Property and Freedom Podcast

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 349.

On Sept. 17–18, 2005, Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann presented a two-day 11-lecture series, “Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics,” in Klampenborg (just north of Copenhagen, Denmark), under the auspices of the Copenhagen Institute and Liberator. Program (local, and at right). See also Copenhagen Institute hosts Hoppe and Hülsmann, Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 1, 2005).

The entire series runs for roughly 10–12 hours and are collected on a PFS Playlist.1 For further information see: Hoppe University: Hoppe and Hülsmann, Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics, Copenhagen Institute (2005).

This episode: Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method—Extended Version.

All Lectures:

Lecture 1: Mises and the Austrian School (Hülsmann)
Lecture 2: Value, Utility and Price (Hülsmann)
Lecture 3: Division Of Labor and Money (Hoppe)
Lecture 4: The Theory of Banking (Hoppe)
Lecture 5: Capital and Interest (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method—Extended Version (Hoppe) Longer version RU version (12 minutes longer)
Lecture 7: Business Cycle Theory (Hülsmann)
Lecture 8: The Economics of Deflation (Hülsmann)
Lecture 9: Theory and History (Hoppe)
Lecture 10: Welfare Economics (Hülsmann)
Lecture 11: Law and Economics (Hoppe)
Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist.

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Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 348.

This episode: Lecture 5: Capital and Interest (Hoppe).

All Lectures:

Lecture 1: Mises and the Austrian School (Hülsmann)
Lecture 2: Value, Utility and Price (Hülsmann)
Lecture 3: Division Of Labor and Money (Hoppe)
Lecture 4: The Theory of Banking (Hoppe)
Lecture 5: Capital and Interest (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method—Extended Version (Hoppe) Longer version RU version (12 minutes longer)
Lecture 7: Business Cycle Theory (Hülsmann)
Lecture 8: The Economics of Deflation (Hülsmann)
Lecture 9: Theory and History (Hoppe)
Lecture 10: Welfare Economics (Hülsmann)
Lecture 11: Law and Economics (Hoppe)
Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist.

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Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 347.

This episode: Lecture 4: The Theory of Banking (Hoppe).

All Lectures:

Lecture 1: Mises and the Austrian School (Hülsmann)
Lecture 2: Value, Utility and Price (Hülsmann)
Lecture 3: Division Of Labor and Money (Hoppe)
Lecture 4: The Theory of Banking (Hoppe)
Lecture 5: Capital and Interest (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method—Extended Version (Hoppe) Longer version RU version (12 minutes longer)
Lecture 7: Business Cycle Theory (Hülsmann)
Lecture 8: The Economics of Deflation (Hülsmann)
Lecture 9: Theory and History (Hoppe)
Lecture 10: Welfare Economics (Hülsmann)
Lecture 11: Law and Economics (Hoppe)
Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist.

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Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 346.

This episode: Lecture 3: Division Of Labor and Money (Hoppe).

All Lectures:

Lecture 1: Mises and the Austrian School (Hülsmann)
Lecture 2: Value, Utility and Price (Hülsmann)
Lecture 3: Division Of Labor and Money (Hoppe)
Lecture 4: The Theory of Banking (Hoppe)
Lecture 5: Capital and Interest (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method—Extended Version (Hoppe) Longer version RU version (12 minutes longer)
Lecture 7: Business Cycle Theory (Hülsmann)
Lecture 8: The Economics of Deflation (Hülsmann)
Lecture 9: Theory and History (Hoppe)
Lecture 10: Welfare Economics (Hülsmann)
Lecture 11: Law and Economics (Hoppe)
Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist.

View Details

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 345.

This episode: Lecture 2: Value, Utility and Price (Hülsmann)

All Lectures:

Lecture 1: Mises and the Austrian School (Hülsmann)
Lecture 2: Value, Utility and Price (Hülsmann)
Lecture 3: Division Of Labor and Money (Hoppe)
Lecture 4: The Theory of Banking (Hoppe)
Lecture 5: Capital and Interest (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method—Extended Version (Hoppe) Longer version RU version (12 minutes longer)
Lecture 7: Business Cycle Theory (Hülsmann)
Lecture 8: The Economics of Deflation (Hülsmann)
Lecture 9: Theory and History (Hoppe)
Lecture 10: Welfare Economics (Hülsmann)
Lecture 11: Law and Economics (Hoppe)
Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist.

View Details

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 344.

This episode: Lecture 1: Mises and the Austrian School (Hülsmann).

All Lectures:

Lecture 1: Mises and the Austrian School (Hülsmann)
Lecture 2: Value, Utility and Price (Hülsmann)
Lecture 3: Division Of Labor and Money (Hoppe)
Lecture 4: The Theory of Banking (Hoppe)
Lecture 5: Capital and Interest (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method (Hoppe)
Lecture 6: Praxeology: The Austrian Method—Extended Version (Hoppe) Longer version RU version (12 minutes longer)
Lecture 7: Business Cycle Theory (Hülsmann)
Lecture 8: The Economics of Deflation (Hülsmann)
Lecture 9: Theory and History (Hoppe)
Lecture 10: Welfare Economics (Hülsmann)
Lecture 11: Law and Economics (Hoppe)
Based on the incomplete V for Voluntary Youtube playlist.

View Details

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 342.

Below is the video of the speech by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Hurdles, Obstacles and Surprises on the Road to Rothbard(ianism): Personal Recollections,” at 100 Years with Rothbard (Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026).

See Cataláxia Editora Rothbard 100 Youtube playlist; See also Kinsella, Rothbard Takes Portugal: 100 Years with Rothbard: A Personal Account.

Transcript and summary below.

Rothbard Porto: Hoppe: Beegarc AI watercolor rendering

Below is the video of the speech by Professor Hoppe at 100 Years with Rothbard (Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026). See Cataláxia Editora Rothbard 100 Youtube playlist. Transcript and summary below.

Select photos (for further information and additional photos, see Kinsella, Rothbard Takes Portugal: 100 Years with Rothbard: A Personal Account).

Portuguese translation at Obstáculos, dificuldades e surpresas no caminho para o rothbardismo: recordações pessoais.

Related “Introduction,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) * “Coming of Age with Murray,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment + Based on Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Coming of Age with Murray” (Mises Institute 2017),” Keynote speech, Mises Institute 35th Anniversary Gala (Oct. 7, 2017), and the related article based on the transcript, “Coming of Age with Murray,” Mises.org (10/16/2017), which was also published in idem, Getting Libertarianism Right (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2018) and idem, The Great Fiction: Property, Economy, Society, and the Politics of Decline, 2d. ed (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2021) * Hoppe, Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty, Introduction to the new edition of Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998) * ——, “Murray N. Rothbard: Economics, Science, and Liberty,” in: Randall Holcombe, ed., Fifteen Great Austrian Economists (Auburn, Al.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999) + Also as “M. N. Rothbard: Economics, Science, and Liberty,” in The Great Fiction * ——, Introduction to Murray N. Rothbard, The Logic of Action, Collected Economic Papers, 2 vols. (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1997) (with David Gordon) (later republisyed as Rothbard, Economic Controversies (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011) * ——, Rothbardian Ethics (based on the Murray N. Rothbard Memorial Lecture at the Mises Institute’s Austrian Scholars Conference in 1999), LewRockwell.com, May 20, 2002 (also in EEPP) * Murray N. Rothbard: In Memoriam (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 1995) (various authors) * Hoppe, Murray Rothbard, R.I.P., The Free Market* 13, no. 3 (March 1995)

Summary (Grok)Hoppe’s Path to Rothbardianism: Personal Recollections 0:19

Hans-Hermann Hoppe shares how he became a Rothbardian despite his post-World War II German upbringing. He describes himself as a low-tech speaker with no slides, recounting obstacles and steps in non-chronological order on his intellectual journey.

Post-War Indoctrination in West Germany 1:09

Born after World War II to refugee parents, Hoppe absorbed prevailing teachings in West Germany. His mother was expropriated as a landowner in East Germany. His father, a late-released American POW, revealed taboo details of German prisoners dying from hunger in fenced camps without civilian aid. Such topics remained largely unknown due to post-war taboos. America was portrayed as the greatest power, with democracy, legislation, paper money, and state infrastructure presented as normal. Germans were taught collective guilt for 20th-century evils, including both world wars and crimes against Jews, with no proof required.

Doubts About Democracy and State Authority 4:50

Hoppe began questioning democracy after realizing parental authority allowed exit while democratic rule did not. No social contract existed with rulers. Citizens never consented to taxes or laws imposed on their conduct and property. Elected officials were unknown strangers who knew nothing about individuals they governed. This insight revealed a fundamental lack of agreement or personal entrustment.

Critique of Politicians, State Expansion, and Majority Rule 6:57

Politicians often lacked competence, as illustrated by examples like a German foreign minister qualified only in trampoline jumping or an economics minister ignorant of company insolvency. States naturally expand through taxation and legislation, increasing dependent employees while shrinking the taxpaying base, ultimately impoverishing society. The majority principle promotes relativism: truth and justice do not depend on majorities. Rothbard’s writings proved most influential in clarifying these issues.

Flawed Justice System and War Guilt Narratives 10:35

In conflicts with the state, the same institution acts as judge, leading to predictably biased verdicts. School history, licensed by occupying forces, enforced German guilt for both world wars. America faced no threat yet intervened, shaping outcomes that birthed Nazism, fascism, and communism after World War I, and communist domination of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II. Post-war Europe remained a U.S. vassal with American troops stationed across the continent.

The Paradox of Imperialism and Monetary Power 15:37

States pursue expansion, with internally liberal nations like the United States advancing furthest due to greater economic strength, creating a paradox where freer societies pursue aggressive foreign policies. Private actors bear war costs, but states externalize them through drafting and taxation. Central banking and fiat money enable enrichment without heavy taxation and facilitate endless wars by printing currency out of nothing. Mises and Rothbard opposed this monopolistic privilege.

Multiculturalism, Discrimination, and Group Realities 21:17

America’s multicultural society contrasted with Europe’s relative homogeneity. Compulsory discrimination against Blacks reversed into affirmative action and compulsory nondiscrimination, extending to women, homosexuals, and others, increasing tensions and perverting justice. Europe followed this pattern. Hoppe stresses the value of group averages alongside individual differences for practical decision-making, such as assessing risks in real-world scenarios. Discrimination, in its original positive sense of refined judgment, is essential.

Ruling Class, Taboos, and Libertarian Conduct 27:29

The U.S. ruling class, particularly Jewish elites dominating academia, Hollywood, media, and politics, remains a forbidden topic. Jewish lobbying powerfully influences foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East, destroying careers including Rothbard’s for speaking out. Hoppe encourages courage in noticing group differences and realities. He critiques unappealing elements within libertarian circles and urges libertarians to achieve personal excellence, behave admirably, and serve as positive examples rather than repelling others.

Closing Reflections 31:25

Hoppe concludes by advocating accomplished, proud, and emulation-worthy conduct among libertarians.

Transcript (Youtube/Grok)Introduction and Personal Style 0:19

Thank you very much all of you. I will follow a slightly different style from the previous lectures. I am also a low tech person. There will be no slides of any kind. And it is my objective to tell you a little bit step by step how I became a Rothbardian. What obstacles were in the way of doing this? The steps are not all in chronological order. But in a way you can say how a standard person like myself happened to be a Rothbardian at the end of his life.

Early Life and Post-War German Indoctrination 1:09

I had no parents or immediate relatives who were libertarians. And as a matter of fact, I was born shortly after World War II. And I absorbed in a way all those things as right and true that were taught at that time in West Germany. My parents had been refugees. My mother was expropriated as a major landowner in East Germany. My father had been a prisoner of war with the Americans. Only late in his life he told me for instance how German prisoners of war were treated by Americans. They were fenced in in concentration camps and tens of thousands died from hunger trying to crawl to the Rhine to drink water without any outside help from German civilians allowed to send over packages or so to these prisoners of war. But these things are up to this day almost unknown in Germany because these were taboo subjects.

American Influence and Standard Beliefs 2:51

So when I grew up, America was of course the greatest and everything that we learned as being normal and part of normal life were things that Americans in some education re-education campaign taught the new Germans of which I am of course one. So it was absolutely normal that you had democracy, that you had legislation, that you had paper money, that you had governments being in charge of infrastructure. And that Germans were guilty for everything bad that had happened in the 20th century. All our parents were considered to be guilty. There was no proof or anything required for that. It was self understood that Germans were evil people. We had after all lost two wars. World War I was caused by Germany. World War II was caused by Germany. And all Germans have been somehow responsible for having done evil things to the Jews. This was the standard view that was preached and taught to all Germans of my generation.

Emerging Doubts About Democracy 4:50

Then gradually questions emerged in my mind. We all understood what parental authority was, but parental authority was something that and of course like most people we also sometimes had difficulties with our parents. But you could evade that. There existed exit. At one point you could leave the household and you got rid of the authority that your parents exercised over you. It was very different with democracy. So my first doubts about democracy arose. There existed no exit. It was also obvious that there was no contract with any of these people who ruled over you. You were subjects. You never agreed to being taxed. You never agreed to the laws that were passed and imposed on your conduct or on your property. There existed people that ruled over you and you had never selected these people. Yes, there existed elections. But the people who finally came to power were not people that you personally knew that you had personally entrusted with doing anything. They did not know anything about you and you did not know anything about them. That was an astonishing insight.

Observations on Politicians and State Growth 6:57

You also then in a way discovered as you grow up reading becoming a little bit smarter that many of these people were not exactly very smart. You just have to look at the present crop of politicians that we have. Let’s say take a look at Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump who were obviously senile and belonging to the nut house instead of being people who should rule over you. Now this applies to the politicians in Germany either. We had a foreign minister for instance for four years her only qualification was that she was very good at trampoline jumping. But nonetheless she represented Germany and the rest of the world. We had an economics minister who did not know what an insolvency of a company was. But he was minister of economics in Germany. And I’m sure in Portugal you find many of these wonderful examples just as well.

Then I discovered of course that if you are an institution that can tax and that can legislate this institution has a tendency to continuously grow. If you can tax other people of course you prefer to get more taxes rather than less taxes. If you can make laws, you tend to make laws that benefit you regardless of what they do to other people. There is a tendency that a minimal state, a state that was maybe very small at the beginning will grow and grow. The number of employees working for the state or being dependent on the state will continuously grow. You have a secretary but then your secretary needs an under secretary and that under secretary needs an under under secretary. So the number of people working for the state and being dependent on the state getting their salaries from taxes will continuously grow. And the number of people that have to provide the taxes to pay for all of these people will continuously diminish ultimately of course resulting in an impoverishment of society at large.

Critique of Majority Rule and Justice Systems 9:51

Then I discovered of course that the majority principle itself is somehow an immoral principle. It leads to relativism. Does truth depend on majority? The answer is truth has nothing to do with majorities. Does justice depend on majorities and the answer is justice has nothing to do with majorities. Then I discovered of course again in all of this readings of different people helped me. Most important of course was the readings of Rothbard. Then I discovered what type of justice system is it if in every case of conflict with other people one guy can decide who is right and wrong. That is if you have a conflict with the state. Complain about what some state agent has done to you. Who decides then who is right in this conflict? It is an employee of the same company with whom you have these difficulties. You have a conflict with the policeman complain about it who decides whether you were right, a judge who is an employee of the same company that also employs the policeman. You can roughly predict that this will not lead to just verdicts but this will lead to systematic unjust verdicts in almost all cases.

