi differenti.

==Diffusione culturale==

Il Movimento Libertario, come associazione culturale si pone quale promotore italiano della diffusione del liberalismo classico e di una visione libertarian della società del libero mercato e del liberalismo economico in economia.<ref name="aboutus">Leonardo Facco. [http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=54 "Movimento Libertario: Chi siamo"]. 6 Giugno, 2009.</ref>.

Uno dei loro motti è: "Ognuno è libero di fare ciò che ritiene giusto per se stesso, senza attaccare nessuno e senza attaccare i diritti di proprietà degli altri".

I membri del Movimento Libertario ritengono che la politica sia soprattutto la diffusione della cultura della libertà come libertà economica, ecco perchè tra le loro attività sono numerosi e frequenti gli incontri, i dibattiti, il dato informativo sul web, conferenze e pubblicazioni.<ref name="manifesto" />

===Ispirazione===

Il Movimento Libertario è politicamente ispirato al liberalismo classico di [[John Locke]] e dei [[Padri fondatori degli Stati Uniti d'America]], coniugato con l'anarchismo individualista americano del XIX secolo di [[Benjamin Tucker]], [[Henry David Thoreau]] e [[Lysander Spooner]].<ref>Paolo Zanotto, [http://www.unisi.it/ricerca/dip/gips/document/monografie/mon_02.pdf ''Il Movimento Libertario americano dagli anni sessanta ad oggi: radici storico-dottrinali e discriminanti ideologico-politiche''], Siena, Università degli Studi di Siena, 2001. [http://www.unisi.it http://www.unisi.it]</ref><ref name="theory">[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=55 ''La teoria politica dei libertari'']</ref>

In economia si ispira agli insegnamenti della scuola austriaca e in particolare alla formulazione teorica del filosofo ed economista libertarian anarco-capitalista Murray N. Rothbard.<ref name="austrian" /><ref name="theory" /><ref name="crisis">[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5660:crisi-quando-spiegammo-come-stavano-le-cose&catid=1:latest-news ''Crisi: Quando spiegammo come stavano le cose''] 25 maggio, 2010.</ref>

Le azioni a favore della resistenza fiscale, lo spirito imprenditoriale e l'astensione dal voto elettorale ricordano le riflessioni [[agorismo|agoriste]] di [[Samuel Edward Konkin III]]<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3144&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=1 ''Konkin e l'agorismo''] di Samuel Edward Konkin III. 23 Gennaio, 2009. ''Introduction to the Agorist Class Theory''. Archived from ''New Libertarian Notes'' #28, December 1973.</ref> anche se il Movimento Libertario non ufficialmente si identifica nelle posizioni programmatiche e lo spettro dei libertari rothbardiani di sinistra americani.

Il Movimento Libertario include anche alcuni aspetti del modello americano di libertà teorizzato da [[Robert Nozick]] ([[miniarchismo]]) e la filosofia [[oggettivismo (Ayn Rand)|oggettivismo]] dei romanzi di [[Ayn Rand]].<ref name="theory" /><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3467&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=55 ''Ayn Rand, la più letta in tempi di Bailout''] by Michael Shermer. Retrived on October 22, 2009. Archived from [http://www.brunoleoni.it/nextpage.aspx?codice=8561 http://www.brunoleoni.it]</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3615%3Aayn-rand-qdivaq-della-tv-americana&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=55 ''Ayn Rand "Diva" della tv americana?''] Retrived on December 29, 2009.</ref>

Il Movimento Libertario si riferisce alla libertà di associazione del federalismo anarchico, all'anarco-capitalismo di libero mercato e alla società con governo limitato di matrice jeffersoniana del liberalismo classico.

Il termine "[[federalismo]]", viene usato dal Movimento Libertario nel suo significato a favore di una politica di decentramento e di fiscalità locale contro il centralismo dello Stato nazionale italiano.<ref>[http://ricerca.gelocal.it/ilcentro/archivio/ilcentro/2005/10/05/CPAPO_CPA01.html ''Finanziaria elettorale''] ''Il centro'' di Leonardo Facco. page 10. 5 ottobre, 2005.</ref>.

Non è usato per indicare l'aumento del potere centrale come in ambito americano; non a caso il Movimento Libertario è una organizzazione anti-federalista riguardo l'Europa, ed è contro il governo centralizzato dell'[[Unione europea]], preferendo l'adesione volontaria e l'unanimità di una [[Confederazione]].

I pensatori italiani storici di riferimento per il Movimento Libertario in economia e politica sono [[Ferdinando Galiani]], [[Cesare Beccaria]]<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5219%3Adel-liber-porto-darmi-e-cesare-beccaria&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=1 ''Il libero possesso di un arma e Cesare Beccaria!''] di Leonardo Facco. 8 maggio, 2010.</ref>, [[Paolo Balsamo]], [[Filippo Mazzei]]<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3056&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=1 ''Inizia il Clan Libertario toscano''] di Leonardo Butini. 6 Aprile, 2008.</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3080&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=1 ''Filippo Mazzei, un vero liberale''] 28 giugno, 2008.</ref>, [[Emerico Amari]], [[Francesco Ferrara (senatore)| Francesco Ferrara]], [[Giuseppe Todde]], [[Giovanni Pinna Ferrà]], [[Tullio Martello]], [[Carlo Cattaneo]], [[Edoardo Giretti]], [[Gaetano Mosca]], [[Vilfredo Pareto]], [[Luigi Einaudi]], [[Bruno Leoni]], [[Gianfranco Miglio]]<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5779%3Adella-liberta-povera-europa&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=1 ''Libertà povera Europa!''] di Gianfranco Miglio. 29 Maggio, 2010.</ref> e [[Sergio Ricossa]]<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8097%3Alio-anarchico&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=55 ''L'io anarchico'']] di Sergio Ricossa, 25 agosto 2010, Tratto da ''Da liberale a libertario'' Leonardo Facco Editore. 1999</ref>.

==Pubblicazioni==

Leonardo Facco, grazie all'incontro con alcuni dei pensatori libertarian italiani più importanti (Carlo Lottieri, Alberto Mingardi, Carlo Stagnaro, Guglielmo Piombini, Nicola Iannello)<ref>Nicola Iannello, [http://www.univ.trieste.it/~etica/2003_2/iannello.htm ''Il libertarianism: saggio bibliografico''], in ''Etica & Politica'', 2, 2003. [http://www.univ.trieste.it http://www.univ.trieste.it]</ref> fonda nel 1996 a Treviglio la casa editrice indipendente ''[http://www.leonardofaccoeditore.com Leonardo Facco Editore]''.

Questa è orientata a diffondere i concetti riguardanti la difesa della libertà, la proprietà e la vita delle persone che sono minacciate quotidianamente dalle azioni degli Stati, governi e autorità pubbliche.

I libri pubblicati trattano la storia, sociologia, scienze politiche e le questioni relative l'ecologia di mercato da un punto di vista libertarian.

Il Movimento Libertario grazie alla Leonardo Facco Editore pubblica periodicamente (senza ricevere alcun finanziamento pubblico dallo Stato) anche due sue riviste: ''I Fogli di Enclave'' e la rivista ''Enclave'' che dà spazio a vari temi politici, culturali, sociali ed economici libertari italiani e internazionali<ref name="austrian" />.

''[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59 ''I Fogli di Enclave'']''<ref>[http://opinione.it/articolo.php?arg=14&art=71539 ''Cosa e dove''] ''L'Opinione''. 10 maggio, 2008.</ref> è una pubblicazione bimestrale gratuita, mentre la rivista ''[http://www.leonardofaccoeditore.com/enclave/index.htm ''Enclave'']''è una rivista trimestrale fondata nel marzo del 1998, disponibile in abbonamento.

Il Movimento Libertario lavora attivamente attraverso la rivista ''Enclave'' con i membri del think tank di libero mercato, [[Istituto Bruno Leoni]] [http://www.brunoleoni.it]<ref name="austrian" />: Alberto Mingardi (co-editore), Carlo Stagnaro (co-direttore) e [[Carlo Lottieri]] (comitato scientifico).

Nel comitato scientifico della rivista ''Enclave'' fanno parte anche: [[Walter Block]], [[David D. Friedman]], [[Raimondo Cubeddu]], [[Romano Bracalini]], [[Hans Hermann Hoppe]], [[John Hospers]], [[Antonio Martino]], [[Nicola Jannello]], [[David B. Kopel]], [[Pierre Lemieux]], [[Tibor R. Machan]], [[Jan Narveson]], [[Wendy McElroy]], [[Guglielmo Piombini]], [[Raico Ralph]], [[Alberto Pasolini Zanelli]], [[Sergio Ricossa]], [[Robert Sirico]], [[Thomas S. Szasz]], [[Alessandro Vitale]].

Il Movimento Libertario collabora attivamente anche con i membri del [http://www.liberisti.org/ partito liberista svizzero del Canton Ticino] e la loro associazione (ALT), in iniziative culturali ed economiche di libero mercato (convegni e pubblicazioni, come ''I Fogli di Enclave'') tra i soggetti libertari in Italia e svizzeri in [[Canton Ticino]].

Nel gennaio del 2010, Leonardo Facco, ha annunciato l'intenzione di delegare la proprietà della sua casa editrice al Movimento Libertario, al fine di promuovere la continuità nel futuro delle attività del movimento, garantendo un autofinanziamento privato attraverso la vendita di libri pubblicati oltre alle donazioni dei soli singoli privati sostenitori.

==Piattaforma==

Rispetto della definizione storica del libertarianismo americano, a differenza del [[Libertarian Party]] statunitense, il Movimento Libertario vuole portare in [[Italia]] gli stessi contenuti dei partiti e movimenti libertariani esteri ma con la pratica agorista della non partecipazione diretta alle elezioni politiche italiane con il simbolo del Movimento Libertario. <ref>[http://opinione.it/articolo.php?arg=10&art=70685 ''Liberali classici alle elezioni: che cosa fare?''] ''L'Opinione'', di Gustavo Cevolani. 10 Aprile, 2008</ref><ref name="manifesto" /><ref name="statute" />.

Anche se in realtà il Movimento Libertario è registrato ufficialmente come partito politico italiano, come movimento anti-statalista disconosce la legittimità dello Stato e delle sue elezioni politiche.

Come un formale partito politico italiano può decidere di partecipare alle elezioni italiane politiche (a diversi livelli) sostenendo dall'esterno alcuni candidati vicini alla sua visione culturale, attraverso liste civiche allo scopo di diffondere le sue idee.<ref name="statute" />.

Il Movimento Libertario per le sue radici di matrice anglosassone non è classificabile nelle tradizioni politico-ideologica del XX° secolo presente in Italia.

Come altri soggetti libertarian nel mondo, il soggetto rispetta lo spettro politico di Nolan.

Uno dei suoi slogan dice: "Né destra né sinistra, né di centro.Semplicemente liberi è meglio ".

===Spettro culturale delle correnti libertarie interne===

Il Movimento Libertario è al suo interno formalmente neutro come ideologia libertaria, con una visione anarco-capitalista, una organizzazione e una prassi volontarista e agorista come caratteristica.

A differenza degli Stati Uniti, in Italia e nel Movimento Libertario non sono frequenti le polemiche interne tra l'identità ideologica del termine libertarian tra i suoi iscritti libertari delle varie correnti, non ponendo una netta distinzione tra i libertari rothbardiani di destra e dei [[paleolibertarismo| paleolibertari]]) con i libertarian di sinistra (quest'ultimi intesi come sinistra libertarian dello spettro rothbardiano, quindi agoristi, panarchici non ai libertari socialisti europei) perché le scuole libertarie non presentano significative differenze nel loro modo anti-stato di visione comune per gli obbiettivi che si è prefissato il Movimento Libertario.

Inoltre, queste scuole libertarie non sono radicati in Italia se non con alcuni membri rappresentativi aderenti al Movimento Libertario.

Il Movimento Libertario ritiene fondamentale valorizzare i principi in comune che uniscono tutti i diversi orientamenti libertari, cercando di promuovere la protezione della proprietà privata, del libero mercato e la legge naturale attraverso azioni e nonviolenta e mezzi pacifici, lasciando libertà di pensiero individuale circa le questioni di bioetica e di comportamento individuale sui diritti civili negativi.

===Struttura e composizione===

Gli organi di amministrazione interna al Movimento Libertario comprendono l'Amministratore Delegato, Consiglio di Amministrazione, Assemblea dei Soci (Assemblea), gruppi di associazione territoriale (denominati [[clan]])<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50&Itemid=57 Movimento Libertario Clan libertari] Mappa della presenza di clan sostenitori ML.</ref>, il Collegio Sindacale, e l'enclave di Saggi.

Lo Statuto del Movimento Libertario<ref name="statute"/> descrive e regola tutti gli organi di amministrazione interna e la loro funzione.

Leonardo Facco co-fondatore della Associazione, rappresenta dal 2007 (in base allo statuto e alla democrazia interna dei membri dell'Associazione) il ruolo di Amministratore Delegato del Movimento Libertario.

