The starting point of praxeology, i.e., the logic of human action, is a self-evident truth. As economist Ludwig von Mises noted, this truth is “the cognition of the fact that there is such a thing as consciously aiming at ends.” Praxeology describes the invariant features and implications of human action, independently of time and place. For example, the actor’s unavoidable need to choose and the fact that his subjective valuations determine the means and ends of his actions. Mises’ axiom of action—the fact that men act—means that action is intentional behavior. It means that men act by...

Law is a social institution independent of the existence of the state. Law explicitly recognizes the principles of justice, which can only be consistently recognized as universal for all times and places. These principles serve not only to deliver justice, but also to judge the justice of the laws applied in any society. The state usurps law by a combination of force and ideology, monopolizing the final say in society and setting itself up as the final judge of all conflicts and crimes, including those involving the state itself. The state thus becomes both judge and party in its own cases....

Whoever argues in favor of granting rights to animals, has first accepted that humans have rights and believes that animals must also be recognized as subjects of rights. And only someone who has a notion of what having rights means can meaningfully ask for this. Yet here, leaving aside the fact that humans can be classified as a specific type of animal, there is no need to justify human rights, but only to assess the validity of animal rights. In a series of lectures published as a book under the title Economy, Society, and History, libertarian philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe puts forward...

Be it the group that controls the state apparatus or the one that represents the institution of government, let us simply refer to the state. While the state cannot achieve everything, it can certainly achieve much, because the state is the monopoly of monopolies—the one and only that makes all other monopolies possible. First, the state is the compulsory territorial monopoly of the services of justice (law) and security (order), which, with institutional power to impose property transfers (taxes) for its maintenance, takes by force or threat the final decisions in society. And second, the...