War Guilt, History, and the Paradox of Imperialism 11:40

Now then coming to the question of war and war guilt. My reading then indicated that it was not always as easy as we were taught in school. Again, remember I mentioned that all school books in Germany after World War II were licensed by the occupying forces. Germany like many other countries in Europe is in a way a vassal state of the United States indicated by the fact that you have troops stationed all over Europe. After World War I, the American troops withdrew to the United States. After World War II, the United States stayed in Europe. There are troops stationed in Germany. There are troops stationed in Portugal. There are American troops stationed in Italy, in Spain, in Turkey. There’s practically no country in Europe that does not have American troops stationed there. Imagine that would be the other way around. If there would be German and Portuguese and Turkish troops stationed in the United States, what the United States would then say in this case, we are not a sovereign country.

Obviously, so this is also true for Germany. All the books were licensed by the occupying forces in Germany. And of course what they presented as a correct version of modern history was World War I was German guilt even though it was quite clear that America was not threatened by Germany in World War I. America was protected by two oceans in between. And it was an inner European war. America got involved in the war and in a way decided the outcome of World War I because it was persuaded by England to join World War I. What was the result of the involvement of America in World War I? It was that Nazism, fascism rose in Europe and communism. America got involved in World War II. Again, there had been no reason Germany did not threaten the United States. Germany also did not even declare war. The first country that declared war against Germany was England and France. All of these things were of course not taught in school. It was always Germany did the wars and we were the only guilty ones. What was the outcome of World War II? America rises to the rank of the supreme power in the world and the result is all of Central and Eastern Europe turn communist.

Why did the United States get involved in these wars and continues to get involved in wars up to this day? There is no country in the world after World War II who has bombed as many other countries as the United States. Why is that? And all of these things you could learn from Rothbard. They exist what I call the paradox of imperialism. All states like to expand their territory and their reach of influence. There’s a tendency towards a world state and what places what countries will proceed furthest on this way. Those countries that are internally liberal, comparatively liberal and the United States is of course internally comparatively liberal as compared to most other countries and on the basis of the greater economic power that results from being internally liberal. The chances that you will win in wars and expand your territories are higher. So it is paradoxically those countries that seem to be the nicest countries the freest countries that tend to pursue the most aggressive foreign policy. So this explains in my view and also the view of Rothbard the imperialist tendencies that you can see in particular in the United States.

State Aggression and Monetary Policy 17:08

I should also mention, of course, it is easy to see why states tend to be more aggressive than private citizens or even mafia groups, gangster groups for the simple reason that private citizens or private gangs fight each other, they must bear the cost involved in fighting. You have to pay for injuries. You have to get the weapons and there is economics involved in these types of problems. But if you have a state, you can externalize the cost of your aggressiveness onto other people. You can draft people into the army. You can tax people who have no business and no interest in warlike endeavors in the rest of the world to nonetheless fund those people who are interested in taking over other countries who are exercising control over the policies in other countries.

Then another thing that I learned especially after moving to the United States was the importance of monetary policy. It became clearer and clearer to me that the most important institution for a state and the source of state power is a central bank. The abolishing of a commodity money such as gold and silver. The replacement of commodity money by a fiat money, by a paper money or electronic money that can be created at will, that can be created out of nothing. That is easier in order to enrich yourself at the expense of other people by simply printing additional money than it is by imposing ever more taxes on people. No state will easily if ever give up this privilege of being the monopolistic printer of money. And you will get enormous amount of support from all sorts of people once they find out that you have the privilege of printing money out of nothing. I always told my students, imagine you would be the only person in the country that can print money and everybody else who would do it would be locked up as a counterfeiter. How many friends do you think you will have the next day of which you didn’t even know before? They will all come and think you can come and rescue them out of any type of difficulties because you have the magic wand. Because of that, Mises and of course Rothbard as well were strict opponents of the central bank and of paper money. It allows you also of course to go far more easily to war than without having a central bank that can create money out of thin air. If you would have to borrow the money from the public the public might sometimes not cooperate but if you can simply print the money for the war there you go it’s much easier.

Multiculturalism, Discrimination, and Group Differences 21:17

Another thing I discovered and that was something that did not appear when I was younger a problem at all in Europe. America was a multicultural society. America had black people. There were different races in the United States. Germany was relatively homogeneous. I think Portugal until relatively recently was also very homogeneous. France was very homogeneous. Most countries in Europe were rather homogeneous groups, people very much alike. The United States was very different in this regard. And what took place there was first you had compulsory discrimination against blacks for instance. Blacks were not allowed to do certain things. And then this was turned around to the complete opposite. That is instead of simply saying all these compulsory discrimination laws will simply be abolished, they turned it around and said now we have to make good on the discrimination, the unjust discrimination that existed before. Now we have compulsory nondiscrimination or which is called in the United States affirmative action that is we have to give those people special privileges which caused of course tremendous problems and increased the racial hatred to a level that had not existed before. Schools that were before been segregated were now compulsorily integrated and then this nondiscrimination or compulsory nondiscrimination was extended to ever more groups. So the next discriminated groups they found out were women. The next discriminated group that they found out were homosexuals or lesbians or transsexuals or whatever it is. So these sorts of things led to a perversion of justice in an inexplicable way and Europe followed the American pattern. Of course not as fast because the initial problem that is the racial problem of blacks versus whites did not exist to this extent in Europe. But as soon as the extension came females, homosexuals, lesbians, whatever it is, this whole thing caught on in Europe as well.

I also learned then that it is important not only to learn about the differences between different races and different sexes. That is also an error to believe you should only look at individuals. No, you also sometimes need to know something about averages. Not only individuals are different one from the other, also groups of people are different from other groups. Sometimes you don’t have enough information about people on the individual level to make decisions about what to do with this guy and that guy. Sometimes you lack information and you have to just make decision based on your knowledge of averages. You know that if you meet a group of girls coming home at night from some party and a group of black males for instance coming home at night and you have to choose which side of the street you should use in order not to be mugged. It is good to know which group is likely less aggressive and which group is likely more aggressive. These sorts of insights were basically made taboo to talk about in the United States. And what I did learn and again helped me in this was you have to be discriminating. Discriminating between people and groups of people is a good thing. In the old days when people said this person has a discriminating taste that meant this person knows his way around in the world. Nowadays if people say this person is a discriminating person that is considered to be a negative thing. I am a discriminating person. There are many libertarians that claim to be libertarians. I would never want to go out with them. And there are many people who are non libertarians who I think behave in a way that I consider to be polite, good, admirable with whom I would like to go out and who I would like to have as my neighbors and many libertarians who I would not like to have as my neighbors. So discriminating is a very important thing to do.

Ruling Class, Jewish Influence, and Final Advice 27:29

Lastly I should mention coming back to the topic that Saifedean spoke about. You also learn of course who the ruling class in the United States is. The ruling class are those people about whom you are not allowed to speak and you are not allowed to say in the United States that the United States is ruled by the Jewish elite. All top academic posts, all top posts in Hollywood, in the news in the newspapers even in politics are predominantly occupied by Jews. But this is something that you are not supposed to say. We are not supposed to notice this. Also, the American foreign policy that is pursued is a foreign policy that is dominated by Jewish influences. Israel is of enormous influence in the United States. The Jewish lobbying groups are the most powerful groups that exist in the United States. They destroy careers. You will not be able to get a job if you have said certain things about certain types of people. It was also these lobbies that destroyed Rothbard’s career. Rothbard was outspoken about the power of the Jewish lobbying groups and the power of Jewish elites as far as American foreign policy is concerned and their ardent pursuit of destroying the countries in the Middle East. So his career was hampered and ruined despite his enormous talents that he had his unrivaled talents by his own co-religionists if you want to speak about these types of things.

That I said at the end here about discriminating between different people, learning what the talents or the thoughts of certain groups are and certain individuals and saying so is a very dangerous thing. And I encourage people to become courageous enough to not hesitate to point these things out. I am not the most liked person among the libertarians because I make these types of remarks. You should just see some conventions of libertarian party people and you will be surprised what you see there and they are not very appealing. So as libertarians we also have to make an attempt to be accomplished people to have something to show for to be proud of achievements and to behave in a way that let other people try to emulate what we do and not behave in a way that abhors other people once they look at what we do. Thank you very much.

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Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 341.

Below is the video of the speech by Stephan Kinsella, “Rothbard’s Greatest Hits: A Personal Mix Tape,” delivered at “100 Years with Rothbard,” Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026 (iPhone audio).

See Cataláxia Editora Rothbard 100 Youtube playlist.

Transcript and summary below.

See Kinsella, Rothbard Takes Portugal: 100 Years with Rothbard: A Personal Account.

This was a simply wonderful event. As noted here, 100 Years with Rothbard was held yesterday in beautiful Porto, Portugal (June 27, 2026), sponsored by several Portuguese libertarian groups: Mises Portugal, Catalaxia, Don’t Trust Verify (bitcoin podcast), ZugaTV (libertarian podcast), and Golpe de Estado Podcast (ancap podcasters). It featured and was attended by a number of Property and Freedom Society (PFS) members, including myself, Hans Hoppe and Gülçin Imre Hoppe, Saifedean Ammous, Thomas Jacob, Gregory and Joy Morin, and Alessandro and Domitia Fusillo. Hoppe, and Ammous and I spoke at the conference along with others. It was a wonderful event, attended by hundreds from Portugal and many other countries.

In addition to the speeches, the cloth print version of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment was presented and released yesterday, as was its Brazilian Portuguese translation, 100 Anos de Rothbard: Uma Homenagem e Apreciação, as well as Fundamentos Legais de uma Sociedade Livre, the European Portuguese translation of my book Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023).

A full report of the conference will be published presently. In the meantime, for an outside commentary see Rothbard 100, in Porto: A Misunderstood Genius in a Room of People Who Understood.

Related 100 Years with Rothbard * Rothbard 100, in Porto: A Misunderstood Genius in a Room of People Who Understood * Rothbard at 100*: First Hardcopies Printed

A few pictures and tweets below, and my speaking notes.

PhotosRothbard at 100 Porto June 2026 – Manuel Ogando, the organizer

Rothbard at 100 Porto June 2026 – Kinsella on Stage

Rothbard at 100 Porto June 2026 Rothbard chocolates

Tweets

I stole your photo. Apologies for not mentioning you, I arrived late https://t.co/vAMa9BkNVq

— beegarc. (@beegarc_) June 28, 2026

The Rothbard 100 conference in Porto was an amazing success

With H. H. Hoppe, @NSKinsella, @saifedean and many others

Congrats and many thanks to the organizers, especially @mcaogando https://t.co/3iCBFcp2e1 pic.twitter.com/LV58GtDSt7

— Yorick de Mombynes (@ydemombynes) June 28, 2026

FYMNR! pic.twitter.com/8X72NbRJwZ

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) June 27, 2026

Terminou o evento https://t.co/vcORQSJOpN

O melhor e mais memorável evento que participei e vejo que é opinião também de muitos dos palestrantes.

O libertarianismo português lembra muito o brasileiro pre-covid.

A oportunidade que eles têm nas mãos é gigantesca e o conteúdo…

— Fhoer (@Fhoer_here) June 27, 2026

Listening to the greats, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and @NSKinsella, at the Rothbard at 100 conference in Porto. pic.twitter.com/OcL1z4Tv9M

— Saifedean Ammous (@saifedean) June 27, 2026

A palestra do Kinsella no evento deixa algo muito claro: Não se levem tanto a sério, ao menos não o tempo todo

O aprendizado ficar mais palatável, leve e até mesmo cativante.

O Rothbard dos livros, artigos e teses era o mesmo das piadas, peças e memes.

Se você não conseguir… pic.twitter.com/y48MqYkduT

— Fhoer (@Fhoer_here) June 28, 2026

Podcast with @R38TAO, so to speak https://t.co/ERtwAtMIp0

— Hans-Hermann Hoppe (@HoppeQuotes) June 28, 2026

A palestra do Kinsella no evento deixa algo muito claro: Não se levem tanto a sério, ao menos não o tempo todo

O aprendizado ficar mais palatável, leve e até mesmo cativante.

O Rothbard dos livros, artigos e teses era o mesmo das piadas, peças e memes.

Se você não conseguir… pic.twitter.com/y48MqYkduT

— Fhoer (@Fhoer_here) June 28, 2026

Happy 100th birthday Murray Rothbard, so to speak!

With @NSKinsella in Porto https://t.co/koamzNCSzJ pic.twitter.com/lP89ikB9Eb

— Hans-Hermann Hoppe (@HoppeQuotes) June 28, 2026

Os memes que plantamos 8 anos atrás renderam frutos, juros e dividendos. pic.twitter.com/rVWOAZlFlg

— Fhoer (@Fhoer_here) June 27, 2026

FYMNR! pic.twitter.com/8X72NbRJwZ

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) June 27, 2026

In Porto , so to speak pic.twitter.com/dxDa0SGeVK

— Hans-Hermann Hoppe (@HoppeQuotes) June 27, 2026

Grok Notes from my ShownotesRothbard’s Greatest Hits: A Personal Mix TapeRecorded live at the Rothbard at 100 conference
Porto, Portugal • June 27, 2026
Presented by Stephan Kinsella
Property and Freedom Society • C4SIF.org

In this entertaining and insightful talk, Stephan Kinsella delivers his personal “greatest hits” selection from Murray Rothbard’s enormous body of work — the ideas, arguments, and even the funniest moments that have influenced him most over the decades.

Show Notes & Key PointsLibertarianism and Rothbard Kinsella has been a libertarian since high school (age ~15) — about 45 years. * He became a Rothbard fan just a couple of years later, as soon as he started reading him. * He has been an intellectual property attorney for ~33 years (since 1993) and has been opposed to IP for the same length of time*.

Rothbard’s Greatest Hits – A Personal Mix TapeIn his chapter in the new book Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (edited by Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe), Kinsella highlights Rothbard’s most important and interesting insights.

He compares the talk to making a “Rothbard greatest hits” mix tape — the kind he used to make for girlfriends — or even a mix containing only the guitar solos from his favorite band, Rush (another passion he’s had since age 15).

Others’ Favorite Rothbard WorksRothbard was incredibly prolific. Here are some of his most popular and influential works mentioned:

Man, Economy, and State
Power and Market
For a New Liberty
The Ethics of Liberty
Conceived in Liberty (multi-volume)
America’s Great Depression
What Has Government Done to Our Money?
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought
The Betrayal of the American Right
Anatomy of the State
The Progressive Era
“War Guilt in the Middle East”

Highly recommended collections:

The Free Market Reader
The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000)
Making Economic Sense (1996)
Economic Controversies (2011)

One of the best pieces ever written about Rothbard is Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty.

Kinsella’s Personal FavoritesThese are the ideas and writings Kinsella has found most useful, interesting, or clever:

The Dog That Did Not Bark (Rothbard on IP)At a 1988 panel discussion on ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, and others, someone asked Hoppe whether personal sovereignty extends to knowledge and ideas.

