…the Austrian theory of the trade cycle reveals that only the inflationary bank credit expansion that enters the market through new business loans (or through purchase of business bonds) generates the over-investment in higher-order capital goods that leads to the boom-bust cycle.
Murray N. Rothbard Economic Controversies, p. 737
0:00 – Rothbard Quote
0:51 – What is economics?
2:14 – What makes the Austrian School of economics unique?
3:14 – What is an accurate way of measuring wealth in a given society?
4:37 – Why are some countries poor and others wealthy?
7:16 – How can we increase access to products and services to those in lower income brackets while increasing quality – healthcare and housing?
13:20 – Why do Austrians oppose regulation?
15:46 – Do Austrians assume perfect knowledge?
18:04 – What about monopolies & cartels?
23:45 – Subjective value
24:54 – Labor Theory of Value
26:45 – Centrally planning – difference between corporations and governments
29:19 – Competitive currencies – Spontaneous order
31:44 – Spontaneous order in law
33:18 – Do disastrous situations justify the existence of a state?
35:17 – A Priori reasoning vs. Empirical evidence
38:30 – Real world examples
40:50 – Wealth vs. Dignity
42:54 – Why wages rise
46:04 – The “free” mindset
49:55 – Competition – the Austrian approach as a process
The belief in “authority,” which includes all belief in “government,” is irrational and self-contradictory; it is contrary to civilization and morality, and constitutes the most dangerous, destructive superstition that has ever existed. Rather than being a force for order and justice, the belief in “authority” is the arch-enemy of humanity. Pg. 3
If human beings are so careless, stupid and malicious that they cannot be trusted to do the right thing on their own, how would the situation be improved by taking a subset of those very same careless, stupid and malicious human beings and giving them societal permission to forcibly control all the others? Pg. 26
Perhaps most telling is that if you suggest to the average person that maybe God does not exist, he will likely respond with less emotion and hostility than if you bring up the idea of life without “government.” This indicates which religion people are more deeply emotionally attached to, and which religion they actually believe in more firmly. In fact, they believe so deeply in “government” that they do not even recognize it as being a belief at all. Pg. 29
If, for example, someone has a “right” to housing, and housing comes only from the knowledge, skills and efforts of other people, it means that one person has the right to force another person to build him a house. Pg. 117
All statists believe that the people who make up “government” have an exemption from basic human morality, and not only may do things which others have no right to do, but should and must do such things, for the (supposed) good of society. The type and degree of aggression varies, but all statists advocate aggression. Pg. 121
To quickly review, people cannot delegate rights they do not have, which makes it impossible for anyone to acquire the right to rule (”authority”). People cannot alter morality, which makes the “laws” of “government” devoid of any inherent “authority.” Ergo, “authority”-the right to rule-cannot logically exist. Pg. 144
Businesses are always eager for consumers to buy their product or service. On the free market, the consumer is king or queen and the “providers” are always trying to make profits and gain customers by serving them well. But when government operates a service, the consumer is transmuted into a pain-in-the-neck, a “wasteful” user-up of scarce social resources. Whereas the free market is a peaceful cooperative place where everyone benefits and no one loses; when government supplies the product or service, every consumer is treated as using a resource only at the expense of his fellow men. Th e “public service” arena, and not the free market, is the dog-eat-dog jungle.
… it is a man’s right to do whatever he wishes with his person; it is his right not to be molested or interfered with by violence from exercising that right. But what may be the moral or immoral ways of exercising that right is a question of personal ethics rather than of political philosophy …
Mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct, and the State is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft , oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad….The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point of time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for good and minimize the channels for the bad.
Plato’s “Utopia” was the first model for later despotisms — compulsory education and obedience were stressed, there was “communism” of children among the elite “guardians” who also had no private property, and lying was considered a proper instrument for the State to use in its indoctrination of the people.
Murray Rothbard Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 19
Here we have the top medical voice in America, admitting he lied about whether or not a mask will save you from a ‘deadly virus, so bad we must shut down travel, visiting family members, and the economy’.
Every man can enjoy the right of self-ownership, without special coercion upon anyone. But in the case of a “right” to schooling, this can only be provided if other people are coerced into fulfilling it. The “right” to schooling, to a job, three meals, etc., is then not embedded in the nature of man, but requires for its fulfillment the existence of a group of exploited people who are coerced into providing such a “right.”
Murray Rothbard
For a New Liberty, pp. 164–65
A simple analogy makes all “liberal” political theory collapse. If a hundred people were shipwrecked on an island, what would it even mean to say that everyone there has a “right” to food, or that everyone has a “right” to health care, or the “right” to a job, or the “right” to a “living wage”? If, for example, someone has a “right” to housing, and housing comes only from the knowledge, skills and efforts of other people, it means that one person has the right to force another person to build him a house. This is exactly what happens in a larger context, when “liberals” advocate that some people be forcibly robbed via “taxation” in order to provide “benefits” for others. The notion that people, by virtue of their mere existence, are entitled to all sorts of things – things which come into being only as the result of human knowledge and effort – is delusional. The logical result of this supposedly loving and compassionate viewpoint is violence and slavery, because if one’s “need” entitles him to something, that means that it must be forcibly taken from anyone else who has it or can produce it, if he will not supply it willingly.
All of libertarian political thought follows from the non-aggression principle: that no one, including the government, can aggress against someone else’s person or property.
To insure the dominance of the new statism over public opinion, to insure that the public’s consent would be engineered, the governments of the Western world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries moved to seize control over education, over the minds of men: over the universities and over general education through compulsory school attendance laws and a network of public schools. The public schools were consciously used to inculcate obedience to the State as well as other civic virtues among their young charges. Furthermore, this statizing of education insured that one of the biggest vested interests in expanding statism would be the nation’s teachers and professional educationists.
Once concede the power of the people to consent as well as the natural law of “equal freedom from subjection,” and the logical consequence must be anarchism.
Murray N. Rothbard Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 279
… it must be recognized that there are no just national boundaries per se; that real justice can only be founded on the property rights of individuals. …National boundaries are only just insofar as they are based on voluntary consent and the property rights of their members or citizens.
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https://youtu.be/ktNTQUZSUuY All of libertarian political thought follows from the non-aggression principle: that no one, including the government, can aggress against someone else’s person or property. Murray N. Rothbard Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 374 BitChute:...
https://youtu.be/ER5latmoqNU To insure the dominance of the new statism over public opinion, to insure that the public’s consent would be engineered, the governments of the Western world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries moved to seize control over...
https://youtu.be/-4NwihBCl6g Once concede the power of the people to consent as well as the natural law of “equal freedom from subjection,” and the logical consequence must be anarchism. Murray N. Rothbard Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 279 Minds.com:...
https://youtu.be/eBiP_kAlp70 ... it must be recognized that there are no just national boundaries per se; that real justice can only be founded on the property rights of individuals. ...National boundaries are only just insofar as they are based on voluntary consent...
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