Egli rappresenta il Movimento Libertario nella sua attività ufficiale.

Il Movimento Libertario è organizzato da un sistema di libera partecipazione di soci, iscritti e simpatizzanti sul territorio italiano.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3635:tesseramento-2010-contiamo-su-di-voi&catid=1:latest-news ''Tesseramento 2010!. Contiamo su di voi!''] 31 dicembre, 2009.</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5528:libertari-non-si-nasce-si-diventa&catid=1:latest-news ''Libertari non si nasce si diventa!''] 23 maggio, 2010.</ref>

Qualsiasi adulto che registra e paga una quota annua di partecipazione diventa membro azionista del movimento e quindi acquista il diritto di votare e partecipare attivamente alle riunioni degli organi interni dell'associazione.

I minori, anche se autorizzata da un solo genitore, possono essere iscritti solo come soci simpatizzanti senza diritto di voto.

===Principi===

Il Movimento Libertario nel suo atto di fondazione dichiara e riconosce i principi libertarian come interni al suo statuto<ref name="statute" />:

* La libertà, intesa come assenza di costrizione, è un diritto naturale dell'individuo, che nessuno (organismo pubblico o privato) deve minacciare;

* Il [[Governo]], nelle sue diverse varianti, costringe la gente ad obbedire ciecamente e di accettare la legislazione e opprimenti monopoli invasivi;

* Ogni individuo ha il diritto di cercare la propria felicità e quella dei suoi cari, assumendosi la responsabilità delle proprie azioni;

* Ogni individuo ha il diritto di organizzare se stessi nella libertà di proteggere le proprie vite e i propri beni;

* La necessità di eliminare e ridurre lo stato, i politici e le burocrazie nella vita quotidiana, sempre più riconoscendo la dignità di tutte le persone che lavorano veramente, producendo le proprie risorse e beni.

* La proprietà è un diritto naturale e inalienabile dell'uomo, è in primo luogo la proprietà di se stessi, del proprio corpo e della propria vita.

Non può essere concesso o negato da qualsiasi sistema sociale, sia democratico o autoritario.

Proprietà significa anche tutto ciò che appartiene alla persona e che non è il risultato di un atto di violenza, ma determinato dal lavoro della persona, l'acquisizione e la sua trasformazione dallo stato di natura con la libera interazione degli individui.<ref name="manifesto" />

===Proposte===

Il Movimento Libertario, come movimento politico, è nata con l'obiettivo di ridurre del governo ai minimi termini, al fine di dare spazio alla libera interazione tra individui, comunità o il consenso dei singoli, che cercano riparazione delle loro esigenze di mercato<ref name="manifesto" /><ref name="aboutus" />.

Ogni membro aderente ha il dovere morale di liberare le forze della società civile e del libero scambio, eliminando ogni forma di intervento in difesa delle libertà individuali <ref>Leonardo Facco. [http://digilander.libero.it/cssc/liborg/documenti/Programma_politico.pdf "Programma politico del Movimento Libertario"]</ref>.

Il Movimento Libertario nel suo Statuto <ref name="statute" /> ritiene necessarie per l'Italia:

* Il ritorno alla piena ed effettiva sovranità individuale sulle proprie vite e beni, che appartiene al diritto naturale di governare se stessi attraverso metodi nonviolenti e non coercitivi esercitando il diritto di autodeterminazione resistendo se possibile ad ogni tipo di imposta;

* I diritti della personalità di un diritto di proprietà del corpo e le sue cose legalmente detenute, nel rispetto dell'assioma di non aggressione rothbardiano:

''"Io definisco anarchica la società in cui non esiste la possibilità legale per l'aggressione coercitiva contro la persona o la proprietà di qualsiasi individuo. Gli anarchici si oppongono allo Stato perché ha la sua stessa essenza di tale aggressione, e cioè l'espropriazione della proprietà privata attraverso l'imposizione fiscale, l'esclusione coercitiva di altri fornitori di servizi di difesa dal suo territorio, e tutte le altre depredazioni e coercizioni che sono costruiti su questi foci gemello di invasioni dei diritti individuali."''- [[Murray Rothbard]] - ''[[Society and State]]''

Come è stato registrato nel suo nome, il Movimento Libertario vuole promuovere nella società civile italiana i diritti naturali alla vita, alla libertà, la proprietà e il perseguimento della felicità privilegiando anzitutto quelli economici a quelli civili.

Per raggiungere tale finalità ogni azione del Movimento, si basa sul principio della non-violenza: "nessuno può attaccare la persona e la proprietà di altri".<ref name="manifesto" />.

====Posizioni politiche====
=====Economia=====

Appoggia l'abolizione della tassazione in tutte le sue forme comprese le tariffe, è contro il regolamento del libero commercio, controllo dei prezzi, e contro le assicurazioni coercitive, e le quote di produzione.

Un obiettivo intermedio su cui impegnarsi è l'istituzionalizzazione di una flat tax la cui aliquota sia la più basso possibile (per esempio 22%) e uno o più, no-tax area.<ref name="policy">Leonardo Facco. [http://digilander.libero.it/cssc/liborg/enclave/APPENDICE.doc" Appendice del Manifesto Libertario"], 2005.</ref>

Il Movimento Libertario è un movimento euroscettico, critica l'[[euro]] e la presenza di un regime comune europeo di politica economica monetaria rappresentata e diretta da parte della [[Banca centrale europea]] e la [[Commissione europea]].<ref name="policy" />

E'a favore di un ritorno al gold standard e di un sistema bancario libero.<ref name="policy" />

Non riconosce la legalità e la legittimità del [[WTO]], [[FMI]], [[Banca mondiale]], perché sono organizzazioni stataliste in contrasto con i principi di non-interferenza dei governi in una economia di libero mercato.

Il Movimento Libertario è a favore del capitalismo di libero mercato, sostiene la liberalizzazione del mercato e la sua deregolamentazione, supporta anche la privatizzazione del settore economia di Stato (capitalismo di Stato).

E' contro lo [[statalismo]] e il [[protezionismo]], respinge le economie miste private e pubbliche, è contro il [[comunismo]] marxista, la programmazione economica fascista ([[corporativismo]]) e gli interventi socialisti keynesiani in economia da parte dello Stato (capitalismo di Stato) e la politica.

Ritiene che il lavoro non può essere considerato né come un diritto né un dovere, ma solo come libera scelta dell'individuo, e come tale, il lavoro non dovrebbe essere soggetto a contratti collettivi o limitata dalle norme.

Il contratto collettivo è considerato dai libertari come incostituzionale.<ref name="policy" />

E' a favore della soppressione degli ordini professionali di stato, non è contrario al privato ordini professionali e sostiene la loro formazione spontanea privi di sussidi pubblici, in quanto il problema nasce dalla istituzionalizzazione degli ordini professionali di stato e la scelta di queste stesse associazioni di agire come un monopolio partito unico.

L'adesione alla ordini non deve essere imposta per legge.<ref name="policy" />

Sostiene l'abolizione di tutte le licenze commerciali, senza il controllo dei prezzi e nessuna limitazione per l'avvio di nuove attività (ad esempio limitazioni sullo spazio o altro) può essere esercitata dallo Stato e dalle sue autorità territoriali.<ref name="manifesto" />

Il Movimento Libertario riconosce la necessità di puntare sulla chiarezza delle informazioni al pubblico sulla libera scelta dei consumatori.<ref name="policy" />

=====Politica estera=====

La visione del Movimento Libertario è una politica estera internazionale di non-intervento e della nonviolenza come proposto dal candidato alla Presidenza degli Stati Uniti nel 2008, il congressista libertario-repubblicano statunitense [[Ron Paul]].<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2339 Movimento Libertario Chi è Ron Paul?.]</ref>.

Il Movimento è contrario ad ogni aumento della spesa militare o rafforzamento di armamenti anche a scopo difensivo da parte dello Stato italiano, anche all'interno della [[NATO]] (considerata una struttura militare non più necessaria e al di fuori del contesto delle operazioni difensive originale).

E' contro ogni forma di guerra, violenza, conflitti internazionali o interventi su suolo straniero dalle truppe italiane in linea con l'assioma di non aggressione Rothbardian<ref name="manifesto" /><ref name="policy" />;

La legalità e la legittimità delle [[Nazioni Unite]] è in discussione in quanto questa organizzazione internazionale è contraria al principio di un mondo senza la presenza dello Stato.

L'Unione europea è considerata una organizzazione burocratica per il grande governo europeo, con l'obiettivo di ridurre la libera economia e l'organizzazione del territorio attraverso il controllo centrale.

Il [[Trattato di Lisbona]] non è supportato, ma il movimento non è teoricamente contro la possibile realizzazione di un [[referendum]] per la libera scelta degli italiani.

Il Movimento sostiene gli autentici movimenti territoriali separatisti e indipendentisti e il loro diritto di libera autodeterminazione dei popoli e delle aree di riconoscere (enclave), in un quadro di autonomia politica regionale (anche secessionista) all'interno di una apertura libera di scambi tra regioni <ref name="policy" />.

La Svizzera è considerata un importante modello di sistema confederale sia per lo sviluppo dell'economia che per l'organizzazione politica equilibrata del territorio.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5172:elvetizziamo-leuropa&catid=1:latest-news ''Elvetizziamo l'Europa!''] di Giovanni Bonometti. 6 maggio, 2010.</ref>

=====Sicurezza=====

Il Movimento Libertario è favorevole alla riduzione delle intercettazioni telefoniche e dell'obbligo di registrazione per la lista degli indagati intercettati, è favorevole alla localizzazione delle forze di sicurezza (più potere alla polizia municipale in contrapposizione ad una riduzione della polizia nazionale), supporta esperimenti di privatizzazione della polizia (senza interno interferenze di alcun partito politico italiano) nelle piccole città, il rafforzamento della funzione del giudice di pace e l'introduzione di arbitrato, è inoltre per il riconoscimento e la garanzia del diritto di possedere armi in difesa della proprietà privata e della vita di ciascun individuo.<ref name="policy" />

=====Diritti civili=====

Il Movimento Libertario favorisce la libertà di scelta degli individui all'interno dei diritti naturali di proprietà (diritti negativo) e libertà (libertà negativa) una è quella di accettare di riconoscere la responsabilità per le azioni personali e non delegare ad altri le proprie scelte, o farlo in modo informato.<ref name="manifesto" /><ref name="policy" />

Il Movimento sostiene (sebbene non sia tra le sue primarie priorità d'obbiettivo) una depenalizzazione delle droghe leggere (come la [[cannabis]]); sostiene anche il diritto individuale alla [[prostituzione]] e all'[[aborto]].<ref name="policy" />

Il Movimento è contrario a qualsiasi forma di restrizione di libertà, di controllo o censura da parte dello Stato, è contro l'imposizione di aborti coercitivi da parte dello Stato<ref>[http://ilgiorno.ilsole24ore.com/brescia/cronaca/locale/2009/09/29/238358-siamo_uguali_carcerati_tempo_misurato_vedere_quelli_sono_nostri_figli.shtml ''Siamo uguali ai carcerati, tempo misurato per vedere i nostri bambini''] [[Il Giorno (newspaper)|Il Giorno]], di Magda Biglia, 29 settembre, 2009.</ref>, è contro il finanziamento di ogni tipo di matrimonio da parte dello Stato, e contro il divieto di droghe, alcol e fumo. <ref name="policy" />

=====Istruzione=====

Il Movimento Libertario è favorevole al homeschooling e alla libertà d'insegnamento e di scelta scolastica dei singoli e delle famiglie.

=====Salute=====

Il Movimento Libertario è favorevole alla creazione di un modello di assistenza sanitaria privata.

Questo per evitare la giustificazione per il controllo statale sulla condotta privata motivata dal fatto che lo stato spende soldi per la salute <ref name="policy" />.

=====Ricerca=====

Il Movimento Libertario è direttamente coinvolto nella coltivazione libera e nella libera commercializzazione delle sementi e alimenti OGM, senza porre limite alla ricerca scientifica sugli OGM in Italia.

Al contempo ritiene che la libertà di scelta dei consumatori sui prodotti alimentari acquistati <ref name="policy" />, e la libertà di ricerca scientifica privata fino a quando il rispetto per i diritti umani naturali e non fa uso di denaro pubblico.

Il Movimento Libertario non supporta alcuna teoria del riscaldamento globale.

=====Comunicazione=====

Il Movimento Libertario è favorevole alla massima estensione del diritto alla libertà di parola e la libertà delle reti e dei media <ref name="policy" />.