Hoppe’s answer: “In order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.”

Rothbard remained silent. Hoppe later said he believes Rothbard was “almost there” and would have adopted the full anti-IP position had he lived longer.

Contract Theory – Title-Transfer TheoryOne of Rothbard’s most important contributions (developed with Williamson Evers) is the title-transfer theory of contract. Rothbard suggested the idea, Evers wrote it up, and Rothbard later used it in The Ethics of Liberty.

This theory finally makes coherent sense of contract law as an extension of property rights rather than a separate mystical category.

Utility and Welfare EconomicsIn “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics” (in Economic Controversies), Rothbard emphasized that value is not a measurable, cardinal quantity that can be interpersonally compared — a point also stressed by Mises.

Taxonomy of State InterventionIn Power and Market, Rothbard systematically classifies state interventions as:

Autistic
Binary (e.g., taxation)
Triangular (e.g., antitrust, licensing, and intellectual property)

Kinsella notes that IP is a classic triangular intervention — a nonconsensual negative servitude that lets the IP holder control other people’s property.

The Funny RothbardRothbard had a sharp wit. Some highlights Kinsella loves:

“Mozart Was a Red” — a hilarious play mocking “dimwit and serioso” Randians.
“Hoppephobia” (Liberty magazine, March 1990) — Rothbard’s response to a critical review of Hoppe’s book. Classic line: Hoppe’s work has the “remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet.” (Rothbard, “Hoppephobia,” Liberty (March 1990), pp. 11-12)
The Galambos story: A Galambosian author who believed in perpetual IP sent Rothbard a $100 check for using his ideas. Rothbard returned it, saying that if the author really believed in owning ideas, he owed all his royalties, not just $100.

Critiques of Nozick and Georgism* Rothbard’s devastating critique of Robert Nozick’s argument for the minimal state in “Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State.” * Complete demolition of Georgism in “The Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications” and the reply to Georgist criticisms. (Kinsella adds: “Egads, I hate Georgism.”)

MethodNext to The Ethics of Liberty, Kinsella finds Rothbard’s essays in Economic Controversies (especially Part One: Method) among the most useful. He compares them to the first 100 pages of Mises’ Human Action on methodology.

Resources & Further Reading Book: Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment — Available at PropertyAndFreedom.org * Kinsella’s chapter & related article: Read here * IP as Negative Servitudes: C4SIF.org article * Stephan Kinsella’s site: StephanKinsella.com * C4SIF: C4SIF.org * Property and Freedom Society:* PropertyAndFreedom.org

Kinsella Slide ShownotesFrom powerpoint:

Stephan KinsellaProperty and Freedom Society • C4SIF.org100 Years with RothbardJune 27, 2026Porto, PortugalLibertarianism and Rothbard► Libertarian since high school: I’ve been a libertarian since high school, about age 15. So 45 years.§ I became a Rothbard fan just a couple years later, as soon as I started reading him.► Anti-IP since passing the patent bar: I have told people before that I have been an intellectual property attorney for about 33 years, since 1993 or so, and that I also have been opposed to IP for about the same amount of time.Rothbard’s Greatest Hits► Rothbard Chapter: In my chapter in our book presented here today, Rothbard at 100, I explain why Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe’s thought is so important to Austro-libertarian thought§ There I highlighted some of his most important and interesting insights and writing.§ Which is convenient, since that is what I will do today.► Think of it like a Rothbard greatest hits, or a mix tape, the sort I used to make for girlfriends§ Or the time I took about 40 of the best songs of my favorite band, Rush, and made a mix of only the guitar solos§ Coincidentally I’ve been a Rush fan since about age 15 too and in fact am going to see them next month in New York with two libertarian friends, one of whom is here today.Others’ Favorites► With Rothbard we have an embarrassment of riches.§ If one was try to survey his thought comprehensively and with any level of detail, it would take hours and even then would only be a summary presentation§ I remember back in 2002 I was one of 9 faculty members presenting a full 5 days of lectures on Rothbard’s thought at the Mises Institute► Faculty, Rothbard Graduate Seminar, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama (topics: Natural Law and Positive Law; Self Defense, Punishment, and Proportionality; The Theory of Contracts) (July 28-Aug. 2, 2002)► He was so prolific and has such a treasure trove of works that appeal to different libertarians and AustriansOthers’ Favorites§ There are his most famous or popular works: Man, Economy, and State, Power and Market, For a New Liberty, The Ethics of Liberty, Conceived in Liberty, America’s Great Depression, What Has Government Done to Our Money?; An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought; The Betrayal of the American Right; Anatomy of the State; The Progressive Era; “War Guilt in the Middle East”; etc.§ He also wrote a great deal in periodicals such as Libertarian Review, The Libertarian Forum, Reason magazine, Liberty magazine, New Individualist Review, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (1965–1968), The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Rampart Journal, Libertarian Vanguard …§ Other great collections include: The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty; The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000) (from Rothbard-Rockwell Report); Making Economic Sense (1996); Economic Controversies (2011) (previously The Logic of Action 1997)§ And then there is the great collection of commentary on his thought in Man, Economy, and Liberty, his 1988 Festschrift; and now in Rothbard in 100, his posthumous GedenkschriftOthers’ Favorites§ And for one of the best things ever written on Rothbard, there is Hoppe’s “Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty,” his introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty► Hans also has a great discussion of Robert Nozick’s “methodologically non-committal” approach to libertarianism, which “was deemed respectable by the academic masses”: his “disparate or loosely jointed arguments, conjectures, puzzles, counterexamples, experiments, paradoxes, surprising turns, startling twists, intellectual flashes, and philosophical razzle-dazzle,” compared to Rothbard’s more substantive attempt to treat political philosophy not just as a game but as a serious attempt to find answers and truth in an important field of human lifeKinsella’s Favorites► Now my chapter in the book highlights some of his most important insights and contributions. I will briefly mention some of them, and a few others, here:► These are basically some of my personal favorites.§ The ones that I have drawn on or found especially useful or interesting, or just clever or amusing.§ Among his books, the ones I cite and rely on the most would probably be The Ethics of Liberty and Economic Controversies► Let me start with a favorite thing Rothbard did NOT say, as in Sherlock Holmes’ “the dog that did not bark”§ Now Rothbard was critical of patents but in my view his arguments for “common law copyright” or contractual copyright was somewhat confused§ 1988 panel discussion on ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, and two othersKinsella’s Favorites► Owning Thoughts and Labor [Rothbard and Hoppe on 1988 Panel], Mises Blog (Dec. 11, 2006)► Question: I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Does the idea of personal sovereignty extend to knowledge? Am I sovereign over my thoughts, ideas, and theories? …Hoppe: … in order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.§ Rothbard did not say anything§ Hans believes that had he lived, he would have of course adopted the anti-IP stance; “he was almost there”§ “I suspect Rothbard would have come around on this issue [inalienability, implicit theft, debtor’s prison, etc.] had he lived longer. After all, he accepted Hoppe’s argumentation-ethics defense of rights as an improvement on his natural law-based defense. I believe he also would have come around on intellectual property. Alas.”§ Cite my recent article w/ hoppe footnote: https://propertyandfreedom.org/books/rothbard-100/kinsella-mises-rothbard-hoppe-indispensable-framework/#identifier_47_5554: “Stephan Kinsella, “Hoppe on Reisman and Rothbard on Intellectual Property,” StephanKinsella.com (Oct. 16, 2025). See also Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract,” n. 52The Funny Rothbard► Mozart Was a Red, a funny play mocking the “dimwit and serioso” Randians§ This was a term he used in a 1993 article:► “When Lew Rockwell, in response to the doctored Rodney King-tape, humorously suggested outlawing camcorders, he was deluged by protests from dimwit andseriosolibertarians. But he was the first person to raise a serious concern that must be dealt with.”###### ► See Rothbard, in “The December Surprise,” in The Irrepressable Rothbard (Feb. 1993)

► Reminds me of Professor Hoppe’s reference to naïve “Students for liberty” type libertarians as “Stupids for Liberty” or “Liberallala-Libertarians” in a 2017 speech###### ► Libertarianism and the Alt-Right: In Search of a Libertarian Strategy for Social Change (2017)

► I also love that he derided left-libertarians and libertarian “technologists” as “Space Cadets”§ Rothbard on Libertarian “Space Cadets”; Post-scarcity, Superabundance, Money, and Star Trek Space CadetsThe Funny Rothbard§ Another funny one is “Hoppephobia,” Liberty Magazine (March 1990), which was a response to libertarian philosopher Loren Lomasky’s critical review of Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. He had two hilarious lines:► “The Lomasky review is an interesting example of what is getting to be a fairly common phenomenon: Hoppephobia. Although he is an amiable man personally, Hoppe’s written work seems to have the remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet.”§ Muttering and chewing the carpet!► “[Lomasky] is shocked and stunned that Hoppe is not simply a defender of existing capitalism; his book is “no less than a manifesto for untrammeled anarchism.” Well, heavens to Betsy! Anarchism! One wonders where Lomasky has been for the last 20 years! Perhaps the knowledge has not yet penetrated to the fastnesses of Minnesota, but anarchism has been a vibrant part of the libertarian dialogue for a long time, as most readers of Liberty well know.”§ Love that “Heavens to Betsy” lineThe Funny Rothbard§ Now I have long mocked Andrew Galambos, his “serioso” Galambosian followers, and his the ridiculous arguments for intellectual property.► One story I heard was that some author published a book that was based on Rothbard’s ideas.► The author was a Galambosian who believed in inalienable and perpetual intellectual property rights, so he sent Rothbard a $100 check► Rothbard returned it, noting that he didn’t agree with Galambos’s notion that you could own ideas, but if the author did, he owed Rothbard all his royalties, not just $100. I mean why just $100?Nozick, Georgism► But on to more serious topics:► Speaking of Nozick, Rothbard has one of the best criticisms of Nozick’s argument for the minimal state in Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State§ He points out that the dominant PDA has no ban competing agencies on the grounds that they are “too risky”.► Rothbard also completely demolishes Georgism in his The Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications and A Reply to Georgist Criticisms.§ Egads, I hate GeorgismMethod► As I noted, next to The Ethics of Liberty, the essays in Economic Controversies are among the most useful to me, especially Part One: Method§ Just as the first 100 pages or so of Human Action, on methodology, is my favorite and the most important, and why The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science is my favorite Mises book§ Close second: Epistemological Problems of Economics and Theory and HistoryContract Theory► To my mind, maybe his more important contribution is his title-transfer theory of contract, developed with Williamson Evers§ Rothbard suggested it, Evers wrote it up, Rothbard then relied on this in a chapter in Ethics of Liberty§ Neither was a lawyer§ It’s groundbreaking, and finally makes sense of contract law, as an adjunct of property law► The Title-Transfer Theory of ContractUtility and Welfare Economics► “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,” in Economic Controversies (1977), which emphasized that value is not a measurable, cardinal quantity that can be interpersonally compared.§ As Mises also said, prices are not a measure of value§ See, on this, Stephan Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” Part I.D, n. 19; and idem, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” Part IV.A, both in LFFS. See also idem, “Money Prices Not a Measure of Value,” StephanKinsella.com (July 21, 2025); Robert P. Murphy, “Why Austrians Stress Ordinal Utility,” Mises Wire (Feb. 3, 2022).Taxonomy of State Intervention► Taxonomy: systematically classifies state interventions as autistic, binary, or triangular.► Power and Market, in the chapter “Fundamentals of Intervention§ taxation and government expenditures are binary interventions into the free market§ antitrust law licensing, etc., amount to grants of monopoly privileges to some and thus is a type of “triangular intervention” in which the state regulates the terms of exchange between a pair of its subjects► This also applies to intellectual property► IP is a type of nonconsensual negative servitude granted by the state that allows the IP holder to control someone else’s resources► This is a Rothbardian’s triangular intervention:§ it is like a compelled exchange between all property owners and the patent owner###### ► Kinsella, https://c4sif.org/2011/06/intellectual-property-rights-as-negative-servitudes/

Monopoly; Defamation► Monopoly Theory/antitrust law: “Monopoly and Competition,” ch. 10 of Man, Economy and State (1962). In this chapter, Rothbard adopted a more radical and sound view of monopoly and antitrust law, from both an Austrian economic and libertarian perspective, than the more conventional view of Mises.§ See also Hoppe’s complementary views in A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 10, “Capitalist Production and the Problem of Monopoly.”► Defamation: Rothard was only one of the few libertarians to see this issue clearly§ you can’t own your reputation since it is just what others think of you► This plus his comment about Galambos that you can’t own ideas, is another reason I think he would have rejected IP completely► “Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property”Shooting the Hostage► some have argued that if a bad guy has a hostage and he is shooting a you, you have the right to shoot the hostage in self defense. Rothbard argued that this would be murder:§ “There is an important philosophical error that [Eric] Mack makes about free-market defense agencies that is quite relevant to our concerns. He maintains that if A uses B as an innocent shield to aggress against C, it is perfectly legitimate for C to shoot B. The problem here is that Mack forgets about the rights of B. Suppose, after all, that B has hired his own defense agency sworn to defend his life and property, and that, for some empirical reason, the agency can’t get to A; would it not then be perfectly legitimate for B or his agent to shoot C in self-defense? The answer, of course, is yes.”► Rothbard, “Reason Watch,” Libertarian Review 6, no. 4 (August 1977): 10–13; published as “Libertarians Must Never Warm to the Warfare State” at LewRockwell.com and “Libertarians Must Never Warm to the Warfare State” at Mises.org; also Rothbard, Murray N. 1984. “Eric Mack and the Anarchist Case for War.” The Libertarian Forum. Vol. 18, No. 5-6, pp. 3-7; http://www.mises.org/journals/lf/1984/1984_05-06.pdfPollution and Hermeneutics► “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution,” in Economic Controversies (originally published 1982). This piece advanced the concept of the “relevant technological unit,” which I have drawn on in my own writing about property rights.§ This is relevant to how much of a resource is homesteaded by use or occupation, and why stepping foot on a continent does not mean you own the whole thing§ Kinsella, “What Libertarianism Is,” pp. 24–25, n. 34; and idem, “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” n. 42 and “On Libertarian Legal Theory, Self-Ownership, and Drug Laws,” n. 39, both in LFFS.► Criticism of Hermeneutics: The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics§ This pairs well with the Economic Controversies, Section One: Method (The Mantle of Science, In Defense of “Extreme Apriorism”, and others)Universal Communism► Universal communism: his argument for self-ownership:§ only two alternatives to self-ownership:§ One class owns another (slavery)§ Universal communism: everyone owns a share of everyone else► “a world in which no man is free to take any action whatever without prior approval or indeed command by everyone else in society. It should be clear that in that sort of “communist” world, no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish.”§ pp. 353–354; bold emphasis added§ See also similar arguments and comments in Rothbard, “Interpersonal Relations: Ownership and Aggression,” in The Ethics of LibertyHayek’s Knowledge Problem► “the entire Hayekian emphasis on ‘knowledge’ is misplaced and misconceived”► Murray N. Rothbard, “The End of Socialism and the Calculation Debate Revisited,” Economic Controversies (Auburn, Ala: Mises Institute, 2011), p. 846► Jörg Guido Hülsmann, “Knowledge, Judgment, and the Use of Property.” Rev. Austrian Econ. 10, no. 1 (1997): 23–48, p. 39 (discussing “the irrelevance of knowledge problems”)► Joseph T. Salerno, “Ludwig von Mises as a Social Rationalist,” Rev. Austrian Econ. 4 (1990): 26–54, p. 44 (“[t]he price system is not–and praxeologically cannot be–a mechanism for economizing and communicating the knowledge relevant to production plans. The realized prices of history are an accessory of appraisement”)► Hoppe, “Socialism: A Property or Knowledge Problem?”, in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, p. 146 (“Hayek’s contribution to the socialism debate must be thrown out as false, confusing, and irrelevant.”)► Knowledge vs. Calculation► Don’t tell me to read HayekOriginal word file:

Rothbard’s Greatest Hits: A Personal Mix Tape

2.0

Stephan Kinsella

100 Years with Rothbard: Porto, Portugal

June 27, 2025

Rush, Libertarianism and Rothbard

Libertarian since high school: I’ve been a libertarian since high school, about age 15.
- I became a Rothbard fan just a couple years later, as soon as I started reading him.
Anti-IP since passing the patent bar: I have told people before that I have been an intellectual property attorney for about 33 years, since 1993 or so, and that I also have been opposed to IP for about the same amount of time.

