Spoken Mises

(Original Text)

My New Year's Wish For The Movement (944.00 KB)

For almost a full century before the Revolution of 1776, writes Albert Jay Nock, the classic enumeration of human rights was "life, liberty, and property." The American Whigs took over this formula from the English Whigs, who had constructed it out of the theories of their seventeenth-century political thinkers, notably John Locke. It appears in the Declaration of Rights, which was written by John Dickinson and set forth by the Stamp Act Congress. In drafting the Constitution of Massachusetts in 1779 Samuel and John Adams used the same formula. But when the Declaration of Independence was drafted Mt Jefferson wrote "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and although his colleagues on the committee, Franklin, Livingston, Sherman, and Adams, were pretty well tinctured with Whig philosophy, they let the alteration stand. It was a revolutionary change.

(Original Text)

Life, Liberty, and ... (4.99 MB)

The power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, writes Murray Rothbard. After centuries of propaganda, the pervasive depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. And yet the idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services. Nor does pure liberty assume that men are angels. Given the "nature of man," given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad.

(Original Text)

Society without a State (7.57 MB)

Lew Rockwell writes: As the war drags on and the state expands its reach in nearly every area of life, I'm detecting another moment of despair sweeping through libertarian ranks. Why aren't all our efforts making a difference? What are we doing wrong? Are we just wasting our time with our publications, conferences, scholarships, editorials, vast web presence, recruitments of thousands of young people? Have our educational efforts ever made any difference?We need an angel like Clarence to show us that world that might have been.

(Original Text)

We Need an Angel Like Clarence (1.80 MB)

Henry Hazlitt advocated the "negative income tax" long before Milton Friedman, but later realized the problem with the idea. It is either inadequate at the lower end or excessive at the higher end. The unpalatable truth seems to be that whenever we try to "increase incentives" by reducing a relief payment by less than a dollar for every addi­tional dollar of self-earnings, we solve an immediate problem at the cost of building up a bigger problem for the future. And the negative income tax has created a problem indeed, and politics has so far forestalled a solution.

(Original Text)

Fallacies of the Negative Income Tax (5.77 MB)

Few American economists have wielded as much influence on economic thought and policy as the late Milton Friedman, writes Hans Sennholz. He was an articulate and ardent advocate of free markets and personal liberty. Yet Sennholz has been at odds with Professor Friedman ever since he advanced his monetarist thought. It is strange that Professor Friedman and his fellow monetarists, who are such defenders of the market order, should call on politicians and bureaucrats to provide the most important economic good — money.

(Original Text)

Milton Friedman, 1912-2006 (1.59 MB)

(Original Text)

An Introduction to Value Theory (5.12 MB)

Bob Murphy applauds the online magazine Slate for its recurring series on "the dismal science," as they call it:"Don't get me wrong, I just about always disagree with the columns. Even so, the articles get me thinking, and that's what's important. So the reader must understand that it is in this festive, jovial spirit that I proceed to devastate a recent Slate article, 'The Sovereign versus the Idiot.' It is a stocking stuffed full of fallacies and plenty a non sequitur for all the family to enjoy."

(Original Text)

Putting the Economics Back in Christmas (2.04 MB)

A number of scholars concerned with the history of European growth have tended to converge on an interpretation highlighting certain distinctive factors, writes Ralph Raico. For the sake of convenience, we shall, therefore, speak of them, despite their differences, as forming a school of thought: the "European miracle" approach, where the "miracle" in question consists in a simple but momentous fact: It was in Europe — and the extensions of Europe, above all, America — that human beings first achieved per capita economic growth over a long period of time. The question is: why Europe?

(Original Text)

The European Miracle (10.81 MB)

Every year, more prisons are built, more money is funneled to police departments, more criminal law is written and yet domestic crime remains a major problem. Explanations abound as to why this is, writes Anthony Gregory. There fundamental explanation makes logic out of the entire mess but is almost never voiced: Socialism. Law enforcement agencies, courts, prisons, legislative bodies — all of the key institutions that are supposed to produce justice are owned and maintained by the state.

(Original Text)

Law-Enforcement Socialism (2.88 MB)