Il movimento è contro il finanziamento pubblico dei partiti politici, dei giornali e delle scuole confessionali, e del canone alla televisione pubblica italiana.<ref>[http://www.ilgiornale.it/interni/stop_allabbonamento_raccomandata_e_516_euro/27-09-2009/articolo-id=385900-page=0-comments=1 ''Stop all'abbonamento con una raccomandata da 5,16 €''] ''[[Il Giornale]]'', di Felice Manti. 27 settembre, 2009</ref><ref>[http://www.ilgiornale.it/interni/io_li_ho_messi_sacco_cosi_si_sono_arresi/evasione_fiscale-leonardo_facco-canone_rai/29-09-2009/articolo-id=386395-page=0-comments=1 "''Io li ho messi nel sacco, così si sono arresi''"] ''[[Il Giornale]]'' di Felice Manti. 29 settembre, 2009.</ref>.

====Crisi economica====

Il Movimento Libertario segue i principi e gli insegnamenti della scuola economica austriaca <ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3098&catid=1:latest-news ''Crack up boom''] promossi dall'associazione [[Usemlab]] di [Francesco Carbone]] con la quale collabora. 13 settembre, 2008. [http://www.usemlab.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=306:le-tappe-del-crack-up-boom&catid=21:scuola-austriaca-di-economia&Itemid=51 ''Le tappe del Crack Up Boom''] 12 ottobre, 2008.</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/images/ml/ifoglidienclave/Enclave5.pdf ''Crack Up Boom, sistema monetario''] ''I Fogli di Enclave'' n° 5, pag 2 e 3, di Francesco Carbone. Novembre 2008. [http://www.movimentolibertario.it http://www.movimentolibertario.it]</ref> e l'analisi economica su mutui subprime di [[Peter Schiff]]<ref>[http://www.usemlab.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=375:il-solito-gioco-p&catid=21:scuola-austriaca-di-economia&Itemid=51 ''Il solito gioco''] di Francesco Carbone. 27 agosto, 2009.</ref> fu in grado di prevedere in anticipo la crisi economica del 2008 <ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3083&catid=1:latest-news ''Attenti, giovani speculatori inesperti''] di Francesco Carbone. 29 luglio, 2008.</ref>, delle difficoltà economiche di [[Grecia]]<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3488&catid=1:latest-news ''Grecia alla bancarotta?''] di Mauro Meneghini. 9 Novembre, 2009.</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4111:grecia-a-settembre-2008-lo-avvamo-detto&catid=1:latest-news ''Grecia, in Novembre 2009 noi lo avevamo detto!''] di Mauro Meneghini. 11 febbraio, 2010</ref> e Italia nel 2010.

Il Movimento Libertario collabora e partecipa a vari progetti con l'Associazione Culturale Italiana di Economia austriaca e il suo promotore [[Francesco Carbone]].

Di conseguenza, [[Usemlab]] e il Movimento Libertario erano stati in grado anche di predire in anticipo l'ascesa del prezzo dell'oro.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/images/ml/ifoglidienclave/Enclave5.pdf ''Decadenza e modernità''] ''I Fogli di Encalve'' n°5 pag 1 e 2, di Francesco Carbone. Novembre 2008. [http://www.movimentolibertario.it http://www.movimentolibertario.it]</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3487&catid=1:latest-news ''Quelli veramente ossessionati dall'oro!''] di Francesco Carbone. 8 Novembre, 2009. [http://www.usemlab.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=410:quelli-veramente-ossessionati-dalloro&catid=21:scuola-austriaca-di-economia&Itemid=51 http://www.usemlab.com] il 5 novembre, 2009.</ref>

Essi ritengono che la crisi monetaria nell'area dell'euro e nei paesi, come "[[PIIGS]]" è solo l'inizio di più la crisi economica e di default a causa dell'intervento statale eccessivo e un approccio sbagliato al problema monetario da parte dei governi.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3485&catid=1:latest-news ''Prima o poi arriva il momento di pagare!''] di Mauro Meneghini. 5 novembre, 2009.</ref>.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5738:moneta-contro-cartastraccia&catid=1:latest-news#yvComment5738 ''Moneta contro carta straccia!''] di Juan Morillo Bentué. 28 maggio, 2010.</ref>

Nel maggio 2009, il Movimento Libertario ha inviato a vari politici italiani e le forze politiche un documento sulla situazione economica internazionale e italiana dal punto di vista della scuola austriaca.<ref name="crisis" />

In quel documento, il Movimento Libertario ha invitato la politica italiana in una drastica riduzione del suo ruolo nell'economia.

La riduzione di Stato non è stato perseguito attraverso una drastica riduzione delle spese e delle imposte dal governo italiano; la riduzione della tassazione e della spesa pubblica porterebbe automaticamente a uno spostamento del rapporto sociale tra risparmio, investimento e consumo favore dei primi, in modo da ridurre notevolmente il tempo per tornare a un'economia prospera.

Durante la depressione secondo il Movimento Libertario, ogni riduzione di imposte o di qualsiasi interferenza che ostacola il libero mercato stimolerà le attività economiche sane, al contrario, un aumento di tasse o altre misure volte a stimolare l'economia creeranno turbative nei mercati.

Il Movimento Libertario ritiene che anche in ambito italiano le diverse misure prese dall'esecutivo, sono differenti da quanto indicato e promesso a livello elettorale<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4376:italia-tasse-sullimpresa-aumentate-in-tempi-di-crisi&catid=1:latest-news ''Italia, tasse sull'impresa aumentate in tempo di crisi!''] di Leonardo Facco. 10 marzo, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5692:manovra-da-24-miliardi-il-parere-del-movimento-libertario&catid=1:latest-news ''Manovra da 24 miliardi: il parere del Movimento Libertario!''] di Leonardo Facco. 26 maggio, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5799:24-miliardi-la-speculazione-finanziaria-italiana&catid=1:latest-news ''24 miliardi, La speculazione finanziaria italiana!''] di LucaF. 29 maggio, 2010. da [http://iovotopli.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/sulla-speculazione-finanziaria-italiana-da-24-miliardi-di-euro/ http://iovotopli.wordpress.com] 28 maggio 2010</ref>, quindi la situazione di crisi e di difficoltà per l'Italia continueranno a tempo indeterminato.

===Rapporti con i maggiori partiti===

Per le sue posizioni anti-statalista, relativamente alle imposte, a favore della libera scelta degli individui e di maggior libero mercato con meno interventismo politico statale, il Movimento Libertario è molto critico nei confronti della politica italiana e dei suoi protagonisti principali.

===Rapporti con altri soggetti politici liberali italiani===

Tra i gruppi politici al di fuori del ML con il quale collabora, c'è il caso dei [[Radicali Italiani]] i quali fanno riferimento per il loro pacifismo e la loro nonviolenza ad alcuni principi del libertarianismo di sinistra favorevole al libero mercato e alla proprietà privata.

Anche se il Movimento Libertario differisce su molti punti dai Radicali Italiani, mantiene stretti rapporti con loro e i loro mezzi di comunicazione (come ''Radio Radicale'' <ref>[http://www.radioradicale.it/soggetti/leonardo-facco registrazioni di Leonardo Facco a Radio Radicale]</ref><ref>[http://www.radioradicale.it/soggetti/giorgio-fidenato registrazioni di Giorgio Fidenato a Radio Radicale]</ref> ), in particolare per quanto riguarda la battaglia contro il sostituto d'imposta.

Giorgio Fidenato e il Movimento Libertario, hanno ricevuto il sostegno dei radicali italiani di [[Marco Pannella]] dal segretario, [[Mario Staderini]] nella battaglia sul sostituto d'imposta<ref>[http://www.radicali.it/view.php?id=149336 ''Intervista con Mario Staderini: "Non più con il PD incapace di lottare"''], ''L'Opinione'' di Dimitri Buffa. 19 novembre, 2009. [http://www.radicali.it/view.php?id=149336 http://www.radicali.it/]</ref><ref>[http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/messaggeroveneto/2009/11/19/PN_02_PNB2.html ''Processo Fidenato, proteste dei Radicali Italiani''] ''Messaggero Veneto'', pag 2. 19 novembre 2009, [http://ricerca.repubblica.it/ http://www.repubblica.it/]</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3957%3Asantarossa-lista-bonino-si-allabolizione-del-sostituto-dimposta&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=1 ''Santarossa (lista Bonino): Si all'abolizione del sostituto d'imposta!''] 28 gennaio, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://ricerca.gelocal.it/messaggeroveneto/archivio/messaggeroveneto/2009/11/12/PN_04_PND1.html ''Fidenato, la battaglia con l'agenzia dell'entrate continua con il processo e il sit-in''] ''Messaggero Veneto'', di Elena Del Giudice, pag 4. 12 novembre, 2009.</ref>.

Giorgio Fidenato, come rappresentante del Movimento Libertario, è stato invitato a discutere il suo caso al congresso nazionale di Radicali Italiani a [[Chianciano Terme]] nel novembre 2009.<ref>[http://vimeo.com/7667910 Video del discorso di Giorgio Fidenato al Congresso dei Radicali Italiani nel November 2009]</ref>

Il 30 aprile 2010, [[Elisabetta Zamparutti]], onorevole radicale italiano membro del Parlamento italiano con delega in commissione Ambiente, ha dato la sua solidarietà al Movimento Libertario, ad Agricoltori Federati e a Giorgio Fidenato, sostenendo la loro azione di disobbedienza civile non violenta per la semina del mais OGM in Italia, sostenendo la necessità di aprire l'Italia alla coltivazione di [[OGM]].<ref>[http://www.radicali.it/view.php?id=156553 ''OGM, Zamparutti: L'atto di disobbedienza civile sulla ricerca OGM aiuta l'agricoltura''] 30 Aprile 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5076:marcia-del-mais-sostegno-della-deputata-radicale-zamparutti&catid=1:latest-news ''Marcia del mais: Sostegno della deputata radicale Zamparutti!''] 1 maggio 2010.</ref>

Il 4 maggio 2010, i parlamentari Radicali Elisabetta Zamparutti, [[Marco Beltrandi]], [[Rita Bernardini]], [[Maria Antonietta Farina Coscioni]], [[Matteo Mecacci]] e [[Maurizio Turco]] ([[Lista Emma Bonino]] nel Partito Democratico Italiano) hanno depositato, e pubblicato il giorno dopo, una interrogazione parlamentare scritta al Ministro degli Interni italiano e al Ministro italiano Agricoltura, per sapere quali provvedimenti stavano prendendo per evitare possibili nuovi attacchi in futuro nella sede dell'associazione Agricoltori Federati di Giorgio Fidenato circa la questione degli OGM.

Nella interrogazione i parlamentari di Radicali Italiani hanno fatto inoltre presente anche delle minacce alla persona e alla proprietà che Giorgio Fidenato ed Agricoltori Federati hanno ricevuto da parte degli ambientalisti, [[no global]] e dei movimenti comunisti italiani.<ref>[http://www.camera.it/417?idSeduta=316&resoconto=bt13&param=n4-07050#n4-07050 ''Seduta della Camera dei deputati''] Allegato B Seduta N°316, 4 maggio, 2010.Richiesta parlamentare dei Radicali Italiani al ministro degli Interni e al suo collega all'Agricoltura. [http://www.camera.it/417?idSeduta=316&resoconto=bt13&param=n4-07050#n4-07050 http://www.camera.it]</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5158:semina-ogm-aggressione-a-fidenato-interrogazione-dellonorevole-zamparutti-e-colleghi&catid=1:latest-news#yvComment5158 ''Semina OGM aggressione a Fidenato: interrogazione dell'onorevole Zamparutti e colleghi!''] 5 maggio, 2010.</ref>

L'interrogazione parlamentare menziona anche che il governo italiano continua a non riconoscere a Giorgio Fidenato, l'italiana agricoltori federati, il Movimento Libertario e Futuragra il diritto di semina di mais OGM, come determinato dalla decisione del Consiglio di Stato italiano e la Direttiva della Comunità Europea.

Tra i gruppi politici al di fuori del ML vi è anche l'associazione di centrodestra [[Libertiamo]] che fa riferimento ad alcuni generici principi liberali.

Il Movimento Libertario non ha un rapporto particolare con questa associazione, anche se questa ha dato il suo sostegno formale nei confronti del sostituto d'imposta <ref>[http://www.libertiamo.it/2009/11/16/la-battaglia-di-fidenato-la-supponenza-dellavvocato/ ''La battaglia di Fidenato la supponenza dell'avvocato''] di Piercamillo Falasca. 16 novembre, 2009.</ref><ref>[http://www.libertiamo.it/2009/11/19/il-giudice-rinvia-a-gennaio-liniziativa-di-fidenato-sul-sostituto-dimposta-continua/ ''Il giudice rinvia a gennaio l'iniziativa di Fidenato sul sostituto d'imposta''] di Piercamillo Falasca. 19 novembre, 2009.</ref>, sostenendo Giorgio Fidenato e il suo diritto di seminare mais OGM. <ref>[http://www.libertiamo.it/2010/04/30/ogm-la-disobbedienza-civile-di-fidenato-i-buoni-frutti-del-pragmatismo-e-le-bacche-velenos-degli-ambientalisti/ ''OGM: La disobbeidenza civile di Fidenato, i buoni frutti del pragmatismo e le bacche velenose degli ambientalisti''] di Piercamillo Falasca. 30 aprile, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.libertiamo.it/2010/08/19/il-mais-di-fidenato-non-fa-male-a-nessuno/ ''Il mais di Fidenato non fa male a nessuno''] di Giordano Masini. 19 agosto 2010</ref> e citando alcuni iniziative del ML sul suo sito web.<ref>[http://www.libertiamo.it/2010/03/13/15-marzo-a-milano-in-scena-una-provocazione-libertaria-contro-le-tasse/ ''15 marzo a Milano, in scena una provocazione libertaria contro le tasse''] 13 marzo, 2010</ref>.