Rothbard’s Greatest Hits

Rothbard Chapter: In my chapter in our book presented here today, Rothbard at 100, I explain why Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe’s thought is so important to Austro-libertarian thought
- There I highlighted some of his most important and interesting insights and writing.
- Which is convenient, since that is what I will do today.
Think of it like a Rothbard greatest hits, or a mix tape, the sort I used to make for girlfriends
- Or the time I took about 40 of the best songs of my favorite band, Rush, and made a mix of only the guitar solos
- Coincidentally I’ve been a Rush fan since about age 15 too and in fact am going to see them next month in New York with two libertarian friends, one of whom is here today.

Others’ Favorites

With Rothbard we have an embarrassment of riches.
- If one was try to survey his thought comprehensively and with any level of detail, it would take hours and even then would only be a summary presentation
- I remember back in 2002 I was one of 9 faculty members presenting a full 5 days of lectures on Rothbard’s thought at the Mises Institute
  - Faculty, Rothbard Graduate Seminar, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama (topics: Natural Law and Positive Law; Self Defense, Punishment, and Proportionality; The Theory of Contracts) (July 28-Aug. 2, 2002)
- He was so prolific and has such a treasure trove of works that appeal to different libertarians and Austrians
  - There are his most famous or popular works: Man, Economy, and State, Power and Market, For a New Liberty, The Ethics of Liberty, Conceived in Liberty, America’s Great Depression, What Has Government Done to Our Money?; An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought; The Betrayal of the American Right; Anatomy of the State; The Progressive Era; “War Guilt in the Middle East”; etc.
  - He also wrote a great deal in periodicals such as Libertarian Review, The Libertarian Forum, Reason magazine, Liberty magazine, New Individualist Review, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (1965–1968), The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Rampart Journal, Libertarian Vanguard …
  - Other great collections include: The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty; The Irrepressible Rothbard(2000) (from Rothbard-Rockwell Report); Making Economic Sense (1996); Economic Controversies (2011) (previously The Logic of Action 1997)
  - And then there is the great collection of commentary on his thought in Man, Economy, and Liberty, his 1988 Festschrift; and now in Rothbard in 100, his posthumous Gedenkschrift
  - And for one of the best things ever written on Rothbard, there is Hoppe’s “Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty,” his introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty
    - Hans also has a great discussion of Robert Nozick’s “methodologically non-committal” approach to libertarianism, which “was deemed respectable by the academic masses”: his “disparate or loosely jointed arguments, conjectures, puzzles, counterexamples, experiments, paradoxes, surprising turns, startling twists, intellectual flashes, and philosophical razzle-dazzle,” compared to Rothbard’s more substantive attempt to treat political philosophy not just as a game but as a serious attempt to find answers and truth in an important field of human life

Kinsella’s Favorites

Now my chapter in the book highlights some of his most important insights and contributions. I will briefly mention some of them, and a few others, here:
These are basically some of my personal favorites.
- The ones that I have drawn on or found especially useful or interesting, or just clever or amusing.
- Among his books, the ones I cite and rely on the most would probably be The Ethics of Liberty and Economic Controversies
Let me start with a favorite thing Rothbard did NOT say, as in Sherlock Holmes’ “the dog that did not bark”
- Now Rothbard was critical of patents but in my view his arguments for “common law copyright” or contractual copyright was somewhat confused
- 1988 panel discussionon ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, and two others
  - Owning Thoughts and Labor[Rothbard and Hoppe on 1988 Panel], Mises Blog (Dec. 11, 2006)
  - Question:I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Does the idea of personal sovereignty extend to knowledge? Am I sovereign over my thoughts, ideas, and theories? …
    Hoppe: … in order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.
- Rothbard did not say anything
- Hans believes that had he lived, he would have of course adopted the anti-IP stance; “he was almost there”
  - Cite my recent article w/ hoppe footnote: https://propertyandfreedom.org/books/rothbard-100/kinsella-mises-rothbard-hoppe-indispensable-framework/#identifier_47_5554: “Stephan Kinsella, “Hoppe on Reisman and Rothbard on Intellectual Property,” com(Oct. 16, 2025). See also Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract,” n. 52: “I suspect Rothbard would have come around on this issue [inalienability, implicit theft, debtor’s prison, etc.] had he lived longer. After all, he accepted Hoppe’s argumentation-ethics defense of rights as an improvement on his natural law-based defense. I believe he also would have come around on intellectual property. Alas.”
- Rothbard could also be hilarious.
  - Mozart Was a Red, a funny play mocking the “dimwit and serioso” Randians
    - This was a term he used in a 1993 article:
      - “When Lew Rockwell, in response to the doctored Rodney King-tape, humorously suggested outlawing camcorders, he was deluged by protests from dimwit and seriosolibertarians. But he was the first person to raise a serious concern that must be dealt with.”
        
        See Rothbard, in “The December Surprise,” in The Irrepressable Rothbard(Feb. 1993)
      - Reminds me of Professor Hoppe’s reference to naïve “Students for liberty” type libertarians as “Stupids for Liberty” or “Liberallala-Libertarians” in a 2017 speech
        
        Libertarianism and the Alt-Right: In Search of a Libertarian Strategy for Social Change (2017)
      - I also love that he derided left-libertarians and libertarian “technologists” as “Space Cadets”
        
        Rothbard on Libertarian “Space Cadets”
Post-scarcity, Superabundance, Money, and Star Trek Space Cadets
Another funny one is “Hoppephobia,” Liberty Magazine (March 1990), which was a response to libertarian philosopher Loren Lomasky’s critical review of Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. He had two hilarious lines:
- “The Lomasky review is an interesting example of what is getting to be a fairly common phenomenon: Hoppephobia. Although he is an amiable man personally, Hoppe’s written work seems to have the remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet.”
  - Muttering and chewing the carpet!
- “[Lomasky] is shocked and stunned that Hoppe is not simply a defender of existing capitalism; his book is “no less than a manifesto for untrammeled anarchism.” Well, heavens to Betsy! Anarchism! One wonders where Lomasky has been for the last 20 years! Perhaps the knowledge has not yet penetrated to the fastnesses of Minnesota, but anarchism has been a vibrant part of the libertarian dialogue for a long time, as most readers of Libertywell know.”
  - Love that “Heavens to Betsy” line
- Now I have long mocked Andrew Galambos, his “serioso” Galambosian followers, and his the ridiculous arguments for intellectual property.
  - One story I heard was that some author published a book that was based on Rothbard’s ideas.
  - The author was a Galambosian who believed in inalienable and perpetual intellectual property rights, so he sent Rothbard a $100 check
  - Rothbard returned it, noting that he didn’t agree with Galambos’s notion that you could own ideas, but if the author did, he owed Rothbard all his royalties, not just $100. I mean why just $100?
But on to more serious topics:
Speaking of Nozick, Rothbard has one of the best criticisms of Nozick’s argument for the minimal state in Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State
- He points out that the dominant PDA has no ban competing agencies on the grounds that they are “too risky”.
Rothbard also completely demolishes Georgism in his The Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications and A Reply to Georgist Criticisms.
- Egads, I hate Georgism
As I noted, next to The Ethics of Liberty, the essays in Economic Controversies are among the most useful to me, especially Part One: Method
- Just as the first part of Human Action, on methodology, is the my favorite and the most important, and why The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science is my favorite Mises book
  - Close second: Epistemological Problems of Economics and Theory and History
- To my mind, maybe his more important contribution is his title-transfer theory of contract, developed with Williamson Evers
  - Rothbard suggested it, Evers wrote it up, Rothbard then relied on this in a chapter in Ethics of Liberty
  - Neither was a lawyer
  - It’s groundbreaking, and finally makes sense of contract law, as an adjunct of property law
    - The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract
  - “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,” in Economic Controversies (1977), which emphasized that value is not a measurable, cardinal quantity that can be interpersonally compared.
    - As Mises also said, prices are not a measure of value
    - See, on this, Stephan Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” Part I.D, n. 19; and idem, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” Part IV.A, both in LFFS. See also idem, “Money Prices Not a Measure of Value,” com (July 21, 2025); Robert P. Murphy, “Why Austrians Stress Ordinal Utility,” Mises Wire (Feb. 3, 2022).
  - Taxonomy: systematically classifies state interventions as autistic, binary, or triangular.
    - Power and Market, in the chapter “Fundamentals of Intervention
  - taxation and government expenditures are binary interventions into the free market
  - antitrust law licensing, etc., amount to grants of monopoly privileges to some and thus is a type of “triangular intervention” in which the state regulates the terms of exchange between a pair of its subjects
    - This also applies to intellectual property
    - IP is a type of nonconsensual negative servitude granted by the state that allows the IP holder to control someone else’s resources
    - This is a Rothbardian’s triangular intervention:
      - it is like a compelled exchange between all property owners and the patent owner
        
        Kinsella, https://c4sif.org/2011/06/intellectual-property-rights-as-negative-servitudes/
      - Monopoly Theory/antitrust law: “Monopoly and Competition,” ch. 10 of Man, Economy and State (1962). In this chapter, Rothbard adopted a more radical and sound view of monopoly and antitrust law, from both an Austrian economic and libertarian perspective, than the more conventional view of Mises.
        
        See also Hoppe’s complementary views in A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 10, “Capitalist Production and the Problem of Monopoly.”
      - Defamation: Rothard was only one of the few libertarians to see this issue clearly
        
        you can’t own your reputation since it is just what others think of you
        
        This plus his comment about Galambos that you can’t own ideas, is another reason I think he would have rejected IP completely
        
        “Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property”
        
        Shooting the Hostage: some have argued that if a bad guy has a hostage and he is shooting a you, you have the right to shoot the hostage in self defense. Rothbard argued that this would be murder:
        
        “There is an important philosophical error that [Eric] Mack makes about free-market defense agencies that is quite relevant to our concerns. He maintains that if A uses B as an innocent shield to aggress against C, it is perfectly legitimate for C to shoot B. The problem here is that Mack forgets about the rights of B. Suppose, after all, that B has hired his own defense agency sworn to defend his life and property, and that, for some empirical reason, the agency can’t get to A; would it not then be perfectly legitimate for B or his agent to shoot C in self-defense? The answer, of course, is yes.”
        
        Rothbard, “Reason Watch,” Libertarian Review 6, no. 4 (August 1977): 10–13; published as “Libertarians Must Never Warm to the Warfare State” at LewRockwell.com and “Libertarians Must Never Warm to the Warfare State” at Mises.org
        
        also Rothbard, Murray N. 1984. “Eric Mack and the Anarchist Case for War.” The Libertarian Forum. Vol. 18, No. 5-6, pp. 3-7; http://www.mises.org/journals/lf/1984/1984_05-06.pdf
        
        “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution,” in Economic Controversies (originally published 1982). This piece advanced the concept of the “relevant technological unit,” which I have drawn on in my own writing about property rights.
        
        This is relevant to how much of a resource is homesteaded by use or occupation, and why stepping foot on a continent does not mean you own the whole thing
        
        Kinsella, “What Libertarianism Is,” pp. 24–25, n. 34; and idem, “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” n. 42 and “On Libertarian Legal Theory, Self-Ownership, and Drug Laws,” n. 39, both in
        
        Criticism of Hermeneutics: The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics
        
        This pairs well with the Economic Controversies, Section One: Method (The Mantle of Science, In Defense of “Extreme Apriorism”, and others)
        
        Universal communism: his argument for self-ownership:
        
        only two alternatives to self-ownership:
        
        One class owns another (slavery)
        
        Universal communism: everyone owns a share of everyone else
        
        “a world in which no man is free to take any action whatever without prior approval or indeed command by everyone else in society. It should be clear that in that sort of “communist” world, no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish.”
        
        353–354; bold emphasis added
        
        See also similar arguments and comments in Rothbard, “Interpersonal Relations: Ownership and Aggression,” in The Ethics of Liberty
        
        Criticism of Hayek: “the entire Hayekian emphasis on ‘knowledge’ is misplaced and misconceived”
        
        Murray N. Rothbard, “The End of Socialism and the Calculation Debate Revisited,” Economic Controversies(Auburn, Ala: Mises Institute, 2011), p. 846
        
        Jörg Guido Hülsmann, “Knowledge, Judgment, and the Use of Property.” Austrian Econ. 10, no. 1 (1997): 23–48, p. 39 (discussing “the irrelevance of knowledge problems”)
        
        Joseph T. Salerno, “Ludwig von Mises as a Social Rationalist,” Austrian Econ. 4 (1990): 26–54, p. 44 (“[t]he price system is not–and praxeologically cannot be–a mechanism for economizing and communicating the knowledge relevant to production plans. The realized prices of history are an accessory of appraisement”)
        
        Hoppe, “Socialism: A Property or Knowledge Problem?”, in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, p. 146 (“Hayek’s contribution to the socialism debate must be thrown out as false, confusing, and irrelevant.”)
        
        Knowledge vs. Calculation
        
        Don’t tell me to read Hayek

Grok version:

Rothbard’s Greatest Hits: A Personal Mix TapeStephan Kinsella
Property and Freedom Society • C4SIF.org

100 Years with Rothbard
June 27, 2026
Porto, Portugal

Libertarianism and Rothbard* Libertarian since high school: I’ve been a libertarian since high school, about age 15. So 45 years. * I became a Rothbard fan just a couple years later, as soon as I started reading him. * Anti-IP since passing the patent bar: I have told people before that I have been an intellectual property attorney for about 33 years, since 1993 or so, and that I also have been opposed to IP for about the same amount of time.