===Violenze subite===

Nel mese di aprile 2010, il Movimento Libertario e dei suoi membri (in particolare Giorgio Fidenato e Leonardo Facco) hanno seminato i primi semi di mais OGM in Italia.

A seguito di tale atto sono stati sottoposti a ripetute minacce e atti di vandalismo violento alla sede dell'associazione Agricoltori Fidenato, da movimenti no-global, ambientalisti e della sinistra anti-capitalista sulla questione di mais OGM.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y66sP-6e4nY Video delle vilenti proteste degli ambientalisti e no-global contro Agricoltori Federati'']</ref><ref>[http://www.agi.it/trieste/notizie/201004302035-cro-rts1025-ogm_fvg_oppositori_irrompono_in_sede_agricoltori_federati ''OGM: FVG, oppositori irrompono in sede di Agricoltori Federati''] ''Agi News'' 30 Aprile, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.ilgiornale.it/interni/mais_ogm_scoppia_guerra_seme/01-05-2010/articolo-id=442040-page=0-comments=1 ''Mais OGM scoppia la guerra del seme''] ''Il Giornale'', di Fausto Biloslavo. 1 maggio 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U724XcLZDk ''servizio del TG5 su Fidenato e il Movimento Libertario circa la prima semina di OGM in Italia''] 1 maggio, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.newnotizie.it/2010/05/01/agricoltori-pro-biotech-sfidano-il-decreto/ ''Agricoltori Pro-biotech sfidano il decreto''] di Stefano Bernardi. 1 maggio, 2010.</ref>

La notizia della prima semina OGM in Italia ad opera del Movimento Libertario e Agricoltori Federati e le polemiche ad essa seguite sono state anche riportate da quotidiani internazionali.<ref>[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:I3b1BVQFPk8J:www.post-gazette.com/pg/10236/1082277-82.stm%3Fcmpid%3Dnationworld.xml+Giorgio+Fidenato+Pittsburgh&cd=5&hl=it&ct=clnk&gl=it&client=firefox-a ''In the Fields of Italy, a Conflict Over Corn''] Elisabeth Rosenthal, August 24, 2010 [www.post-gazette.com www.post-gazette.com]</ref><ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/world/europe/24modify.html?_r=1 ''In the Fields of Italy, a Conflict Over Corn''] Elisabeth Rosenthal, ''New York Times'', August 23, 2010 A version of this article appeared in print on August 24, 2010, on page A4 of the New York edition [http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8080:semina-mais-ogm-fidenato-sul-new-york-times&catid=1:latest-news ''Semina Mais OGM, Fidenato sul New York Times'']</ref><ref>[http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/content/flouting-ban-italian-farmer-wages-crusade-genetically-modified-corn ''Flouting ban, Italian farmer wages crusade for genetically modified corn''] August 20, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7928%3Aogm-la-nostra-battaglia-sullherald-tribune&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=55 ''OGM, La nostra battaglia sull'Herald Tribune!''] 19 agosto 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.giornalettismo.com/archives/77636/mais-ogm-litalia-divieti-assurdi/ ''Mais Ogm, l’Italia dei divieti assurdi sbarca sul New York Times''] di Dipocheparole, 24 agosto 2010</ref>

===Attività===
====Contro le tasse====

Da marzo 2010, il Movimento Libertario collabora e partecipa attivamente alle iniziative di [http://www.confcontribuenti.eu/ Confcontribuenti], una Confederazione di contribuenti italiani.

Confcontribuenti sostiene il Movimento Libertario e Giorgio Fidenato nella sua battaglia contro il sostituto d'imposta.<ref>[http://www.confcontribuenti.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70:sostituto-dimposta&catid=41:sostituto-dimposta&Itemid=64 ''Sostituto d'imposta''] 3 Febbraio, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://opinione.it/articolo.php?arg=3&art=90283 ''La battaglia di Confcontribuenti per l'abbattimento delle tasse ingiuste''] ''l'Opinione'' di Stefano Magni. 111 marzo, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.confcontribuenti.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=71%3A1-aprile-sentenza-sul-sostituto-dimposta&catid=34%3Aultime-notizie&Itemid=1 ''1 Aprile: sentenza sul sostituto d'imposta''] 3 febbraio 2010.</ref>

Il Movimento Libertario vuole creare una massa critica di proprietari e contribuenti italiani per lanciare proteste pacifiche contro le imposte dei governanti, come il caso delle proteste Tea Party statunitensi.<ref>[http://opinione.it/articolo.php?arg=3&art=66631 ''"Noi difendiamo la moneta dai furti dello Stato!"''] ''L'Opinione'' di Stefano Magni.1 dicembre 2007.</ref><ref>[http://www.brunoleoni.it/nextpage.aspx?codice=5684 ''Tasse? Se a nessuno piace pagarle una ragione ci sarà...''] ''L'Occidentale'', di Carlo Stagnaro. 8 ottobre 2007. [http://www.brunoleoni.it http://www.brunoleoni.it]</ref>, come il caso delle proteste [[Tea party]] statunitensi <ref name="manifesto" /><ref name="aboutus" /><ref>[http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio-local/Tasse-c-e-chi-vuole-boicottare-i-prodotti-sardi/1603547/6 ''Tasse c'è chi vuole boicottare i prodotti sardi''] ''La Nuova, Nuova Sardegna'', di Alfredo Franchini, pag 3. 11 maggio, 2007. [http://espresso.repubblica.it http://espresso.repubblica.it]</ref><ref>[http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio-local/Tasse-sul-lusso-rivolta-via-web/1608496/6 ''Tasse sul lusso rivolta via web''] ''La Nuova, nuova Sardegna''. 14 maggio, 2007. [http://espresso.repubblica.it http://espresso.repubblica.it]</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5818:dal-tea-party-alla-rivolta-fiscale&catid=1:latest-news#yvComment5818 ''Dal Tea Party alla rivolta fiscale''] di Leonardo Facco. 30 maggio, 2010.</ref>.

Da aprile 2010, il Movimento Libertario collabora e partecipa attivamente a questa iniziativa offerta da parte dell'associazione [http://www.teapartyitalia.it/ Tea Party Italia], per l'organizzazione di eventi italiani Tea Party.

Il 20 maggio 2010 il Movimento Libertario è stato a [[Prato]] per il primo italiano Tea Party, un incontro organizzato per discutere il carico fiscale eccessivo in Italia e dei liberali classici e le soluzioni alla crisi economica liberista.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4830:prato-il-primo-tea-party-italiano&catid=1:latest-news ''Prato, il primo Tea party italiano''] 15 aprile, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.ultimathule.it/articolo/il-primo-tea-party-italiano-prato-il-20-maggio.html ''Il primo Tea Party italiano il 20 maggio''] 5 maggio, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.t-party.it/2010/5/21/tea-party-prato-liberali,-libertari-e-conservatori-per-la-rivoluzione-fiscale.aspx ''Prato Tea Party: liberali, libertari e conservatori per la rivoluzione fiscale''] di Saba Giulia Zecchi, 21 maggio, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5465:primo-tea-party-italiano-la-registrazione-dellevento&catid=1:latest-news ''Primo Tea party italiano il video dell'evento''] di Raffaele Schettino 21 maggio, 2010. [http://vimeo.com/11916813 http://vimeo.com].</ref><ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x3tLbWRDS0 ''Tea Party, video di una tv locale di Prato''] 24 maggio, 2010. [http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5565:tea-party-servizio-al-tg-locale&catid=1:latest-news http://www.movimentolibertario.it]</ref><ref>[http://www.libero-news.it/news/416906/I_Tea_Party_sbarcano_in_Italia__meno_tasse__pi%C3%B9_libert%C3%A0.html ''I Tea Party sbarcano in Italia: meno tasse più libertà''] ''Libero'', di Saba Giulia Zecchi. 21 maggio [http://www.ultimathule.it/articolo/tea-party-prato-liberali-libertari-e-conservatori-la-rivoluzione-fiscale.html http://www.ultimathule.it].</ref>

L'incontro è stato organizzato contro ogni intervento dello Stato e anti-socializzazione della nostra economia, per rivendicare il diritto di autonomia personale ed economica la responsabilità individuale.

In vista del secondo italiano Tea Party a Roma il 26 giugno 2010, Tea Party Italia ha fornito la distribuzione dei moduli necessari per chiedere di ricevere lo stipendio lordo in busta paga: un atto di resistenza contro il sostituto d'imposta considerato una truffa fiscale.

Con la distribuzione pubblica dei moduli, il Tea Party di Roma vuole sostenere la lotta di Giorgio Fidenato e il Movimento Libertario.<ref>[http://www.t-party.it/2010/6/6/tea-party-roma-distribuzione-dei-moduli-per-chiedere-al-datore-di-lavoro-lo-stipendio-lordo-in-busta-paga.aspx ''Tea Party Roma: distribuzione dei moduli per chiedere al datore di lavoro lo stipendio lordo in busta paga''] by Tea Party Roma. 6 giugno, 2010.</ref>

====Vendere il nostro voto====

Alla luce della sentenza sul caso di Giorgio Fidenato sul sostituto d'imposta, il Movimento Libertario ha presentato a Pordenone (per le elezioni regionali in Italia avvenute il 28-29 marzo 2010), un'iniziativa dal titolo: "Vendere il nostro voto".<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3889:regionali-vendiamo-il-nostro-voto-per-fidenato&catid=1:latest-news "Vedere il nostro voto"] 20 gennaio, 2010.</ref>.

L'intento simbolico era quello di firmare un contratto per i candidati alle elezioni nella quale si impegnavano a sostenere, in ogni modo e pubblicamente, la battaglia di Fidenato contro il sostituto d'imposta.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4004:regionali-2010-contratto-di-cessione-del-voto&catid=1:latest-news ''Regionali 2010, Contratto di vendita del voto!''] Copia del modulo per sostenere Giorgio Fidenato nella sua battaglia contro il sostituto d'imposta . 1 febbraio, 2010.</ref>

I sostenitori e membri del Movimento Libertario a loro volta si impegnavano a sostenere in pubblico i firmatari politici candidati, garantendo loro la partecipazione degli elettori italiani libertaria al voto regionale.

Questa iniziativa trae spunto dalle iniziative del [[Americans for Tax Reform]] di [[Grover Norquist]]; questi e la sua associazione contro le tasse si sono impegnati a sostenere i vari candidati alle elezioni americane solo dopo aver ottenuto da loro un notevole impegno nella lotta a favore dei tagli fiscali.

Nelle elezioni regionali del 2010 in Italia, il Movimento Libertario ha sostenuto i Radicali Italiani candidati nella ([[Lista Pannella-Bonino]]), firmatari del contratto "Vendere il nostro voto".<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4086:8-candidati-campani-insieme-a-giorgio-fidenato&catid=1:latest-news ''6(+1) candidati campani candidati con Giorgio Fidenato!'']. 9 febbraio, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4100:anche-cappato-sottoscriv-il-contratto-di-cessione-del-voto&catid=1:latest-news ''Anche Cappato sottoscrive il contratto di vendita del voto!'']. 10 febbraio, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4109:dalla-puglia-adesione-al-contratto-di-qcessione-del-votoq&catid=1:latest-news ''Puglia adesione al contratto di cessione del voto''] 11 febbraio, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4122:contratto-cessione-voto-unaltra-adesione-da-napoli&catid=1:latest-news ''Contratto cessione voto, un'altra adesione da Napoli!''] di Domenico Letizia. 12 febbraio, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4141:contratto-di-cessione-del-voto-unaltra-sottoscrizione-dalla-calabria&catid=1:latest-news ''Contratto di cessione del voto, un'altra sottoscrizione dalla Calabria!''] 13 febbraio, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4148:vendiamo-il-nostro-voto-unaltra-adesione-dalla-toscana&catid=1:latest-news ''Vendiamo il nostro voto un'altra adesione dalla Toscana!''] 14 febbraio, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://www.casertanews.it/public/articoli/201002/art_20100216081418.htm ''Domenico Letizia tra i candidati della Lista Bonino-Pannella alla Regione Campania'']. 16 febbraio, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4183:vendiamo-il-nostro-voto-lassoziazione-radicali-qenzo-tortoraq-aderisce&catid=1:latest-news ''Vendiamo il nostro voto, Associazione Radicali Enzo Tortora aderisce''] 17 febbraio, 2010</ref>

====Seminario Vivien Kellems====

Il 25 e 27 giugno 2010, il Movimento Libertario ha organizzato a [[Bergamasco (AL)]] in ([[Provincia di Alessandria]]) una tre giorni di seminari e di studi per l'apprendimento teorico e il tirocinio pratico sui principi del libertarianismo in economia, sulla politica e cultura nella società contemporanea. <ref> http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4380:primo-seminario-vivien-kellems&catid=1:latest-news [''In primo luogo seminario Vivien Kellems''] Retrived il 11 marzo 2010.</ref>

Questo primo seminario è stato intitolato "''Kellems Vivien. Il rigore delle idee, il potere di azione''" in onore dell'imprenditrice americana [[Vivien Kellems]] e la sua battaglia sul sostituto d'imposta nel 1948 che lei stessa ha descritto nel suo libro ''Toil, Taxes and Trouble''.<ref>On the Kellems case, see Vivien Kellems, ''Toil, Taxes and Trouble'' (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1952)</ref>

Questo episodio di resistenza fiscale è diventato un modello per l'agricoltore italiano libertario Giorgio Fidenato per iniziare la sua [[disobbedienza civile]] e [[resistenza fiscale]] contro il sostituto d'imposta.

Il caso Kellems è stato inoltre presentato anche da [[Murray Newton Rothbard]] nel suo libro ''[[For a New Liberty]]''<ref> Murray Newton Rothbard,''[Per una nuova libertà]]. Il manifesto libertario.'', Pag. 86, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1973). Disponibile gratuitamente in lingua inglese in [https://freecapitalists.org/books/for-a-new-liberty-the-libertarian-manifesto/ http://mises.org/]</ref>:

''La caratteristica del sostituto d'imposta sul reddito è un esempio ancora più netto di servitù involontaria. Come l'intrepida industriale del Connecticut Vivien Kellems ha sostenuto anni fa, il datore di lavoro è costretto a spendere tempo, lavoro e denaro nel business della deduzione delle imposte e trasmettere per i suoi dipendenti ai governi federale e statale tali pratiche - ma il datore di lavoro non è ricompensato per questo spesa. Che cosa giustifica a livello di principio morale del governo il costringere i datori di lavoro ad agire come esattori delle tasse non pagati? Il principio alla fonte, ovviamente, è il fulcro di tutto il sistema federale sul reddito. Senza il costante e relativamente indolore processo di dedurre l'imposta dalla busta paga del lavoratore, il governo non avrebbe mai potuto sperare di aumentare i livelli elevati di imposta da parte dei lavoratori in un'unica soluzione. Pochi ricordano che il sistema di ritenuta è stata istituita solo durante la seconda guerra mondiale e avrebbe dovuto essere un espediente di guerra. Come tante altre caratteristiche del dispotismo Stato, tuttavia, la misura d'urgenza in tempo di guerra presto entrò a far parte del consacrato sistema americano. È forse significativo che il governo federale, sfidato da Vivien Kellems per verificare la costituzionalità del sistema di ritenuta alla fonte, non è riuscito a raccogliere la sfida. Nel febbraio 1948 Miss Kellems, una piccola costrutttice a Westport, nel Connecticut, ha annunciato che stava sfidando la legge del sostituto d'imposta rifiutandosi di detrarre l'imposta ai suoi dipendenti. Lei stessa ha chiesto al governo federale di essere accusata, in modo che i tribunali fossero in grado di pronunciarsi sulla costituzionalità del sistema di ritenuta alla fonte. Il governo ha rifiutato di farlo, ma invece colto l'importo dovuto dal suo conto in banca. Miss Kellems ha citato in giudizio il governo in una corte federale per vedersi restituire i propri fondi. Quando il dibattimento è finalmente giunto alla prova nel febbraio del 1951, la giuria ha ordinato al governo di rimborsare i suoi soldi. Ma tale atto costituzionale non giunse mai''.- [[Murray Newton Rothbard]] - da ''[[For a New Liberty]]''

Il seminario dedicato ai giovani iscritti al ML vuole essere un appuntamento annuale per poter apprendere alla presenza di molte personalità italiane del mondo del giornalismo libertario, della cultura e della comunicazione, del diritto e dell'economia austriaca nel ruolo di insegnanti, le nozioni e i concetti del libertarianismo.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4380:primo-seminario-vivien-kellems&catid=1:latest-news ''Iscrizione al primo seminario Kellems Vivien''] 11 marzo, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6036:seminario-vivien-kellems-ecco-il-programma&catid=1:latest-news ''Seminario Vivien Kellems, il programma!''] 8 giugno, 2010.</ref>

====Interlibertarians: Internazionale Libertari====

I liberisti svizzeri del Canton Ticino Libero e i membri del Movimento Libertario hanno organizzato il 26 e 27 Marzo 2011 a [[Lugano]] (Canton Ticino, Svizzera) un evento internazionale, il quale si terrà una volta all'anno in Svizzera: "Interlibertarians" ([[Internazionale Libertari]]).<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4475:interlibertarian-primo-congresso-internazionale-dei-libertari&catid=1:latest-news ''Interlibertarians: Primo Congresso dell'Internazionale Libertarians] di Leonardo Facco. 19 marzo, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://homepage.mac.com/rcortonesi/Sites/ENCLAVE11.pdf ''Che idea: L'internazionale libertaria!''] ''Enclave'' n°11, pag 1, di Giovanni de Consoli. Febbraio [http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59&Itemid=55 http://www.movimentolibertario.it/]</ref>

"Interlibertarians 2011" è stata la prima conferenza dei libertari un'importante occasione di incontrarsi in un meeting internazionale di tutte le organizzazioni del libero mercato, liberali classiche, minarchiche, oggettiviste, liberiste, anarco-capitaliste di tutto il mondo, per un dibattito serio sui problemi reali che affliggono il mondo di oggi, in una prospettiva di libertà.

==Curiosità==

Nel 2009, [[Enrico Montesano]], il famoso attore italiano, ha aderito al Movimento Libertario sostenendo Giorgio Fidenato nella sua battaglia a favore dell'abolizione del sostituto d'imposta.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4185%3Ail-masaniello-delle-liberta-qimpossibiliq&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=1 ''Il "Masainiello" delle libertà impossibili''] ''Il Secolo d'Italia'', di Daniele Priori. 17 febbraio, 2010. [http://www.movimentolibertario.it/ http://www.movimentolibertario.it/]</ref>

Montesano come libertario è contro il FUS (Fondo Unico per lo Spettacolo) assegnate dal governo per finanziare il teatro italiano e produzioni cinematografiche.<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/images/ml/ifoglidienclave/Enclave11.pdf ''Montesano, il libertario''] ''I fogli di Enclave'' n°11 di Franco Possenti, pag 1,4. Febbraio 2010. [http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59 http://www.movimentolibertario.it/]</ref>

Egli sostiene che: "Il lavoro di un artista viene giudicato al botteghino ed è il pubblico che decide."<ref>[http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3434&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=1 ''E Montesano canta il rap dei libertari!''] ''Il Secolo d'Italia'' di Daniele Priori. 10 ottobre, 2009. [http://www.movimentolibertario.it/ http://www.movimentolibertario.it/]</ref><ref>[http://www.nereovilla.it/091104-secoloditalia-montesano_libertario.pdf ''E Montesano canta il rap dei libertari!''] ''Il Secolo d'Italia'' di Daniele Priori, pag 16. 4 novembre 2009. Archived from [http://www.nereovilla.it http://www.nereovilla.it]</ref>

==Voci correlate==

* [[Agorismo]]
* [[Capitalismo]]
* [[Liberalismo classico]]
* [[Euroscetticismo]]
* [[Libero mercato]]
* [[Individualismo]]
* [[Liberismo]]
* [[Miniarchismo]]
* [[Non-interventismo]]
* [[Nonviolenza]]
* [[Oggettivismo (Ayn Rand)|Oggettivismo]]

==Note==
{{Reflist|2}}

==Link esterni==

* [http://www.movimentolibertario.com/ Sito ufficiale del Movimento Libertario]
* [http://www.youtube.com/user/Leonardofaccoeditore/ Canale YouTube del ML]
* [http://www.justin.tv/movimentolibertario Canale ML su Justin.tv] Web Tv del Movimento Libertario per conferenze, attività pubbliche e dibattiti
* [http://shop.movimentolibertario.com Negozio online e sito della Leonardo Facco Editore] sito della casa editrice del Movimento Libertario
* [http://www.movimentolibertario.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59 ''I Fogli di Enclave''] bimestrale gratuito del Movimento Libertario

Money supply

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'''Money supply''' or money stock is the total amount of [[money]] available in an economy at a particular point in time.<ref name="Johnson_supply">Paul M. Johnson. [http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/money_stock "Money stock"], from "A Glossary of Political Economy Terms".</ref>

==Changes in the money supply==
An '''increase''' in the money is called [[inflation]]<ref name="Hazlitt_inflation">Henry Hazlitt. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/2914 "What You Should Know About Inflation"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2010-10-0.</ref>, while a '''contraction''' or decrease is called [[deflation]].<ref name="Rothbard_deflation">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap12f.asp#11C._Secondary_Developments "C. Secondary Developments of the Business Cycle"], [[Man, Economy and State]], referenced 2010-03-09.</ref>

==Monetary aggregates==
There is a number of monetary aggregates to measure and interpret the money supply.

===M0===
According to the [[Bank of England]], '''M0''' or "narrow money" is composed of [[banknote|notes]] and [[coin]] in circulation outside the Bank of England, and banks’ operational deposits with the Bank of England. It is not published by this bank since 2006,<ref name="BoE_M0">Bank of England. [http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/mfsd/iadb/notesiadb/m0.htm "Explanatory Notes - M0"], referenced 2010-10-06.</ref> but other banks continue using variants of it.{{Fact|Other banks still publish the M0 - see [[Latvia]] for example.}}

===M1===
According to the [[European Central Bank]], '''M1''' is defined as currency in circulation plus overnight deposits.<ref name="ECB_aggregates">The European Central Bank. [http://www.ecb.int/stats/money/aggregates/aggr/html/index.en.html "Monetary aggregates"]. Referenced 2010-10-05.</ref>

The [[Federal Reserve]] defines '''M1''' as the sum of currency held outside the vaults of depository institutions, Federal Reserve Banks, and the U.S. Treasury; travelers checks; and demand and other checkable deposits issued by financial institutions (except demand deposits due to the Treasury and depository institutions), minus cash items in process of collection and Federal Reserve float.<ref name="Fed_definitions">Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. [http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/mt/notes.pdf "Definitions"] (pdf) from Monetary trends. Referenced 2010-10-06.</ref>

===M2===
According to the [[European Central Bank|ECB]], '''M2''' comprises '''M1''' plus deposits with an agreed maturity of up to and including two years and deposits redeemable at notice of up to and including three months.<ref name="ECB_aggregates" />

The [[Federal Reserve|Fed]] defines '''M2''' as M1 plus savings deposits (including money market deposit accounts) and small-denomination (under $100,000) time deposits issued by financial institutions; and shares in retail money market mutual funds (funds with initial investments under $50,000), net of retirement accounts.<ref name="Fed_definitions" />

===M3===
For the [[European Central Bank|ECB]], '''M3''' comprises '''M2''' plus repurchase agreements, money market fund shares and units as well as debt securities with a maturity of up to and including two years.<ref name="ECB_aggregates" />

For the [[Federal Reserve|Fed]], '''M3''' is M2 plus large-denomination ($100,000 or more) time deposits; repurchase agreements issued by depository institutions; Eurodollar deposits, specifically, dollar-denominated deposits due to nonbank U.S. addresses held at foreign offices of U.S. banks worldwide and all banking offices in Canada and the United Kingdom; and institutional money market mutual funds (funds with initial investments of $50,000 or more).<ref name="Fed_definitions" />

===MZM===
The '''MZM''' used by the [[Fed]] ("money, zero maturity") is M2 minus small-denomination time deposits, plus institutional money market mutual funds (that is, those included in M3 but excluded from M2).<ref name="Fed_definitions" />

==True Money Supply==
{{Main|True Money Supply}}
Austrian economists Murray Rothbard and Joe Salerno developed an alternative monetary aggregate, variously called the "true money supply" or the "Austrian money supply."<ref name="Murphy_Lost">Robert P. Murphy. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/5028/Lost-in-a-Maze-of-Money-Aggregates "Lost in a Maze of Money Aggregates?"], ''Mises Daily'', February 14, 2011. Referenced 2011-02-14.</ref>

==See also==
* ''[[What Has Government Done to Our Money?]]''