Rothbard’s Greatest Hits* Rothbard chapter: In my chapter in our book presented here today, Rothbard at 100, I explain why Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe’s thought is so important to Austro-libertarian thought. * There I highlighted some of his most important and interesting insights and writing. * Which is convenient, since that is what I will do today. * Think of it like a Rothbard greatest hits, or a mix tape, the sort I used to make for girlfriends. * Or the time I took about 40 of the best songs of my favorite band, Rush, and made a mix of only the guitar solos. * Coincidentally I’ve been a Rush fan since about age 15 too and in fact am going to see them next month in New York with two libertarian friends, one of whom is here today.

Others’ Favorites With Rothbard we have an embarrassment of riches. * If one was to try to survey his thought comprehensively and with any level of detail, it would take hours and even then would only be a summary presentation. * I remember back in 2002 I was one of 9 faculty members presenting a full 5 days of lectures on Rothbard’s thought at the Mises Institute. * Faculty, Rothbard Graduate Seminar, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama (topics: Natural Law and Positive Law; Self Defense, Punishment, and Proportionality; The Theory of Contracts) (July 28–Aug. 2, 2002). * He was so prolific and has such a treasure trove of works that appeal to different libertarians and Austrians. * There are his most famous or popular works: Man, Economy, and State, Power and Market, For a New Liberty, The Ethics of Liberty, Conceived in Liberty, America’s Great Depression, What Has Government Done to Our Money?, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, The Betrayal of the American Right, Anatomy of the State, The Progressive Era, “War Guilt in the Middle East”, etc. * He also wrote a great deal in periodicals such as Libertarian Review, The Libertarian Forum, Reason Magazine, Liberty Magazine, New Individualist Review, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (1965–1968), The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Rampart Journal, Libertarian Vanguard… * [UPDATE: He also apparently wrote in American Libertarian. See Liberty, Jan. 1989, p. 39; and in Faith and Freedom*, discussed also in Kinsella, “The Night-Watchman State”: I’ll Take that Slur; Rothbard and Read on the Origin of “Libertarian.”] * Other great collections include: The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty; The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000) (from Rothbard-Rockwell Report); Making Economic Sense (1996); Economic Controversies (2011) (previously The Logic of Action 1997). * And then there is the great collection of commentary on his thought in Man, Economy, and Liberty, his 1988 Festschrift; and now in Rothbard at 100, his posthumous Gedenkschrift. * And for one of the best things ever written on Rothbard, there is Hoppe’s “Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty,” his introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty. * Hans also has a great discussion of Robert Nozick’s “methodologically non-committal” approach to libertarianism, which “was deemed respectable by the academic masses”: his “disparate or loosely jointed arguments, conjectures, puzzles, counterexamples, experiments, paradoxes, surprising turns, startling twists, intellectual flashes, and philosophical razzle-dazzle,” compared to Rothbard’s more substantive attempt to treat political philosophy not just as a game but as a serious attempt to find answers and truth in an important field of human life.

Kinsella’s Favorites* Now my chapter in the book highlights some of his most important insights and contributions. I will briefly mention some of them, and a few others, here. * These are basically some of my personal favorites. * The ones that I have drawn on or found especially useful or interesting, or just clever or amusing. * Among his books, the ones I cite and rely on the most would probably be The Ethics of Liberty and Economic Controversies. * Let me start with a favorite thing Rothbard did not say, as in Sherlock Holmes’ “The Dog That Did Not Bark.” * Now Rothbard was critical of patents but in my view his arguments for “common law copyright” or contractual copyright was somewhat confused. * 1988 panel discussion on ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, and two others. * Owning Thoughts and Labor [Rothbard and Hoppe on 1988 Panel], Mises Blog (Dec. 11, 2006). * Question: I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Does the idea of personal sovereignty extend to knowledge? Am I sovereign over my thoughts, ideas, and theories? … * Hoppe: … In order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them. * Rothbard did not say anything. * Hans believes that had he lived, he would have of course adopted the anti-IP stance; “he was almost there.” * “I suspect Rothbard would have come around on this issue [inalienability, implicit theft, debtor’s prison, etc.] had he lived longer. After all, he accepted Hoppe’s argumentation-ethics defense of rights as an improvement on his natural law-based defense. I believe he also would have come around on intellectual property. Alas.” * Cite my recent article w/ Hoppe footnote: https://propertyandfreedom.org/books/rothbard-100/kinsella-mises-rothbard-hoppe-indispensable-framework/#identifier_47_5554: “Stephan Kinsella, ‘Hoppe on Reisman and Rothbard on Intellectual Property,’ StephanKinsella.com (Oct. 16, 2025). See also Kinsella, ‘A Libertarian Theory of Contract,’ n. 52.”

The Funny Rothbard* Mozart Was a Red, a funny play mocking the “dimwit and serioso” Randians. * This was a term he used in a 1993 article: * “When Lew Rockwell, in response to the doctored Rodney King-tape, humorously suggested outlawing camcorders, he was deluged by protests from dimwit and serioso libertarians. But he was the first person to raise a serious concern that must be dealt with.” * See Rothbard, in “The December Surprise,” in The Irrepressible Rothbard (Feb. 1993). * Reminds me of Professor Hoppe’s reference to naïve “Students for Liberty” type libertarians as “Stupids for Liberty” or “Liberallala-Libertarians” in a 2017 speech. * Libertarianism and the Alt-Right: In Search of a Libertarian Strategy for Social Change (2017). * I also love that he derided left-libertarians and libertarian “technologists” as “Space Cadets.” * Rothbard on Libertarian “Space Cadets”; Post-scarcity, Superabundance, Money, and Star Trek Space Cadets. * Another funny one is “Hoppephobia,” Liberty Magazine (March 1990), which was a response to libertarian philosopher Loren Lomasky’s critical review of Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. He had two hilarious lines: * “The Lomasky review is an interesting example of what is getting to be a fairly common phenomenon: Hoppephobia. Although he is an amiable man personally, Hoppe’s written work seems to have the remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet.” * Muttering and chewing the carpet! * “[Lomasky] is shocked and stunned that Hoppe is not simply a defender of existing capitalism; his book is ‘no less than a manifesto for untrammeled anarchism.’ Well, heavens to Betsy! Anarchism! One wonders where Lomasky has been for the last 20 years! Perhaps the knowledge has not yet penetrated to the fastnesses of Minnesota, but anarchism has been a vibrant part of the libertarian dialogue for a long time, as most readers of Liberty well know.” * Love that “Heavens to Betsy” line. * Now I have long mocked Andrew Galambos, his “serioso” Galambosian followers, and his ridiculous arguments for intellectual property. * One story I heard was that some author published a book that was based on Rothbard’s ideas. * The author was a Galambosian who believed in inalienable and perpetual intellectual property rights, so he sent Rothbard a $100 check. * Rothbard returned it, noting that he didn’t agree with Galambos’s notion that you could own ideas, but if the author did, he owed Rothbard all his royalties, not just $100. I mean why just $100?

Nozick, Georgism* But on to more serious topics: * Speaking of Nozick, Rothbard has one of the best criticisms of Nozick’s argument for the minimal state in Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State. * He points out that the dominant PDA has no ban on competing agencies on the grounds that they are “too risky.” * Rothbard also completely demolishes Georgism in his The Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications and A Reply to Georgist Criticisms. * Egads, I hate Georgism.

Method* As I noted, next to The Ethics of Liberty, the essays in Economic Controversies are among the most useful to me, especially Part One: Method. * Just as the first 100 pages or so of Human Action, on methodology, is my favorite and the most important, and why The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science is my favorite Mises book. * Close second: Epistemological Problems of Economics and Theory and History.

Contract Theory* To my mind, maybe his more important contribution is his title-transfer theory of contract, developed with Williamson Evers. * Rothbard suggested it, Evers wrote it up, Rothbard then relied on this in a chapter in Ethics of Liberty. * Neither was a lawyer. * It’s groundbreaking, and finally makes sense of contract law, as an adjunct of property law. * The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract.

Utility and Welfare Economics* “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,” in Economic Controversies (1977), which emphasized that value is not a measurable, cardinal quantity that can be interpersonally compared. * As Mises also said, prices are not a measure of value. * See, on this, Stephan Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” Part I.D, n. 19; and idem, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” Part IV.A, both in LFFS. See also idem, “Money Prices Not a Measure of Value,” StephanKinsella.com (July 21, 2025); Robert P. Murphy, “Why Austrians Stress Ordinal Utility,” Mises Wire (Feb. 3, 2022).

Taxonomy of State Intervention* Taxonomy: systematically classifies state interventions as autistic, binary, or triangular. * Power and Market, in the chapter “Fundamentals of Intervention.” * Taxation and government expenditures are binary interventions into the free market. * Antitrust law, licensing, etc., amount to grants of monopoly privileges to some and thus is a type of “triangular intervention” in which the state regulates the terms of exchange between a pair of its subjects. * This also applies to intellectual property. * IP is a type of nonconsensual negative servitude granted by the state that allows the IP holder to control someone else’s resources. * This is a Rothbardian’s triangular intervention: * It is like a compelled exchange between all property owners and the patent owner. * Kinsella, https://c4sif.org/2011/06/intellectual-property-rights-as-negative-servitudes/

View Details

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 340.

Below is the video of the speech by PFS stalwart Saifedean Ammous: “Rothbard on Palestine,” at 100 Years with Rothbard (Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026). See Cataláxia Editora Rothbard 100 Youtube playlist.

Transcript and summary below.

See Kinsella, Rothbard Takes Portugal: 100 Years with Rothbard: A Personal Account.

See also other PFS posts on Zionism.

Rothbard Porto: Saifedean Ammous: Beegarc AI watercolor rendering

Select photos (for further information and additional photos, see Kinsella, Rothbard Takes Portugal: 100 Years with Rothbard: A Personal Account).

Related Saifedean Ammous, “Murray Rothbard: An Ode to an Intellectual Hero,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) * Ammous Interview with Mario Nawfal: A Misesian-Propertarian Take on the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict * Saifedean Ammous, “Javier Milei’s Austrian Scam By the Numbers” * Ammous, “Property Rights: The Root Cause of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,” Property and Freedom Journal* (May 7, 2026) + PFP309 | Saifedean Ammous: Property Rights: The Root Cause of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (PFS 2025) * PFS posts on Israel * Ammous, Property Rights: The Root Cause of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict * Hoppe, Judeo-Christian tradition affirmed by new law: Death penalty for thee (Goy) but not for me (Jew) * Kinsella, Block on Israel, Self-Defense, Pacifism * Kinsella, Ammous vs. Block on Israel * Van De Haar and Besada on Hayek, Mises, Rothbard on Zionism * Hoppe, An Open Letter to Walter E. Block

Summary (Grok)Saifedean Ammous on Rothbard’s Perspective on Palestine 0:05

Saifedean Ammous thanks the audience in Porto and honors Murray Rothbard as his hero. While Rothbard’s economic ideas shaped his thinking, Ammous focuses on Rothbard’s rarely discussed views on the Palestine conflict and the broader Middle East.

Rothbard’s Sharp Analytical Style 0:51

Rothbard wrote on countless topics with exceptional clarity. He consistently strips away lies, propaganda, romance, emotional manipulation, and obfuscation to reach the core of any issue. His writings on Palestine illustrate this strength, offering a powerful and precise dissection of the conflict.

Courage in Speaking Unpopular Truths 1:36

Rothbard repeatedly spoke uncomfortable truths, like the child declaring the emperor has no clothes. This approach harmed his academic career but produced ideas that endure. He embraced unpopularity, calling hate his muse. His critiques of inflation, legal tender laws, and central banking seemed radical in the 1960s-80s yet proved prescient.

Opposition to Central Banking and Fixed Money Supply 2:49

Rothbard opposed inflation, central banks, and government planning while advocating a fixed money supply. These ideas appeared ridiculous at the time but are now more relevant, especially with Bitcoin. He wrote for the future, knowing truth is timeless. His work on money provided tools to understand Bitcoin.

Rothbard’s Early Insight on Palestine 7:11

As a Palestinian familiar with the history, Ammous praises Rothbard’s clarity on the conflict. Rothbard’s best piece, “War Guilt in the Middle East,” identifies the dispossession of Palestinians and denial of their property rights as the root cause. This is a distinctly Austrian analysis.

Zionism as the Historical Root Problem 9:00

Rothbard traces the issue to Zionism, a political movement seeking Jewish nationalism on someone else’s land. Western European Jews largely assimilated after the French Revolution, but Eastern European Jews faced different challenges. Four solutions were proposed: assimilation, Bundism on European land, nationalism on uninhabited land, and nationalism on inhabited land belonging to others. Only the last option made no sense and guaranteed conflict.

Balfour Declaration and British Role 10:53

The 1917 Balfour Declaration promised land Britain did not own to a people who did not live there. Palestine was roughly 90% non-Jewish. Under British rule from 1917 to 1948, authorities helped Zionists build state institutions and a military while disarming Palestinians on a racial basis. This disarming from 1936 to 1939 set the stage for later events.

Terrorism, Nakba, and Systematic Expulsions 13:06

Zionist terrorism increased in the 1930s-1940s. By 1945, despite extensive support, Zionists owned only about 5.67% of Palestine, scattered and non-contiguous. The Nakba involved systematic expulsion, with 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinians removed before Israel’s independence and before Arab armies entered. The UN partition plan gave Zionists 55% of the land despite minimal ownership.

Ethnic Cleansing Plans and Looting 16:38

The ethnic cleansing plan was developed in the 1930s by David Ben-Gurion and Zionist groups, not as a result of war fog. Hundreds of villages were destroyed. Recent books like Adam Raz’s Loot document systematic military looting of Palestinian property, while Ilan Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine details the meticulous planning.

Rothbard’s Conclusion and Property Rights 26:36

Rothbard concluded Israel faces a dilemma: continued hostility leading to overthrow by guerrilla war, or cutting Western imperial ties to become ordinary Jewish citizens of the Middle East, allowing peace and justice. Peaceful Jewish-Arab coexistence existed for centuries before Western imperialism. There is no inherent enmity between Arab and Jew. Property rights are the foundation of civilization and the solution to conflict.

Contrast with Ayn Rand and Final Reflections 21:48

Ammous contrasts Rothbard with Ayn Rand, who supported U.S. government aid to Israel, embracing taxation and altruism selectively. Rothbard’s property-rights framework remains superior. Ammous thanks Rothbard for his principled stance as a Jewish thinker who prioritized truth and expresses regret at never meeting him.

Transcript (Youtube/Grok)Introduction and Purpose of the Talk 0:05

Good afternoon everybody. Thank you so much for the invitation. It’s a pleasure and an honor to be here in Porto and a pleasure and an honor to be speaking about my hero Murray Rothbard.

And I’ve read a lot of Rothbard over the years and I’ve usually discussed his work on economics. He has been the most influential economist on my development and I discussed this in the book that is available outside. I discuss how important it was. But today I’m going to talk about something different which is not usually mentioned when Rothbard is discussed understandably because Rothbard wrote about so many different topics. I’m going to be talking today about his perspective on the conflict in Palestine and the conflict in the Middle East in general.

Rothbard’s Analytical Clarity 0:51

And as I was saying, he wrote on many many many topics. And it’s actually astonishing to see how many of these topics he had a very strong grasp of even though they may not obviously appear to be things that are relevant to him. But whenever you read Rothbard, you may agree or you may disagree, but you can’t question just the sharpness and the ability to strip away the lies, the propaganda, the romance, the emotional manipulation and the obfuscation to put it all aside, get to the heart of the matter.

And I think Palestine, Rothbard on Palestine is interesting because it’s important to understanding the topic, but it’s also an illustration of Rothbard at his best in his ability to really get to the bottom of things.

Rothbard’s Courage in Speaking Unpopular Truths 1:36

In all of these topics, we see a constant theme wherein Rothbard sticks his neck out like the child who says, “The emperor has no clothes.” And he just stands there and he says something extremely unpopular, extremely hurtful to the feelings of the majority of adult children in the world who are incapable of handling ideas like Rothbard and it gets him into all kinds of trouble.

It’s not been good for his career as you know as you can imagine I mean he’s been such a prolific scholar and he’s produced things that have been read so widely and yet his success in academia is very limited. He was at a relatively low ranking university compared to the more established universities and he could have easily had a career in those established universities if he towed the line if he went along with what was popular. But in everything he always went with the truth and he embraced the hate and the unpopularity. He used to call I think he said hate was his muse that was inspiring to him. He didn’t care.

And you see this in economics and you see this in all kinds of topics where his ideas survive the test of time even though they’re unpopular when they come out but then in the long term they come out to have been very prescient and very important.

Opposition to Inflation and Central Banking 2:49

So in economics you know he spoke up against inflation and you know now there are a lot more people talking about inflation than there was back then in the 1960s or 70s or 80s. There was no internet. There were very little avenues for talking about the damage that inflation does because the vast majority of media and academic journals were controlled largely by governments and their central banks and the economists who work there were paid by the central bank.

So everybody went along with the inflation story. Everybody agreed that the central bank needed to operate. It was necessary for a modern economy to have a central bank. And very few people questioned that. And of course when you question that, you know, it doesn’t help your career prospects. And so Rothbard spoke out against inflation. He opposed legal tender laws. He criticized the entire existence of the central bank, which is a very bad career move.

If you are in an industry where the central bank pays roughly 90% of the salaries about 90% of academics published in the journals of monetary economics are paid directly by the Federal Reserve or by institutions that are paid by the Federal Reserve. So really the best way to destroy your career in economics is to go against the Federal Reserve. So obviously Rothbard embraced that opportunity and he opposed central planning. He opposed the role of the government and he argued for a fixed supply of money which in the 60s and 70s and 80s must have seemed you know not just heretic but also deeply silly. Why would you even imagine something like this? Even gold would always make more gold. Why would anybody want a fixed supply money?

And as far as I can tell, Rothbard was the only and first one to ever discuss the possibility of a fixed supply money. All these ideas were very ridiculous in the 1960s and 70s when Rothbard was writing them. They’re a lot less ridiculous now. You still will ruin your career by talking about the Fed, but you can maybe find people outside who will talk to you, not just the homeless guy on the street. You can make friends and you can join organizations and discuss this. And there’s Bitcoiners and you can go online and you can make fun of the fiat people. It’s a very different world now.

Rothbard’s Enduring Legacy 5:15

His career suffered. He didn’t get the recognition that mainstream economists would have gotten but he’s today much more widely read than most of those economists. So when you think about the economists that were active in the 60s and 70s and 80s, practically none of them are having conferences about them on their 100th birthday today. Practically none of them are selling any substantive number of books. Practically none of them have hundreds of reviews on Amazon or thousands of reviews on Amazon from people that are still reading their books these days.

And with his identification of the fixed supply, he really touched on something very, very profound. He was the only one who gave us the tools to think about Bitcoin. And the reason why I think I understood Bitcoin and understood the significance of Bitcoin is because I’d read this paper, particularly a paper called the Austrian theory of money. It’s a brief paper that summarizes a lot of the work of the Austrians and does a terrific job of it. And once you think about that idea of a fixed supply money, then Bitcoin becomes possible and workable and then you’re able to understand it much better.

You get the feeling when reading Rothbard that he wrote for the future. He knew that in the present this was not going to get him jobs. It was not going to win him a lot of friends. But he didn’t care. He knew that he was writing for us. He knew that 20, 30, 50 years from now, people would make sense of what he said and they would appreciate it a lot more. And I think he was absolutely correct because truth and wisdom are timeless. They do not go and come with fads. They are timeless. And I think this is what Rothbard shows us. And in the same way that he did that with economics, he did it with Palestine. So I’m going to try and illustrate this with some of his discussion.

Rothbard on the Root of the Palestine Conflict 7:11

If you read his work on Palestine, you’re struck and I say this as a Palestinian who had been very familiar with the Palestinian issue and I studied the history for all of my life. Basically, I’d lived the history and you start reading Western perspectives on the conflict and it’s very rare that you come across somebody who understands the issue.

If you read people on the left, it’s usually presented from the perspective of, you know, leftists and colonialism and it’s a continuation of Western imperialism and it’s all because of Westerners being bad and colonialism being bad and all of that and it’s just very cliched and not very useful toward understanding what’s happening on the ground today. On the other hand, if you read perspectives from the right, you are constantly inundated with idiotic Israeli propaganda along the lines of, you know, we are the good guys, they are the bad guys, so we have to kill them and do all kinds of horrible things to them. Essentially Ayn Rand level cartoonish nonsense.

But here was Murray Rothbard presenting a very very very powerful dissection of the conflict and with remarkable clarity and precision identifying the root of the problem and I think the best article that he has on this is an article called War Guilt in the Middle East. He has many other articles on this but this one is I think the one that summarizes his views best and he pinpoints the problem from the first couple of pages. The cause of the problem is the dispossession of the Palestinians and the denial of their property rights. It’s a very Austrian perspective and it is inevitable that you would see this if you were an Austrian economist. It’s very clear and it’s practically inarguable and it’s completely indefensible and the only way that it can be defended is essentially through lies and propaganda as we’re going to be seeing.

Zionism and the Four Proposed Solutions 9:00

So Rothbard pinpoints the historical root of the problem as Zionism. He says Zionism is a political movement that made no sense. He says Western European Jewry assimilated into Western European societies after the French Revolution. Eastern European Jewry however did not. And so they needed a solution and there were four practical solutions to the problem of the presence of Jews in Eastern Europe and the problems that they were having with their neighbors.

Number one is assimilation which is what western Europeans chose but it seemed like it was not a very practical solution in Eastern Europe as Rothbard puts it. The second was Bundism or Jewish nationalism on Jewish land in Europe. So territories in Europe that were mostly Jewish owned would declare their independence and build independent communities and potentially even a state. So Jewish nationalism on European land was the second option.

The third was Jewish nationalism on uninhabited land. And there were many proposals as such. Nebraska, Alaska, Uganda, Argentina. In the turn of the 20th century, these were seriously discussed by a lot of the people in the Zionist movement, but none of these really took off.

And then the fourth option, as Rothbard describes it, is the only one that made no sense whatsoever. It’s Jewish nationalism on somebody else’s land. So, it’s not unowned land and it’s not Jewish land. It’s somebody else’s land. And so, you can see where the problem is. You can see why inevitably this is going to lead to all of the problems that you see unfold over the last century. If you did this anywhere on Earth, if you went to a group of people and you said, “Sorry, we’re kicking you out. We need to build a national homeland for another group of people.” You’re going to get conflict. There’s just no way around it. It’s very, very simple.

Balfour Declaration and British Facilitation 10:53

So in 1917 when the British issued the Balfour Declaration granting a land that they did not own to a people who did not live in the land when that was issued the population of Palestine was about 90% not Jewish only about 10% of the population of Palestine was Jewish and 10% may be a vast overstatement might be as low as four or 5% but it’s not very clear what the number was but by all accounts it can’t possibly have not been over 12 or 13%. Jews were a small minority with very little land ownership. They likely owned less land than their population percentage because they were more concentrated in the cities.

And so, how do you build a national homeland for a group of people that don’t own the land on which you want to build the homeland? It’s tricky. You can try and buy the land, but you can’t really just buy a whole country. You can buy individual plots, but it’s difficult to convince an entire population to sell at once and leave. And where do they go? You know, it’s not like you’re selling your one property and you buy another one in your same town or in the town next door. You’re talking about displacing all of the people who live in that land. So, if they’re not going to sell their land, what are you going to have to do? Obviously, force.

So, under British rule, which started in 1917 and lasted until 1948, the Zionists and the British worked to make the Zionist state in Palestine possible. And Rothbard identifies all of this in the 1960s. And more and more has come clear about what actually was happening during that time over time that vindicates what he has seen and what he had written in the 1960s but a lot more research has come out since then but because it’s Rothbard and because he’s using the Austrian analytical praxeological framework he doesn’t need to get a lot of the details that we needed many decades later he could see the clarity of the situation that’s a property right violation and so clearly we can see what’s going on.

Disarmament, Terrorism, and the Path to Nakba 12:50

And so he understood what was happening under the British when and one of the roots of the problem was that when the British took over they worked to develop the state institutions of a Jewish state and not a state for the local population. They allowed the Zionist movement to build the institutions of a state. Most important of course being a military while disarming the Palestinians and preventing them from building any institutions and from building a military. And that was really the key point.

From 1936 to 1939, the British and the Zionists disarmed the Palestinians. And everything that has happened to the Palestinians since then has just been an inevitable consequence of the disarming of the Palestinians, which was done on a purely racial basis. If you were not Jewish, you couldn’t hold weapons, but if you were Jewish, you could be part of terrorist militias that were out there massacring civilians as well as British soldiers and British civilians. But they were allowed to keep their weapons.

So this of course then resulted in Zionist terrorism becoming very very common in the 1930s and the 1940s and it led to mass casualty events and many many victims and then of course the culmination of this was in 1947 with the Nakba or the Palestinian catastrophe.

Land Ownership in 1945 and Planned Ethnic Cleansing 14:04

Because in 1945 and this is a very important chart or graph that I’ve got there in 1945 even after three decades of the Zionist movement receiving countless military and financial forms of support from European countries, from the British, from the Soviet Union, from Nazi Germany. Incidentally, as well, the Nazis were quite happy to get European Jews out and to join the Zionist project in the 1930s. And from receiving a lot of money and financing from the international Jewish community, even after all of that, the Zionist movement had only acquired about 5.67% of Palestine by 1945.

This is really the most important fact perhaps in the history of the conflict. This is it. This glaring fact that you have this entire piece of land and if you look at the map it shows you independent individual districts and the percentage of land ownership by district and you see that the green is predominant that’s basically the ownership by Muslims Christians and other groups whereas the red is the ownership by Jews and it is essentially only in some of the districts and it’s not a majority of any of the districts.

So, it’s not only 5.6%, it’s also not concentrated. It’s distributed over several areas that are not territorially contiguous. And so, building a nation state with dots of land dispersed all over is not very practical. And so, the Zionists of course understood this very very well. And over the years, you know, Rothbard wrote this article in the 1960s, but over the years, a lot more resources have come out and a lot more explanations have come out with quotes and diaries and classified documents and secret documents that have revealed the reality of what was going on.

So now we know that yes, it makes sense that it could only work through mass expulsion and murder. And Rothbard isn’t very familiar with all of the details that come out decades after he wrote that article obviously. But he still arrives at the right conclusion because he gets it because the property rights belong to the Palestinians. The land belonged to the Palestinians predominantly. And all of human history shows us there are no examples of people just picking up and leaving their land voluntarily because other people nicely asked to have their land. It just doesn’t happen. So if somebody wants your land, there’s going to be conflict. There’s no way around it. So this was the plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. We later find out in the 1990s was developed in the 1930s. It was very clear that where the population centers were in Palestine, the Jewish population centers were and that there were areas that needed to be cleaned in the middle between those areas so that the Jewish population areas could be contiguous and defensible. And so all of the population that was between those areas had to go.

And so this was a plan laid out in the 1930s. It was not something that happened in the fog of war as Israeli propaganda likes to pretend. It was systematically laid out in the 1930s by David Ben-Gurion who was Israel’s first prime minister and the Haganah and all the other terrorist organizations that were part of the Zionist movement at that time.

The Nakba and Systematic Expulsions 17:19

One of the most important factoids which Rothbard doesn’t mention but supplements and proves his point. He says the idea you know most Americans think that the refugees were a result of the war. The Arabs invaded and there was a fight and as the first Israeli president Chaim Weizmann put it, a miracle happened and they left. And that’s essentially the extent of intellectual work in your average brainwashed Zionist in academia and media today. A miracle happened and people just decided to leave their home and now they can’t have them back and that’s just how we’re going to have peace and prosperity for the future.

But in reality, of course, 300,000 Palestinians, between quarter million and 300,000 Palestinians were expelled before Israel announced its independence and before a single Arab soldier had entered Palestine. So the notion that they were expelled as a result of the war is completely fabricated, bold-faced lie. 250 to 300,000 already been expelled from their homes.

And when the Arab armies invaded, they didn’t invade Israel. They invaded primarily almost all of the land in which Arab military operated was the land was not partitioned to Israel as part of the partition plan. The plan was the partition plan was done by the UN at that point. It gave the Zionist movement something like 55% of Palestine and even though they owned only about 5% of it and it gave the Palestinians the other part and even the supposedly Jewish state that was planned from the partition plan would have still had a majority of its land owned by Palestinians.

The majority of the land of the Jewish state was still owned by Palestinians. So the rest of that country which was supposed to become a Palestinian state or an Arab state at that point that was where the Arab armies entered mainly in order to defend these territories from also being taken over by the Israelis. There was very little Arab incursion into Israeli territory and yet the ethnic cleansing happened before that and it continued throughout 1948. 500 villages were systematically destroyed and depopulated. And there’s been a very systematic attempt of looting and the looting of private property.

Looting, Ethnic Cleansing Books, and Rothbard’s Foresight 19:38

And this has been only recently revealed the extent of this has only recently been revealed by this book by an Israeli scholar called Adam Raz. It’s called Loot: How Israel Stole Palestinian Property. And it’s an absolutely astonishing book. I’ve not heard of a more systematic attempt to just rob an entire country. We’re talking about divisions of the military that would go into villages and just go into the houses and rob every single object in the house, every single thing you can imagine. And it was a bit of a scandal amongst the high ranks of the Israeli military at that time, but it wasn’t very well publicized.

And of course, the other very important book about this is the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé, which shows us Rothbard’s intuition was absolutely correct. And it shows us the Rothbard shows us the motive and concludes that clearly it must have happened because it’s inevitable but Ilan Pappé shows us the exact details of how this took place and how it was planned meticulously from first sources.

Now as I was saying you know it took decades to establish most of the stuff Rothbard understood from the 1960s and as I was saying there and so essentially Rothbard really understood the problem of Zionism very early back when the vast majority of people in the US were completely hoodwinked by this ideology and he just understood that if it’s a criminal project that has displaced and murdered hundreds of thousands of people and that you can’t have peace based on that there’s not going to be a peaceful solution to this.