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Links==
* [http://mises.org/content/nofed/chart.aspx?series=TMS Series:True Money Supply] graph maker
* {{md|5028|Lost in a Maze of Money Aggregates?|[[Robert P. Murphy]]|February 2009}}
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/austrian-definitions-of-the-supply-of-money/ Austrian Definitions of the Supply of Money] (pdf) by Murray N. Rothbard, 1978
* [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/aen/aen6-4-1/ The "True" Money Supply: A Measure of the Supply of the Medium of Exchange in the U.S. Economy] (pdf) by Joseph T. Salerno, 1987
* [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/qjae/qjae3-4-3/ The Mystery of the Money Supply Definition] (pdf) by Frank Shostak, 2000
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/1397 Making Sense of Money Supply Data] by Frank Shostak, December 2003
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=444 The Fallacy of the Money Supply] by William L. Anderson, June 2003
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/1956 Why Money Supply Matters] by Thorsten Polleit, November 2005
* [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/scholar/define/ How Should We Define the Money Supply? Austrian Versus Monetarist Approach] (pdf) by Nicolas Bouzou
* [https://stats.ecb.europa.eu/stats/download/bsi_tab02_03/bsi_tab02_03/bsi_tab02_03.pdf 2.3 Monetary statistics] (pdf) - Monetary aggregates in the Euro Area, January 2011
* [http://mises.org/money/2s8.asp The "Proper" Supply of Money] by Murray Rothbard, from ''[[What Has Government Done to Our Money?]]''

* {{wplink}}

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[[Category:Money]]

Money

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'''Money''' is a commonly used [[medium of exchange]].<ref name="Goods">Ludwig von Mises. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/read/chapter-xvii-indirect-exchange/ "1. Media of Exchange and Money"], ''Chapter XVII. Indirect exchange'', [[Human Action]], online edition, referenced 2009-04-27.</ref> People wishing to achieve their ends often have to [[trade]]. They can exchange their [[good]]s ''directly'', if they have matching preferences and suitable goods, or ''indirectly'', with the help of another good, the ''medium of exchange''.

==Medium of exchange and money==
{{Main|Medium of exchange}}
Jones can trade an apple against two eggs from Brown. But this direct exchange or [[Trade#Direct Exchange|barter]] limits the number of exchanges and the extent of social cooperation. Both must have a direct personal need for the goods of the other person (this problem is called the "[[Coincidence of wants|double coincidence of wants]]") and the goods must be easily divided. Using another, marketable good between the traded and desired goods and services helps to reduce some of the problems.

: Indirect exchange means, "''if, between the commodities and services, that are the ultimate end of exchanging, are one or several media of exchange.''"<ref name="Goods" />

Another grave problem with a world of barter is that it is impossible for any business [[firm]] to '''calculate''' how it's doing, whether it is making profits or incurring losses, beyond a very primitive estimate. Suppose that you are a business firm, and you are trying to calculate your income, and your expenses, for the previous month. And you list your income: "let's see, last month we took in 20 yards of string, 3 codfish, 4 cords of lumber, 3 bushels of wheat. . . etc.," and "we paid out: 5 empty barrels, 8 pounds of cotton, 30 bricks, 5 pounds of beef." How in the world could you figure out how well you are doing? Once a money is established in an economy, however, business calculation becomes easy: "Last month, we took in 500, and paid out 450. Net profit, 50." The development of a general medium of exchange, then, is a crucial requisite to the development of any sort of flourishing market economy.<ref name="Rothbard_money">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-case-against-the-fed/ The Case Against the Fed] (pdf), The Genesis of Money, p.12-15, referenced 2010-03-18.</ref>

A [[commodity]] that comes into general use as a medium of exchange is money. The concept of a "medium of exchange" is precise. But when exactly comes a medium of exchange into "common" or "general" use is not strictly definable. Whether or not is a medium money can be decided only by the judgment of the historian. Since there is a great tendency on the market for a medium of exchange to become money, it is called money for simplification.<ref name="Rothbard_medium">Murray N. Rothbard [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap3a.asp#2._Emergence_of_Indirect "2. The Emergence of Indirect Exchange"] Chapter 3-The Pattern of indirect exchange, ''[[Man, Economy and State]]'', online edition, referenced 2009-05-05.</ref>

Note that money is still a [[good]] - the most marketable good. Money is valuable to the extent that others are willing to accept it in exchange. But, money itself must first have originated as a directly serviceable good before it could become an indirectly serviceable good.<ref name="Mahoney_money">Dan Mahoney. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/672 "Austrian Business Cycle Theory: A Brief Explanation"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-06-17.</ref>

==Origin and properties==
In the history of mankind, a great variety of commodities — cattle, shells, nails, tobacco, cotton, copper, silver, gold, stone wheels<ref name="Friedman_Yap">Milton Friedman. [http://hoohila.stanford.edu/workingpapers/getWorkingPaper.php?filename=E-91-3.pdf "The Island of Stone Money"] (pdf), The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, February 1991, referenced 2009-08-14.</ref>, and so on, have been used as media of exchange. In the most developed societies, the precious metals have eventually been preferred to all other goods because of their physical characteristics ([[scarcity]], durability, divisibility, distinct look and sound, homogeneity through space and time, malleability, and beauty).<ref name="Hulsmann_money">Jörg Guido Hülsmann. [[The Ethics of Money Production]], online version, 2. The Origin and Nature of Money, p.22-24, referenced 2009-05-08.</ref>

For a good to become money, it must have the physical properties and be considered valuable by itself. The [[price]] of a good, when employed only for nonmonetary purposes, is a good starting point to estimate its price for use as a money. Should the good stop being money, it will still have [[value]] due its other uses.<ref name="Hulsmann_money" />

Historically, there were often several types of money used concurrently and for different purposes. For example, [[silver]] tended to be widespread in daily use, while [[gold]] served for larger and international transactions. Livestock<ref name="Davies">Davies, Glyn. [http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/origins.html "A history of money from ancient times to the present day"], Origins of Money and of Banking, referenced 2009-05-09.</ref> was for ages associated with wealth (and while it is bulky, it can be easily transported). The role of cigarettes<ref>R. A. Radford. [http://www.albany.edu/~mirer/eco110/pow.html "The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp"], ''[[Wikipedia:Economica|Economica]]'', vol. 12, 1945, referenced 2009-05-09.</ref> in prisons is also well documented.

In the present, money is mostly in the form of [[coin]]s and [[banknote]]s.

{{See also|History of money and banking}}

===Commodity money===
The emergence of money happens through a gradual process, in the course of which more and more market participants, each for himself, decide to use one [[commodity]] rather than others in their indirect exchanges. Thus the historical selection of gold, silver, and copper was not made through some sort of a social contract or convention. Rather, it resulted from the spontaneous convergence of many individual choices, a convergence that was prompted through the objective physical characteristics of the precious metals. Money selected in the free market. i.e. money that comes into use by the voluntary cooperation of acting persons, is also called ''natural money''.<ref name="Hulsmann_money" />

By adding a new component to the pre-existing (barter) demand for these goods, their marketability is still further enhanced. Based on their perception of this fact, other market participants increasingly choose the same goods for their inventory of exchange media, as it is in their own interest to select media of exchange that are already employed by others for the same purpose. Initially, a variety of goods may be in demand as common media of exchange. However, since a good is demanded as a medium of exchange to facilitate future purchases of directly serviceable goods (i.e., to help one buy more cheaply) and simultaneously widen one's market as a seller of directly useful goods and services (i.e., help one sell more dearly), the more widely a commodity is used as a medium of exchange, the better it will perform its function.<ref name="Hoppe_money">Hans-Hermann Hoppe. [https://freecapitalists.org/journals/rae/rae7-2-3/ "How is Fiat Money Possible? - or, The Devolution of Money and Credit"] (pdf), The Review of Austrian Economics Vol.7, No. 2 (1994). Referenced 2010-04-28.</ref>

Because each market participant naturally prefers the acquisition of a more marketable and, in the end, universally marketable medium of exchange to that of a less or non-universally marketable one, "there would be an inevitable tendency for the less marketable of the series of goods used as media of exchange to be one by one rejected until at last only a single commodity remained, which was universally employed as a medium of exchange; in a word, money."<ref name="Mises_origin">Ludwig von Mises. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-theory-of-money-and-credit/ "Theory of Money and Credit"] (pdf), p.32-33, referenced 2010-04-28.</ref>

===Fiat money===
Money did not and never could begin by some arbitrary social contract, or by some government agency decreeing that everyone has to accept the tickets it issues. Even coercion could not force people and institutions to accept meaningless tickets that they had not heard of or that bore no relation to any other pre-existing money.<ref name="Rothbard_money" />

If anyone could produce [[paper money]] on their own, without backing by an underlying commodity, a [[hyperinflation]] would soon follow. Free entry into the note-production business must be restricted, and a money [[monopoly]] must be established. Fiat money can be only established via the development of money substitutes (paper titles to commodity money) - but only fraudulently and only at the price of economic inefficiencies. [[Wikipedia:Hans-Hermann Hoppe|Hoppe]] speaks of the "devolution" of money.<ref name="Hoppe_money" />
{{Main|Fiat Money}}

==Types==

===Commodity money===
As the more marketable [[Commodity|commodities]] in any society begin to be picked by individuals as media of exchange, their choices will quickly focus on the few most marketable commodities available. The demand for these commodities has now an additional component - not only for their direct use, but also for their use as a medium of exchange. This increase in the demand greatly increases their marketability. If e.g. butter begins as one of the most marketable commodities and is therefore more and more chosen as a medium, this increase in the demand for butter greatly increases the very marketability that makes it useful as a medium in the first place. The process is cumulative, with the most marketable commodities becoming enormously more marketable and with this increase spurring their use as media of exchange. The process continues, with an ever-widening gap between the marketability of the medium and the other commodities, until finally one or two commodities are far more marketable than any others and are in general use as media of exchange.<ref name="Rothbard_medium" />

===Money substitutes===
{{Main|Money substitutes}}
Or ''money certificates'', are placeholders for actual money, that is stored in a [[bank]] and can be redeemed at any time by the present owner of the note. Instead of trading e.g. silver, people would trade with notes representing the silver. Apart from paper notes, the main types of such substitutes are token coins, certificates of deposit, checking accounts, credit cards, and electronic bank accounts on the [[Internet]]. The advantage are lower transaction costs, the downside is a greater potential for abuse (and historically, this lure appeared to be irresistible).<ref name="Hulsmann_certificates">Jörg Guido Hülsmann. [[The Ethics of Money Production]], Chapter 2. Money certificates p.35-41, referenced 2009-05-10</ref>

===Credit money===
Credit money is created when financial instruments are used in indirect exchange. It is only a derived kind of money: it receives its [[value]] from an expected future redemption. For example, an [[Wikipedia:IOU (debt)|IOU]] can be accepted by others, if they trust the reputation of the issuer of [[debt]]. This risk of [[default]] also limits its application.

"Not surprisingly, therefore, credit money has reached wider circulation only when the credit was denominated in terms of some commodity money, when the reputation of the issuer was beyond doubt, and when it was the only way to quickly provide the government with the funds needed to
conduct large-scale war."<ref name="Hulsmann_credit_money">Jörg Guido Hülsmann. [[The Ethics of Money Production]], 2. The origin and nature of Money, p.28-29, referenced 2009-05-10</ref>

===Fiat money===
{{Main|Fiat Money}}
Often called '''paper money''', fiat money is in a wider sense any money declared to be [[Legal tender|legal tender]] by government ''fiat''. In the narrower sense used here, fiat money is an [[Wikipedia:intrinsic|intrinsically]] useless good used as a means of payment and a storable object.<ref>Walsh, Carl E. Monetary Theory and Policy, The MIT Press 2003, ISBN 978-0-262-23231-9, [http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=4&q=http://books.google.com/books%3Fid%3DeX3n3LSZVrIC%26dq%3DWalsh,%2BCarl%2BE.%2BMonetary%2BTheory%2Band%2BPolicy%26printsec%3Dfrontcover%26source%3Dbn%26hl%3Den&ei=kCwHSuypIoGH_Qb99sXcBg&usg=AFQjCNFILyic0qj63G7aiTnMpix5BJaRDQ&ei=kCwHSuypIoGH_Qb99sXcBg&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4 online version], referenced 2009-05-10.</ref> All modern paper [[Currency|currencies]] are fiat money.

There are many reported advantages to fiat money as opposed to commodity-based money, among them:
* much lower costs of production
* the quantity can be easily modified to suit the needs of trade
* the quantity can be easily modified to stabilize the value of the money unit.

The main risk of this money is the possibility of a complete loss of value.

{{See also|For and against paper money}}

===Electronic money===
The information technologies have been able to develop very efficient and beneficial new instruments to access and transfer. But no purely electronic money has been produced so far, except for government money, which is free from competition.<ref name="Hülsmann_fiat">Jörg Guido Hülsmann. [[The Ethics of Money Production]], Chapter 1., 5. Paper Money and the Free Market, p. 29-33, referenced 2009-05-10.</ref> A possible candidate for a purely electronic money, which is currently in the experimental stage, is [[bitcoin]].

==Production of money==
The [[production]] of additional units of money will decrease the value of already existing units. Those owning these additional units will tend to pay more money for goods and services or demand additional goods and services, and demand in turn more money when selling their own goods and services. Thusly, the production of money has a tendency to raise money [[price]]s, starting from the producers of money and spreading to other economical actors.