Contrast with Ayn Rand 21:16

An interesting contrast here is with Ayn Rand who many of her followers continue to be very ardent supporters of Zionism. And I find that to be really puzzling at a certain point because you know the entire idea is about individualism and not wanting to support others and not being altruistic and not being a socialist and that’s all that she talks about and yet all of that is thrown out of the window when it comes to the issue of Palestine in Israel. Famously Rand said the US should do everything the US government should do everything to support Israel and so that includes taxation of Americans. Suddenly taxation is good. Let’s tax Americans so we can take their money and send it to Israel. Rand has become a fan of socialism and taxation when it comes to Israel.

And it’s really remarkable to think about why this would be the case from somebody who spent their entire life talking about the evil of altruism. Altruism is evil. Why would you want to give anybody anything? You have to work for yourself. Except in one case, if there’s an ethnostate in the Middle East that needs to murder its neighbors so that it can expand, then your altruism is acceptable. Then altruism is good in that case. Only when funding mass murder of the goyim, then altruism is acceptable.

And of course when asked to and pressed to explain this moronic contention, Miss Rand said, “Well, Israel is civilized and it’s fighting a barbarian foe and so therefore we must stand by the civilized person.” And this is of course ridiculous to put it mildly. Essentially she was arguing that it’s okay to murder peaceful people if they’re uncivilized. But if you’re murdering peaceful people, then you are the one who’s uncivilized. And if they’re peaceful, then they’re the ones who are civilized.

It’s such an idiotic and childish and moronic view of what civilization constitutes because it looks at civilization as essentially being the candy and fruits that we can gain from civilization rather than the process that makes civilization possible. So civilization is not about having nicer clothes. Civilization is about behaving in a civilized way, respecting property rights, and therefore being able to coexist with humans in a society and trade and be part of the division of labor. That’s what civilization is. So, if your clothes aren’t nice, but you’re peaceful, you’re more civilized than a person who is dressed in clothes that are nice, but is a violent person and who initiates conflict.

Property Rights as the Foundation of Civilization 23:54

So, this you see this tension in the libertarian movement until today. There are still people who want to cling to this very very idiotic idea that it’s okay to murder people if we call them uncivilized and somehow this doesn’t make us the ones who are uncivilized and it’s just completely baseless and of course it’s built on the idea which Rothbard also exploits he’s got an article discussing Ayn Rand particularly on this point the entire premise is built on the idea that the Arabs who lived in Palestine were savages who didn’t have civilization. But Palestine had a system of property rights that had existed for hundreds if not thousands of years and had been a working system of property rights.

How do we know that it’s a working system of property rights? Well, what is the point of property? The point of property is that it is the solution for the problem of scarcity. It’s the only way that we can avoid conflict over scarce resources. So, how do we know that the property system in Palestine was working? Because for 1300 years, there were practically no conflicts. There were the crusades for a couple of hundred years which was a foreign invasion but domestically in 1300 years there was practically no civil unrest. There was no civil war. There were no people who were denied the property rights under that property system.

Whether you were Muslim or Christian or Jewish or belonging to any group, you still had the right to own property and you could sell and buy property to people from other religions without this being an issue. It was never an issue and therefore conflict was never an issue. And once property stops being something that is available for everybody, once a group of people are denied the right to have property because of whatever reason, there’s going to be conflict. This is the very simple idea that Mises explained and Rothbard reiterated. We have a very simple choice as a human civilization, as a human race, property or conflict.

As Mises put it, if history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization. Incidentally, I’ve looked all over and I’ve asked a lot of LLM models about Mises on the Palestinian Israeli conflict. He’s basically never written anything about it except for one very tiny passing mention about he was sort of mocking the Zionist movement for pretending that the language can make a national movement or something like that. But he never got into it which I think is really interesting because he wrote also about a very wide variety of issues and you would imagine that if he had any kind of sympathy towards the Zionist project he would have expressed it somewhere or the other. So I think the silence there is quite interesting. But you know Mises was a lot more diplomatic than Rothbard. So Mises chose silence. Rothbard did not. Rothbard was very very outspoken about it.

Rothbard’s Conclusion and Peaceful Coexistence 26:36

And so his conclusion of the article was so he concludes this article by saying, “Israel therefore faces a long run dilemma which she must someday meet either to continue on her present course and after years of mutual hostility and conflict be overthrown by Arab people’s guerrilla war or to change direction drastically to cut herself loose completely from Western imperial ties and become simply Jewish citizens of the Middle East if she did that then peace and harmony and justice would at last reign in that tortured region.”

There is ample precedent for this peaceful coexistence. For in the centuries before 19th and 20th century western imperialism, Jew and Arab had always lived well and peacefully together in the Middle East. There’s no inherent enmity or conflict between Arab and Jew. I think this is entirely accurate and very important and it’s something amazing to come from somebody who wasn’t primarily a Middle East historian because the vast majority of Middle East historians completely stepped over this point and it’s a really really important point to ask when your local Zionist idiot is telling you the Palestinians just want to murder the Israelis and throw them in the sea. Ask them why did they only decide to start murdering them after 1948 and what happened in 1948 that made them somehow wake up after 1300 years when Jews were a tiny minority of Palestine when they were 5 or 10% of the population why didn’t they just kill them then why wait until 1948.

No, obviously it’s a ridiculous conjecture. We have there’s a well-known story of a rabbi who traveled from Poland to Palestine in 1747. And he describes just how friendly the relationships were between the local Palestinian community and the local Jewish community. And specifically he talks about how on the Shabbat the Jewish community leave all of their property unattended and that nobody from the Palestinian ever touches them or abuses their property and as a result he talks about how whenever there’s a celebration in the Jewish community the Muslims come and they dance with them and they celebrate with them and they have very friendly and coordinated relationships and indeed this is the case why because they had property rights the Jews had property rights the Muslims had property rights they could dance together in the circumcision parties. Now we don’t have property rights. Nobody dances in those parties anymore.

It’s a really really simple thing. It’s not an enmity of an Arab and a Jew and it’s not racial and ethnic hatred and it’s not any of these stories that many of these people try and sell us to justify the crimes. It is simply a matter of property rights.

Final Thanks and Reflections 30:19

And I truly and genuinely thank Rothbard for writing this because not only is it so important analytically, not only is it so important because it’s a very powerful voice among the libertarian movement. I think libertarianism continues to be an intellectually very powerful movement. You can’t measure it by whether it wins elections. You can measure it in terms of its impact on ideas and its impact on the development of civilization. And he’s played a very important role in that. But also I think it’s really a really beautiful thing because Rothbard himself was Jewish and he can step back from all this, put all of this aside and understand the issue. And for me it makes me truly wish that I had had the fortune of meeting him. But unfortunately I never did. I think we would have made great friends and would have been a great testament to what he says that there is no inherent enmity or conflict between Arab and Jew. Thank you very much.

View Details

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 339.

Below is the video of the speech by Professor Anxo Bastos at 100 Years with Rothbard (Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026), “Rothbard’s Contributions to the Austrian School.” See Cataláxia Editora Rothbard 100 Youtube playlist. Transcript and summary below. The speech and youtube video are in Portuguese and Spanish (I think). This podcast episode features an AI narration of the English translation (below), prepared by Jorge Besada.

See Kinsella, Rothbard Takes Portugal: 100 Years with Rothbard: A Personal Account. See also Miguel Anxo Bastos Boubeta, Nation, Secession, and Freedom (pp 27–35), in The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Volume II, David Howden and Philipp Bagus, eds. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan / Springer, 2023).

SummarySummary of Bastos’ Talk on Murray Rothbard’s Contributions to Economic Theory

In his speech at the 100th anniversary event for Murray Rothbard organized by the Mixos Institute in Portugal, speaker Bastos highlights three major contributions by Rothbard to Austrian economics, with a fourth overarching insight as the most important.

Reintegrating History into Economic ThoughtRothbard uniquely brought history back to the center of economics, rejecting the modern view of economics as a natural science detached from historical context. He produced a major (unfinished) two-volume History of Economic Thought and applied Austrian business cycle theory to real historical events, most notably in America’s Great Depression and Conceived in Liberty. Bastos emphasizes that pure theory needs historical illustration and examples to be effective, and that Rothbard’s approach allows for “intellectual archaeology” — recovering forgotten thinkers and placing them in the Austrian tradition. He notes that few Austrians today follow this historical emphasis.
Theory of MonopolyRothbard’s analysis of monopoly is transformative. True monopolies and monopoly pricing arise primarily from state intervention (patents, licenses, regulations, barriers to entry), not from the free market. Bastos stresses that every firm is a “monopolist” of its own services, but genuine market monopolies require government backing. He criticizes “methodological nationalism” (analyzing markets only within state borders) and gives examples like telecom cartels that persist due to state protection rather than natural market forces. This ties directly into Rothbard’s broader critique of intellectual property and state-granted privileges.
Economic Calculation Debate and Its ExtensionsRothbard extended the famous Misesian socialist calculation debate beyond socialism to partial socialism (public policies, infrastructure, education) and even to large private organizations and firms. Large entities suffer from internal calculation problems (especially transfer pricing), which explains why companies and empires eventually fail or stagnate. Bastos notes that firms often only survive at massive scale due to state subsidies, patents, and privileges. Without such support, capitalist firms would not grow into the “enormous octopuses” often criticized by the left.

Main Contribution: War as the Ultimate SynthesisBastos argues that Rothbard’s deepest insight is that economics is not the most important thing for libertarians. The core issue is opposition to war, which he sees as the ultimate and most comprehensive form of state intervention. War synthesizes all statist mechanisms: taxation, inflation, price controls, conscription, regulation, and the growth of the state itself. Rothbard understood war (and the military-industrial complex) as organized crime at the heart of statism. Many modern libertarians, coming from an economics background, focus too narrowly on markets and privatization while underappreciating this anti-war core.

Overall Message: Rothbard was not just an economist but a radical thinker who integrated history, power analysis, and a profound anti-statism. Bastos urges the audience to follow Rothbard more fully by studying history, rejecting state-enabled monopolies and calculation failures, and recognizing war as the central enemy of liberty. The talk ends with applause.

The presentation is passionate, personal (Bastos credits Rothbard’s works with deeply influencing his worldview), and aimed at encouraging deeper engagement with Rothbard’s ideas beyond surface-level economics.

Rothbard Porto: Miguel Anxo Bastos: Beegarc AI watercolor rendering

TranscriptIntroduction and Thanks (0:06) Good afternoon.

I want to thank the Mises Institute in Portugal for the kindness of Mr. Adrián Antonio, for inviting me to speak in the company of such illustrious personalities, on the 100th anniversary of Murray Rothbard.

They told me, “Why don’t you talk a bit about the main contributions of Rothbard to economic theory?” My colleagues have spoken about ideas and other things, so let’s talk a bit about the main contributions to Austrian economic theory. What contributions does he have? Well, in principle, we could say many things, and it’s logical.

In general, someone who works within a school makes few contributions because they continue within that school, within a tradition, so they contribute little. Rothbard did make some. I am going to highlight three, and then the last one is for me the main one of the three.

First Contribution: Reintegrating History into Economic Thought (1:24) First, look, I’ve been listening to several conversations; they talk a lot about Rothbard’s thought, but Rothbard has a peculiarity. He brings history back into economic thought. History.

The modern economist thinks that economics is like a natural science, like physics or biology, right? So there is no history. The only thing that counts is what is happening today, nothing more. All of history is left for the scholars, for the studies, but history doesn’t count. Rothbard says no. Economics is not a natural science; it is a social science, a human science. Therefore, history remains relevant.

And how does he show this? First, by studying the history of economic thought. His posthumous work, his great posthumous work, was a history of economic thought, which remained unfinished, incomplete, but it is a history of economic thought in two very thick volumes, almost 1,000 pages, which unfortunately did not have a successor. No one continued the task. What historians of ideas do we have now? None, because we continue to see it as something minor. “Those are the historians; we are people of science,” right? And he demonstrated that this is not the case.

The important thing is to have a good history of economic thought from the Austrian perspective. From the Austrian perspective, he shed new light on how to work. In one of his last works, he shed new light on the history of thought and began to recover it. When I read that book, it was one of the ones that most influenced my life. It may be very erudite and have flaws, yes, but he looked at authors that I saw with different eyes. He taught me to see them from a different perspective. He taught me to recover, to do intellectual archaeology, to recover old forgotten authors and place them within the Austrian tradition. That is one of his contributions.

But careful—not only the history of thought (I repeat, there are no continuators except for some works; there is no continuity). None of us like to study the history of economic thought. From our own circles, we are sometimes with scraps of things that he also cites, but we have not studied it.

But he not only studied the history of thought; he also studied economic history. Here I haven’t seen his book America’s Great Depression cited, for example, which is another book that impacted me a lot in my way of seeing the world. Why? Because he takes Austrian business cycle theory first and then applies it to the case, illustrating a crisis from the Austrian point of view. He studies everything that happened according to the theory of cycles from Mises and his successors.

His Conceived in Liberty, which is also a history of the United States—he liked history. He did not despise history as lesser knowledge; rather, it was at the very core of his thought, at the core of his ideas, and he wanted to introduce it because otherwise pure theory, without examples, often doesn’t work well.

This is a very good book called Theory and History. It is also not one of the most cited in old academia, but it is one of the ones I like the most, and it also talks about this. That is, economics is indeed theoretical, but it must be illustrated with examples. Otherwise, in the abstract, it doesn’t sit well. We must apply what we know from theory to these things. And this is Rothbard’s first contribution. A contribution that was not followed much in many cases. We don’t follow it. We are not a science; we are something very elevated; we don’t have time to waste with history. Well, yes—history was very relevant for him, and it is very relevant for anyone who wants to follow him. As was said before, one must take history into account, study history, and incorporate history into one’s analyses. I don’t know if theory and history are distinct, but why not see history with…

I know few cases. In Spain, unfortunately a historian died recently who did apply it—Antiguet—who applied history to Rothbard’s ideas and applied it to the history of the Spanish Empire. How everything changes! How everything changes when you look at heroic kings, kings who conquered—I suppose it was similar in Portugal, right? A rich navigator [laughter], right? Then he says no, it was a band of thieves [laughter] who debased the currency, devalued everything there was, issued inflationary paper, and did all sorts of things—they embezzled, they were basically war entrepreneurs. Everything they wanted was to get money to finance their wars, those great kings of Spain. How the story changes if we apply Rothbard’s theory! He was one of the few I know. If anyone knows someone else, I’m interested, because few that I know applied the theory to the real economy of the time. Because we are used to it—the kings spent, everything—but he explained how they did it. And careful, it is not exclusive to the kings of Spain; it is true of all kings of the era. It is nothing new, but how the story we were told changes when seen through Rothbard’s economic theory. So that is the first contribution.

Second Contribution: The Theory of Monopoly (7:35) The second one was already cited before—Mr. Gómez spoke about it—the theory of monopoly, which is a theory that also altered me a lot. In Spanish, it was published in the journal Shad when nothing had been translated yet; it was the only thing available translated from Rothbard. So it was the only one I could get. It impacted me a lot also through monopoly. Indeed, because every monopolist company—careful, we are all monopolists of ourselves.

So the theory of monopoly collapses in that aspect, but careful—when Rothbard explains the monopoly price, he explains it very well by saying the state is a monopoly and wants all institutions to be like it, in its image and likeness. So the state is what creates the monopoly, not the monopoly understood economically, not the monopoly in the basic sense. If there is a monopoly price, it is because there is a state behind it.