In the free market, the amount of money produced depends in the free market on the consumers. They decide not only the amount of goods (or money) to be produced, but also the the types of money widely used. Historically, coins of several metals and alloys were used concurrently, this appears to be the natural state of things.

It is often asserted, that higher money prices benefit debtors, as it lowers the relative value of their debts. This may not always be the case: if the lender's estimate of the rising prices is too high, the debtor may end up paying more on account of the expected [[inflation]].

The final and possibly most important effect of a rising [[money supply]] is in its timing - the positive effect of "having more money" benefits the producer of money and those getting it first; while the negative effects impact the latecomers. This redistribution of of wealth and rising prices may be limited to some degree, but cannot be avoided.<ref name="Hulsmann_production">Jörg Guido Hülsmann. [[The Ethics of Money Production]], Chapter 3 Money within the Market Process, referenced 2009-05-10.</ref>

===The optimal quantity of money===
For all products except money, an increase is socially beneficial, since it means that production and living standards have increased in response to consumer demand. If steel or bread or houses are more plentiful and cheaper than before, everyone‘s standard of living benefits. But an increase in the [[Money supply|supply of money]] cannot relieve the natural scarcity of consumer or capital goods; all it does is to make the money cheaper, that is, lower its purchasing power in terms of all other goods and services. Once a good has been established as money on the market, then, it exerts its full power as a mechanism of exchange or an instrument of calculation. All that an increase in the quantity of dollars can do is to dilute the effectiveness, the purchasing-power, of each money. Hence, the great truth of monetary theory emerges: once a commodity is in sufficient supply to be adopted as a money, no further increase in the supply of money is needed. Any quantity of money in society is "optimal." Once a money is established, an increase in its supply confers no social benefit.<ref name="Rothbard_money" />

This is not the situation with '''commodity money'''. Money originally emerged from an ordinary commodity that people demanded because it contributed tangible benefits to their life and well being - one of them the service of a medium of exchange. Therefore, an increase of the production of commodity means more useful goods.<ref name="Shostak">Frank Shostak. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/daily/1596 "The Subsistence Fund"], Mises Daily, August 2004, referenced 2010-05-10.</ref>

==Using money==
Money can be employed in several ways:<ref name="Mahoney_money" />

* Money can be held. Holding it "buys" alleviation from a currently felt uneasiness about an [[Uncertainty|uncertain]] future. If the future seems more uncertain, people will increase their cash holdings.
* Money can be used to buy consumer [[good]]s. People increase their consumption if their time preference rises.
* Finally, it can be [[Saving|saved]], to buy producer goods and so form [[capital]]. People save because their [[Time preference|time preference]] falls.

==Monies over the course of history==
According to a study of 775 present and historical [[Currency|currencies]] by DollarDaze.org, twenty percent failed through hyperinflation, 21% were destroyed by war, 12% ended by independence, 24% were monetarily reformed, and 23% are still in circulation.<ref name="Hewitt_Fate">Mike Hewitt. [http://dollardaze.org/blog/?post_id=00405 "The Fate of Paper Money"], ''DollarDaze.org'', January 7th, 2009. Referenced 2011-08-17.</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==See also==
===Bibliography===
* {{Cite journal
|last=Bastiat|first=Frédéric|authorlink=Frédéric Bastiat
|title=What Is Money?
|journal=[[Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics|The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics]]
|volume=5|issue=3
|year=2002
|pages=87-105
|doi=10.1007/s12113-002-1033-4
|url=https://freecapitalists.org/journals/qjae/qjae5-3-7/
}}
* {{Cite book
|last=Hülsmann|first=Jörg Guido|authorlink=Jörg Guido Hülsmann
|title=[[The Ethics of Money Production]]
|publisher=[[Mises Institute|Ludwig von Mises Institute]]
|place=Auburn, Alabama
|year=2008
|isbn=978-1-933550-09-1
|oclc=370739249
}}
* {{Cite book
|last=Menger|first=Carl|authorlink=Carl Menger
|title=On the Origins of Money
|publisher=[[Mises Institute|Ludwig von Mises Institute]]
|place=Auburn, Alabama
|year=2009
|url=https://freecapitalists.org/books/on-the-origins-of-money/
|isbn=978-1-933550-59-6
|oclc=664877242
}}
* {{Cite book
|last=Mises|first=Ludwig von|authorlink=Ludwig von Mises
|title=[[The Theory of Money and Credit]]
|publisher=[[Mises Institute|Ludwig von Mises Institute]]
|place=Auburn, Alabama
|year=2009
|isbn=978-1-933550-55-8
|oclc=781455429
}}
* {{Cite book
|last=Soto|first=Jesús Huerta de|authorlink=Jesús Huerta de Soto
|title=[[Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles]]
|publisher=[[Mises Institute|Ludwig von Mises Institute]]
|place=Auburn, Alabama
|year=2012
|isbn=978-1-61016-189-3
|oclc=807678778
}}

===Links===
* {{wplink}}
* {{md|1711|The Nature and Origin of Money|[[Carl Menger]]|Wednesday, January 05, 2005}}
* {{md|5213|What Is Money?|[[Frédéric Bastiat]]|Friday, May 27, 2011}}
* Murray N. Rothbard, [https://freecapitalists.org/books/man-economy-and-state-with-power-and-market/ Man, Economy and State], esp. Chapters 2 and 3
* Ludwig von Mises, [https://freecapitalists.org/books/human-action/ Human Action], esp. Chapter XVII
* Frank A. Fetter, Economics In Two Volumes: [http://chestofbooks.com/finance/economics/Economics2-Modern-Economic-Problems/index.html Volume II. Modern Economic Problems]

[[Category:Money|*]]

Monetary reform

2026-08-16T04:26:31Z

ArchiveBot: Repoint 2 dead mises.org links to the archived original (automated; see Austrian Economics Wiki:Link repointing)

{{Wikipedia text|Monetary_reform|390681245}}
'''Monetary reform''' describes any movement or theory that proposes a different system of supplying [[money]] and financing the economy from the current system.<ref>For an example of the use of the term, see [http://www.bilderberg.org/monref.htm this] contribution from Bilderberg.org</ref>

Monetary reformers may advocate any of the following, among other proposals:

* A return to non-government issuance of money such as a market-based [[gold standard]] or [[silver standard]] or [[bitcoin]] money system.<ref>[http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/thebearslairview?art_id=10471 Gold Standard], Michael Hutchinson</ref><ref>[https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/3108 Sound Money], [[Lew Rockwell]]</ref><ref>[https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/1971 Our Money Madness], [[Lew Rockwell]]</ref><ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/books/case-for-a-genuine-gold-dollar-the/ The Case for a Gold Dollar], [[Murray Rothbard]]</ref><ref>[http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article4489.html The Twilight of Irredeemable Debt], [[Antal E. Fekete]]</ref><ref>As another example of such advocacy groups, see [http://www.b''Italic text''iblebelievers.org.au/monie.htm this] entry from the "Bible Believers" website</ref><ref>See also [[Antal E. Fekete]], [[G. Edward Griffin]] and [[Ludwig von Mises]]</ref><ref>[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-not-gold-has-the-midas-touch-2013-11-27 Bitcoin]</ref>

* The issuance of interest-free [[credit (finance)|credit]] from a government-controlled and fully owned [[central bank]]. These interest free but repayable loans would be used for public infrastructure and productive private investment. This proposal seeks to overcome the charge that debt-free money would cause inflation.<ref name="books.google.com">{{Cite book|last= Brown |first= Ellen H. |title= Web of Debt |url= http://books.google.com/books?id=ILMGrEC524UC |accessdate= 2007-12-15 |year= 2007 |publisher= Third Millennium Press |location= Baton Rouge, Louisiana |isbn= 0979560802 }}</ref><ref>[http://www.monetary.org/lostscienceofmoney.html Stephen A. Zarlenga, ''The Lost Science of Money'' AMI (2002)]</ref><ref>[http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article2882.html Market Fundamentalism], [[Richard C. Cook]]</ref>

* The issuance of [[social credit]] - "debt-free" money issued directly from the [[Treasury]] - rather than the sourcing of fresh money from a [[central bank]] in the form of interest-bearing bonds. These direct cash payments would be made to "replenish" or compensate the populace for the net losses some monetary reformers believe the populace suffers in a [[fractional-reserve banking|fractional reserve-based]] [[debt-based monetary system|monetary system]].<ref>As an example of such groups, see the [http://douglassocialcredit.com/ Social Credit] website and the [http://www.ecn.net.au/~socred/ Social Credit School of Studies]</ref><ref name="Rowbotham 1998">{{Cite book|last= Rowbotham |first= Michael |title= The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics | year= 1998 |publisher= Jon Carpenter Publishing |isbn= 9781897766408 }}</ref>

* The enforcement of [[full reserve banking]] for the privately-owned banking system, or at least the dramatic reduction of levels of leverage throughout the economy.<ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/books/what-has-government-done-to-our-money/ What has Government done to our money?], [[Murray Rothbard]]</ref><ref>[https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/1829 The Case for a 100% Gold Dollar], [[Murray Rothbard]]</ref><ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/journals/rae/rae9-1-1/ Free Banking and the Free Bankers], [[Jörg Guido Hülsmann]], Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics (Vol. 9, No. 1)</ref><ref>[[Steve Keen]], [http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2010/10/04/jubilee-shares-and-the-american-monetary-act/ Jubilee Shares and the American Monetary Act]</ref>

==Common targets for reform==
Of all the aspects of [[monetary policy]], certain topics reoccur as targets for reform:

===Fractional Reserve Banking===
{{Main|Fractional-reserve banking}}

[[Fractional-reserve banking]] describes systems in which banks [[loan|lend]] [[money]] while at the same time guaranteeing that depositors (whose money it is lending) will be able to make withdrawals on [[demand deposits|demand]]. Because the bank extends a loan with money from depositors, while at the same time guaranteeing the deposits already held by the bank, this system has the effect of increasing the economy's [[money supply]].<ref name="mankiw2">{{Cite book|title=Macroeconomics|last=Mankiw|first=N. Gregory|author-link=Gregory Mankiw|year=2002|edition=5th|publisher=Worth Publishers|publication-place=New York|isbn=0-7167-5237-9|page=485}}</ref> Some consider this practice both inflationary and fraudulent.<ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/books/mystery-of-banking-the/ Murray Rothbard, ''The Mystery of Banking'']</ref><ref name="Rowbotham 1998"/>

Many attempts at financial reform have been made to try to mitigate against the potentially damaging effects of fractional reserve banking - for example, those made in response to the [[Great Depression]] and the [[crash of 1929]]. These reforms included the creation of [[deposit insurance]] (such as the [[Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation]]) to mitigate against the danger of [[bank run]]s.<ref name="mankiw3"/> Some countries have also implemented legal [[reserve requirements]], which impose minimum cash reserve requirements on banks.<ref name="mankiw4">{{Cite book|title=Macroeconomics|last=Mankiw|first=N. Gregory|author-link=Gregory Mankiw|year=2002|edition=5th|publisher=Worth Publishers|publication-place=New York|isbn=0-7167-5237-9|page=487}}</ref> Mainstream economists believe<ref name="mankiw3">{{Cite book|title=Macroeconomics|last=Mankiw|first=N. Gregory|author-link=Gregory Mankiw|year=2002|edition=5th|publisher=Worth Publishers|publication-place=New York|isbn=0-7167-5237-9|page=489}}</ref> that these monetary reforms have made sudden disruptions in the banking system less frequent.

Some critics of fractional reserve banking (such as members of the [[Austrian school]]) argue that the practice is inherently "[[embezzlement|fraudulent]]" and is an act of theft perpetrated against depositors/savers.<ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/books/mystery-of-banking-the/ Murray Rothbard, ''The Mystery of Banking'']</ref><ref name="Rowbotham 1998"/> In their view, fractional reserve banking artificially lowers real [[interest rates]], destabilizes the [[money supply]] and contributes to volatile and wasteful [[Austrian Business Cycle Theory|business cycles]] (or "[[credit cycle]]s").<ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/books/mystery-of-banking-the/ Murray Rothbard, ''The Mystery of Banking'']</ref> Other critics, such as [[Michael Rowbotham]], equate the practice with [[counterfeiting]], where government-protected privileged private entities (the [[bank]]s) are granted the legal right to create money "out of the nothing" while also being granted the right to charge interest on their creation.<ref name="Rowbotham 1998"/> Michael Rowbotham argues that this concentrates wealth in the banking sector (which has a "[[cannibalizing]]" effect on the rest of the economy), causes the rest of the populace to slowly sink into [[debt slavery]], creates volatile [[hyperinflation]] in the housing market and [[deflation]] in the consumer goods market, squeezes real wages, destroys [[farming]] and [[agriculture]] and de-industrializes heavily indebted economies.

===Money no longer represents any intrinsic value===
{{Main|Fiat money}}

Banks loan out [[money]] through [[fractional-reserve banking]], resultant money is no longer backed by a tangible asset. Money does not represent anything other than the debt of another; the only "tangible" aspect of the system is the borrower’s promise to pay back the interest and principal on the loan. [[Debt]] and the ability of borrowers to service that debt then becomes the underlying currency.<ref>[http://www.professorfekete.com/articles/AEFGotterdammerung.pdf Gotterdämmerung], by [[Antal E. Fekete]]</ref>

===Governments do not supply money. Private banks do, for profit===
Many people criticise the fact that governments pay interest for the use of their own money which the [[central bank]] creates "out of nothing".<ref>For an example of the public criticism of the current monetary system, see the [http://www.prosperityuk.com/prosperity/articles/earl.html speech] of the Earl of Caithness in the House of Lords on 5 March 1997</ref><ref>Other examples of such critics include Christian monetary reform groups such as the [http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/debtmone.htm Bible Believers], Austrian Economists such as [https://freecapitalists.org/books/mystery-of-banking-the/ Murray Rothbard], and other monetary reformers such as [http://www.professorfekete.com/articles/AEFGotterdammerung.pdf Antal E Fekete], [http://www.monetary.org/ Stephen Zarlenga], and [http://www.prosperityuk.com/prosperity/revus/grip.html Michael Rowbotham]</ref> This leaves the state of a nation's economy susceptible to the interests of private bankers who create the money solely for the purpose of creating ongoing profits for their employees and shareholders, without any other binding social or legal obligations to the broader community (or future generations) that are normally expected from [[government]] entities. Either private individuals or corporations borrow to fund themselves and their businesses, or government "borrows" money from the [[central bank]] to fund deficit spending.

===Impact on developing nations===
Some monetary reformers criticise existing global financial institutions like the [[World Bank]] and [[International Monetary Fund]] and their policies regarding [[money supply]], [[bank]]s and [[debt]] in developing nations, in that they appear to these writers to be "forcing" a regime of extortionate or unpayable debt on weak [[Third World]] governments that do not have the capacity to pay the interest on these loans without severely affecting the well-being or even the viability of the local population. The attempt by weak [[Third World]] governments to service unrepayable debt with the sale of valuable hard and soft commodities on world markets is seen by some to be destructive of local cultures, destroying local communities and their environment.<ref name="books.google.com"/><ref name="Rowbotham 1998"/><ref>As an example of groups critical of the World Bank, see the [http://www.whirledbank.org/ "Whirled Bank" website]</ref>

==Alternative money systems==
===Central Bank Independence===
In an attempt to control the volatile, exponential growth of the [[money supply]], some countries have created a [[currency board]], or granted independence to their [[central bank]]. The [[Reserve Bank of New Zealand]], the [[Reserve Bank of Australia]] and the [[Bank of England]] are examples where the [[central bank]] is explicitly given the power to set interest rates and conduct monetary policy independent of any direct political intereference or direction from the [[central government]]. This may enable the setting of [[interest rate]]s to be less susceptible to political interference and thereby assist in combating [[inflation]] (or debasement of the currency) by allowing the [[central bank]] to more effectively restrict the growth of [[money supply|M3]].<ref>[https://mises.freecapitalists.org/story/2810 Manipulating the Interest Rate: a Recipe for Disaster], by Thorsten Polliet, December 2007</ref> However, given that these policies do not address the more fundamental issues inherent in [[fractional reserve banking]], many suggest that only more radical monetary reform can promote positive economic or social change. Although [[central bank]]s may appear to control inflation, through periodic bank rescues and other means, they may inadvertently be forced to increase the [[money supply]] (and thereby debase the currency) to save the banking system from bankruptcy or collapse during periodic [[bank run]]s, thereby inducing [[moral hazard]] in the financial system, making the system susceptible to [[economic bubble]]s.<ref>[http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/210283/ Moral Hazard Effects of Central Bank Intervention], by [[Nouriel Roubini]]</ref>

===International Monetary Reform===
Theorists such as [[Robert Mundell]] (and more radical thinkers such as [[James Robertson (activist)|James Robertson]]) see a role for global monetary reform as part of a system of global institutions alongside the [[United Nations]] to provide global [[ecological]] management and move towards [[world peace]], with [[Robert Mundell]] in particular advocating the revived use of gold as a stabilising factor in the international financial system.<ref>[http://www.usagold.com/gildedopinion/mundellgresham.html Uses and Abuses of Gresham's Law, by Robert Mundell]</ref><ref>[http://www.jamesrobertson.com/article/roleofmoneyandfinance.pdf The Role of Money, James Robertson]</ref> Henry Liu of the ''[[Asia Times Online]]'' argues that monetary reform is an important part of a move towards [[post-autistic economics]].<ref>[http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JA30Dj03.html The Road to Hyperinflation], [[Henry C.K. Liu]]</ref>

While some mainstream economists favour monetary reforms to reduce [[inflation]] and [[currency risk]] and to increase [[efficiency (economics)|efficiency]] in the allocation of [[financial capital]], the idea of all-encompassing reform for green or peace objectives is typically espoused by those on the [[left-wing]] of the subject and those associated with the [[anti-globalization movement]].<ref>As an example of such groups, see the [http://www.sustecweb.co.uk/ Sustainable Economics website]</ref>

===Social Credit and the provision of debt-free money directly from government===
Still other radical reform proposals emphasise monetary, tax and capital budget reform which empowers government to direct the economy toward sustainable solutions which are not possible if government spending can only be financed with more government debt from the private banking system. In particular a number of monetary reformers, such as [[Michael Rowbotham]], [[Stephen Zarlenga]] and Ellen Hodgson Brown, support the restriction or banning of [[fractional-reserve banking]] (characterizing it as an illegitimate banking practice akin to [[embezzlement]]) and advocate the replacement of [[fractional-reserve banking]] with government-issued debt-free [[fiat currency]] issued directly from the [[Treasury]] rather than from the quasi-government [[Federal Reserve]]. Some monetary reformers have criticized these proposals as a return to [[Populist Party (United States)|Populist]] [[Greenbacker]]ism.<ref>See for example Gary North, [https://freecapitalists.org/books/gertrude-coogan-s-bluff-greenback-populism-as-conservative-economics/ ''Gertrude Coogan’s Bluff, Greenback Populism as Conservative Economics'']</ref>

Alternatively, some monetary reformers such as those in the [[Social Credit]] movement, support the issuance of repayable interest-free credit from a government-owned central bank to fund infrastructure and sustainable social projects and the simultaneous enforcement of [[full reserve banking]] to control the inflationary and destabilizing effects they see in the practice of [[fractional reserve banking]]. This [[Social Credit]] movement flourished briefly in the early 20th century, but then became marginalized and died out in the post-[[World War II]] era. It has recently produced fresh proposals for reform via the [[American Monetary Institute]], which is based in Chicago.<ref>[[Steve Keen]], [http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2010/10/04/jubilee-shares-and-the-american-monetary-act/ Jubilee Shares and the American Monetary Act]</ref>

Both these groups (those who advocate the replacement of [[fractional-reserve banking]] with debt-free government-issued fiat, and those who support the issuance of repayable interest-free credit from a government-owned [[central bank]]) see the provision of interest-free money as a way of freeing the working populace from the bonds of "[[debt slavery]]" and facilitating a transformation of the economy away from environmentally damaging [[consumerism]] and towards sustainable economic policies and environment-friendly business practices. Many in both groups advocate the outlawing of [[fractional reserve banking]] and the enforcement of [[full reserve banking]].<ref>[[Steve Keen]], [http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2010/10/04/jubilee-shares-and-the-american-monetary-act/ Jubilee Shares and the American Monetary Act]</ref>

===Examples of government issued debt-free money===
Some governments have experimented in the past with debt-free government-created money independent of a bank. The American Colonies used the "[[Colonial Scrip]]" system prior to the [[American Revolution|Revolution]], much to the praise of [[Benjamin Franklin]]. He believed it was the efforts of English bankers to revoke this government-issued money that caused the Revolution.<ref>[http://www.no-debts.com/anti-federalist/files/ownmoney.txt America Created its Own Money in 1750, by Congressman Charles G. Binderup]</ref> [[Abraham Lincoln]] used interest-free money created by the government to help the Union win the [[American Civil War]].<ref name="The Forgotten War">[http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1192819378.php The Forgotten War]</ref> He called these '[[Greenbacks]]' "the greatest blessing the people of this republic ever had."<ref>Source of quote discussed [http://www.heritech.com/pridger/lincoln/lin-ken.htm here]</ref><ref>Quoted in the Michael Journal [http://www.michaeljournal.org/plenty49.htm here]</ref>

The islands of [[Guernsey]] and [[Jersey]] in the [[Channel Islands]] create their own money, the [[Guernsey pound]] and [[Jersey pound]], to supplement the [[British Pound]] and the [[Scottish pound]].

[[Binary economics]] proposes that central banks issue interest-free loans to the government and for public projects or private capital. They would be administered by the banking system for the spreading of productive capacity and consuming capacity, on market principles, throughout the population.

===Local barter, local currency===
Some go further and suggest that wholesale reform of money and currency, based on ideas from [[green economics]] or [[Natural Capitalism]], would be beneficial. These include the ideas of [[soft currency]], [[barter (economics)|barter]] and the local [[service economy]].

[[Local currency]] systems can operate within small communities, outside of government systems, and use specially printed notes or tokens called [[scrip]]s for exchange. [[Barter (economics)|Barter]] takes this further by swapping goods and services directly; a compromise being the [[Local Exchange Trading Systems]] (LETS) scheme: a formalised system of [[Community-based economics]] that records members’ [[mutual credit]] in a central location.

===Micro credit===
Banks offering [[Microfinance|small loans]] on [[Interest#Simple_interest|simple interest]], not [[compound interest]], can make a difference to small-scale business people trying to make a start without [[Collateral (finance)|collateral]]. The [[Grameen Bank]] instituted this technique and remains popular and influential.<ref>[http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&id=AkdyD3dmJnoC&dq=microcredit&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=1_t3g3Yj_3&sig=--7I_Pvpta8pUs8vguWQLadDXsk&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result The Microfinance Revolution, by Marguerite S. Robinson]</ref>

===Return to the market money===
A move away from [[fiat money]] towards a [[hard currency]] or asset-backed currency does not necessarily mean using commodity money such as [[Gold standard|gold]], [[Silver standard|silver]] or [[Bimetallism|both]] in daily transactions. The vast majority of the gold supposedly in reserve is held by the [[Federal Reserve]] as collateral for the national debt. The currency could be tied to the good faith and credit of the United States Government, which already issues bonds on the open market, which in turn could be redeemable in gold or silver. [[Electronic money|Digital means]] are also now possible to allow trading in hard currencies such as gold, and some believe a new free market will emerge in money production and distribution, as the [[internet]] allows renewed decentralisation and competition in this area, eroding the [[central government]]'s and bankers' old [[monopoly]] control of the [[means of exchange]].<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/?p=episode&name=2009-02-01_095_not_losing_your_head.mp3 ''Not Losing Your Head''], Speech by [[Lew Rockwell]]</ref><ref>[https://freecapitalists.org/books/a-free-market-monetary-system-and-the-pretense-of-knowledge/ ''Free Market Money System''] by [[F.A. Hayek]]</ref> Some monetary reformers believe that in a genuine [[free market]], where government did not impose a monopoly currency on the populace, a [[gold standard]] or [[silver standard]] monetary system would arise spontaneously out of the [[free market]] because of their unique properties: their extraordinary [[malleability]], their strong resistance to [[forgery]], their character as stable and impervious to decay, and their inherently limited supply.<ref>[http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/msT.html Theory of Money and Credit], [[Ludwig von Mises]]</ref>

==See also==
* [[Criticism of fractional-reserve banking]]
* [[Full reserve banking]]
* [[Social Credit]]
* [[Seignorage]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Links==
*[http://www.monetary.org/ American Monetary Institute]
*[http://www.prosperityuk.com Prosperity UK] A monthly journal on Money Reform which campaigns for publicly-created debt-free money
*[http://www.comer.org/ Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform]
*[http://www.moneyreformparty.org.uk/more/web_links/index.php The Money Reform Party, U.K.]
*[http://www.forumforstablecurrencies.org.uk Forum for Stable Currencies, House of Lords]
*[https://freecapitalists.org/books/mystery-of-banking-the/ ''The Mystery of Banking''], [[Murray Rothbard]]
*[https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-money-production/ ''The Ethics of Money Production''], [[Jörg Guido Hülsmann]] (2008), Ludwig von Mises Institute
*[http://www.seek2know.net/pdf.html Transforming Money]
*[http://mars.superlink.net/~neptune/BankFAQ.html Free Banking FAQ]
*[http://www.monetary.org/greeningthedollar.ppt Greening the Dollar]
*[http://www.bendyson.com/ UK Monetary Reform & Proposals for Full-Reserve Banking]