The defenders of monopoly think that everyone is like them and that the market is the same as them, but if there is a monopoly price, if there is a single company in a place, first—in what place? We always talk about a monopoly within a state. What the old Martín, the Portuguese professor, called methodological nationalism—that all economic events, all social events have to be seen in national terms, in state terms. So, sure, a monopoly, but a monopoly of where? Where? A monopoly in Portugal, yes, but if I go to Vigo, I already break the monopoly. Or when things are expensive in Vigo, I go to Valencia or Viana do Castelo to buy. So where was the monopoly broken?

The telephone monopoly, the telephone cartel. I repeat, I live very close to Portugal. And I say, why in Spain can there be a telephone cartel that sets prices, they talk among themselves and set prices, monopoly prices above the market to suck [blood] from the workers, right? But I say, why, for example, doesn’t someone come from Portugal, install poles, and already arrive in the city and break the monopoly? Who doesn’t let Telefónica come to Portugal? Or the Spanish state, which doesn’t let new companies from outside come, who puts limits, regulations, or licenses so that foreign companies come? The states, right? Who grants patents, for example, as Professor Kinsella likes so much? Who grants patents that pillar the free market, or do the states grant them? So if there are monopolies, if there are licenses, it is basically an invention, either because the monopoly is given at the state level or because the state prevents other companies from entering the competition, right?

And there we have the second point. The whole theory of monopoly turns around what refers, for example, to all intellectual property, all licenses, permits. That is another big point of Rothbard.

Third Contribution: The Economic Calculation Debate and Its Extensions (11:10) The third is the calculation, which is also not talked about much. And it is one of the points that for me is most interesting and that can be most developed from Rothbardian thought.

The calculation debate, as we know, is one of the fundamental principles of the Austrian school, where the Austrian school was founded. I am not referring to the Mises-Hayek debate on the possibility or not of a socialist economy—a debate from the 1920s that Mises later developed in his book Socialism and in other works. Mises and Rothbard are also on the topic, and it has tremendous potential. Yes, sir. Look, calculation is not only applied to socialism; calculation can also be applied to companies.

Calculation can also be applied to public policies. What is a public policy, for example? A justice policy, a policy of infrastructure, public works, highways or roads, right? Or any other educational policy, for example. They are partial socialisms in the sense that there are areas of social life that are explained or provided in a socialist way. Careful—the calculation debate also applies to them. Not in the same way as a total socialist economy, because there are some price references, but yes—for example, how much does a teacher cost, where to locate a classroom, the road—how many lanes does it have to have? What quality does the road have to be, from where to where does the highway have to go or not, how many locomotives does it have to have? How many wagons? These are political decisions, not economic decisions, and in the end they fail.

But careful, I am especially interested in the debate on economic calculation in companies, because he also says that companies, organizations, beyond a certain point, also fail, they also calculate badly, especially due to the problem called transfer pricing—internal prices within an organization—and the larger it is, the worse it calculates.

This is a super interesting topic, also empires, sizes, the size of organizations. And this is a very interesting topic because it has tremendous potential for development because it explains why many organizations fail, why the average life of a company is getting shorter, of a large company. I mean, it is now lasting like 40 years. It explains why few companies fail while in their prime. Who remembers IBM? Kodak? They were all-powerful—what became of them and what are the ones now? They fail and he explains it. Look, there comes a point, and why do they surpass that point? That is, they surpass that point many times because they are supported by the state.

The state subsidizes large corporations, whether legally, with patents, with privileges of another style. But basically even [laughter] sometimes states make war for the organizations. And I say, if they can maintain that size and survive, it is because the state allows it, because the state subsidizes those companies. Otherwise, the size of companies—many times people think capitalist companies are like enormous octopuses [laughter] that suck everything. They are not like that; they are so big because someone defends them with weapons behind them and with taxes behind them. That is the difference.

The Central Contribution: War as the Synthesis of Statist Intervention (14:47) But lastly, before finishing, what crowns the door of Rothbardian economic theory is that economics is not everything, as was well said before. For the libertarian, economics is not the main thing. Many modern libertarians are libertarians only in the economic sphere. I don’t blame them, eh? Because the way, the education of many libertarians comes from the field of economics. So they normally tend to analyze all phenomena in economic terms, and I think that can be a problem because they think that basically with private mail, or with the privatization of whatever, that’s it. It’s not that. It’s not that. And the first thing is not stealing. The main thing is war.

Because war synthesizes everything. The opposition to war that many, many of us—I repeat—do not understand. Perhaps because Rothbard writes from a North American perspective, from a country that is imperialist, that gets involved in many wars, and many of us come from countries that, thank God, have not gotten involved in many messes or do not have experience of recent empires, or therefore we do not understand the importance of this. But Rothbard understood it, and moreover, war is the total synthesis of what capitalist thought is.

Because in war, war is the greatest of all interventions. The old one, when he spoke of war and state-building as organized crime—not rare to see if they pay attention to him. The war is the origin of the state, the state is the origin of war too, but at the same time all the fiscal mechanisms—from taxes, from all the inflations, devaluations, all that, all the price regulations, confiscations, everything, everything, everything comes from war.

So the Austrian has to understand this because normally the majority of these things are either in the name of war or some type of war is sought to justify them. Look at the rhetoric of politics: war on poverty, war on drugs, war on whatever occurs to them that seems warlike language to them, because with war you can suspend freedoms, with war you can requisition goods, with war you can intervene in this, but then war also explains to us how states work, what the logic of a state is.

Simply, the people who say simply that they are owners of their persons, of their lives, and of their properties. They say to the lords, all war has to be fought for whatever, right? Then it takes and recruits all these things. It is a complete synthesis of all this, of all traditional anarchist thought, explaining what war is like; you see clearly how it works in a war.

So that synthesis of war as the synthesis of all statist intervention is Rothbard’s main economic contribution, in the sense that economics is not everything.

Thank you very much. [applause]

View Details

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 338.

Below is the video and text of the speech by PFS member Fernando Chiocca of Instituto Rothbard (Brazil/Brasil) at 100 Years with Rothbard (Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026): “Rothbardianism at Rothbard’s Centenary.”1 See also Chiocca’s Prezi presentation. The speech and youtube video are in Brazilian Portuguese. This podcast episode features an AI narration of the English translation, prepared by Jorge Besada.

See Cataláxia Editora Rothbard 100 Youtube playlist. For further information, photos, and so on, see Kinsella, Rothbard Takes Portugal: 100 Years with Rothbard: A Personal Account.

SummaryFernando Chiocca’s speech “Rothbardianism at Rothbard’s Centenary,” delivered at the 100 Years with Rothbard event in Porto, Portugal (June 27, 2026), assesses the libertarian movement’s limited practical achievements after 60–70 years and defines the core requirements of true Rothbardianism while diagnosing a crisis within it.

Chiocca contrasts the libertarian movement’s lack of concrete success—no free society or significant reduction in state power—with the faster results of 19th-century British abolitionism and early 20th-century Marxism. He notes that most people do not desire freedom and that secessionist experiments (such as Liberland, which has drawn input from Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Stephan Kinsella, and Alessandro Fusillo) offer more realistic near-term hope than attempts to reform large states. On Rothbard’s centenary, the movement also faces internal betrayal of his legacy even as his ideas have grown in popularity among genuine adherents.

True Rothbardianism, he argues, requires more than Austrian economics. It demands Misesian praxeology (economics as an axiomatic, logical-deductive science), consistent anarcho-capitalism (rejecting the state monopoly on security and justice that Mises retained), a passionate abolitionist hatred of the state, cultural conservatism as a sociological precondition for liberty, historical revisionism that distrusts official narratives, and uncompromising anti-war principles rooted in opposition to aggression. Disagreements on secondary issues (such as intellectual property refinements by Kinsella, democracy, or abortion) are compatible with remaining Rothbardian; core positions are not.

Chiocca identifies Javier Milei as the leading false Rothbardian: not a consistent praxeologist, not an abolitionist (he preserved and strengthened Argentina’s central bank), not a revisionist (he celebrates Churchill and mainstream narratives), and not anti-war (he strongly supports U.S./Israeli actions in Ukraine, Gaza, and against Iran). Recent “tests” of Covid restrictions, the Ukraine war, and Israel/Gaza further sorted genuine from false adherents; Walter Block and certain institutions failed the Israel test. The resulting institutional crisis centers on the Mises Institute, which Chiocca criticizes for platforming Milei apologists such as Jesús Huerta de Soto, sidelining Hoppe, and drifting from radical Rothbardianism toward more moderate liberalism. He presents the Property and Freedom Society and the Brazilian Instituto Rothbard as remaining faithful sources and views Hoppe as the principal intellectual heir and beacon for authentic Austro-libertarian Rothbardianism.

Editor’s note: in the text below, Chiocca write:

And the third test, Israel, Milei failed spectacularly. And although most libertarians passed, this test also failed one of the, until then, greatest libertarians in the world: Walter Block. Block was considered by many to be among the three greatest Rothbardians, alongside Lew Rockwell and Hoppe, and he passed the first two tests with merit.

Block was actually terrible on Covid-related issues. In his spoken remarks, Chiocca in fact added a caveat at this part saying that Block was not so good on Covid as well, and saying that he took some strange stances. See Stephan Kinsella, “A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre,” in Walter Block – Anarcho-Capitalist Austro-Libertarian, Elvira Nica and Gheorghe H. Popescu, eds. (Addleton Academic Publishers, 2025):

This article is not a comprehensive overview of all of Walter’s publications, and does not include mention or criticism of his pro-covid lockdown writing2, his more recent Israel-Gaza related publications,3 or his pro-Milei views.4 As noted above, this is one reason I had withdrawn this piece from the volume, as I agree with Tucker (and Hoppe) on the covid/infectious disease lockdown issue, with Hoppe on Israel-Gaza issues, and also with Hoppe on Milei issues.

Related* 100 Years with Rothbard (Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026) + Stephan Kinsella, KOL493 | Rothbard’s Greatest Hits: A Personal Mix Tape (Porto, Portugal) + Mises Portugal: 100 Years of Murray Rothbard + Rothbard 100, in Porto: A Misunderstood Genius in a Room of People Who Understood * Posts on Milei: PFS; Hoppe; Kinsella

The President of Argentina, Javier Milei, has declared that modern-day Israel gave birth to Western civilization.

He says Israel is the last wall protecting Western civilization, and that if Israel falls, the rest of Western civilization will fall with it.

Milei is placing… pic.twitter.com/kyKaTfO5cl

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) July 1, 2026

Photos***

Rothbardianism at Rothbard’s Centenaryby Fernando Chiocca

100 Years with Rothbard • Porto, Portugal • June 27, 2026

[Google translation]

Thank you Manuel for the invitation and for making this event happen.

The Communist Manifesto was published on February 21, 1848. 69 years later, the Marxist Bolsheviks, most of whom weren’t even truly Russian – 85% of them were Jewish – would seize power in Russia through a coup d’état. The Marxist movement gained power over seven decades.

The abolitionist movement took shape in the United Kingdom among Christian religious groups. The Quakers were the main founders of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. In 1787, 20 years later, in 1807, they succeeded in ending the British slave trade. And in 1833, 46 years after the founding of this abolitionist society, the end of slavery throughout the British Empire would be achieved.

In 2014, Stephan Kinsella gave a lecture titled “Libertarianism After Fifty Years: What Have We Learned?” where he estimated that the libertarian movement began 50 to 60 years earlier.5 So today, in 2026, on Rothbard’s centenary, the libertarian movement would be between 60 and 70 years old. And before that, 80 years ago, Leonard Reed had founded the Foundation for Economic Education, which even helped publish Mises’s Human Action.

It goes without saying that, compared to the other two movements mentioned, the libertarian movement, in terms of practical results, has failed.

British abolitionists wanted the abolition of slavery and, within a few decades, succeeded in having slavery abolished throughout the British Empire. The libertarian movement, formed by minarchists and anarcho-capitalists, advocated for a minimal state or the abolition of the state. Therefore, if it had had the same success as the anti-slavery movement, the large state, outside of its functions of protection and justice, would have already been abolished at least throughout the American Empire – which is where the libertarian movement originated. Compare the founding of the Abolitionist Society, which 46 years later abolished slavery in the Empire, and the founding of the FEE, Foundation for Economic Education, in 1946, 80 years ago: the American Empire is even further behind than before the minarchism they advocated… it has only gone backward… the state has only grown.

We’ve reached six or seven decades of the movement, and 100 years since Rothbard, without many “practical results” to show for it; we only have a false libertarian who became president of a country in South America, and did nothing to end or diminish the state… on the contrary, he increased the state. (I’ll give details about this later.)

I think only the most naive libertarians want to “ change the world ,” because the rest of us just want to be left in peace, in our corner. That’s why secession is our main political banner. But we haven’t yet achieved a free society anywhere on the planet. And we didn’t even need a large country, since there aren’t many millions of libertarians in the world. Most people reject the product we’re offering. They don’t want freedom. They want a leader. They want security, stability. They want to be bossed around… they prefer to remain slaves. Or whatever it is they want.

So, just a small territory would be good to start with. We have many libertarian projects, such as Seasteading, Free Cities, and the Free State Project in New Hampshire. And among these projects, there is a promising attempt underway on a small river island between Croatia and Serbia, Liberland. Liberland has counted on the collaboration of three of the greatest Rothbardian Austro-libertarians in the world today, who are present here today: Kinsella , Alessandro Fusillo , and Hoppe. These three, on December 19th of last year, were at a Liberland event where they lectured and discussed its constitution. If this project becomes viable, taking into account the advice of these three masters, we will have something practical of value to show in the future.

But that’s not what’s happening now.

If he were alive, Rothbard would celebrate his 100th birthday by seeing the libertarian movement far behind the abolitionist and communist movements in achieving their goals. And that’s not all. He would also witness on his birthday a major crisis within Rothbardianism, with institutions and individuals betraying his legacy.

But of course, he certainly had much to celebrate. His ideas have grown enormously in popularity, with people and institutions doing justice to his legacy (the main ones gathered here today in this celebration). So, I want to talk about who the true and false Rothbardians are, and for that, we need to understand what it means to be a Rothbardian.

Rothbard was an Austrian economist, but being an Austrian economist doesn’t mean being a Rothbardian. In economics, Rothbard was a Misesian. Therefore, to be a Rothbardian, one must be a Misesian, that is, understand economic science as a branch of praxeology. Economics is an axiomatic, logical-deductive science. This means that its propositions have the same status as the axioms from which they are derived, that is, they are irrefutable. This is, for example, quite different from being a Hayekian. Hayek was a Wieserian influenced by Popper who disregarded praxeology.

Rothbard was the foremost and greatest economist after Mises. But Rothbard was not just an economist. Therefore, being merely a praxeologist does not mean being a Rothbardian. Rothbard was a polymath, with profound knowledge in various sciences, but Rothbardianism is characterized by Rothbardian ethics, and the implications of this ethics in his political philosophy.

In this respect, Rothbard departs from Mises. Rothbard is not a Misesian in ethics and political philosophy, only in economics. So, being a complete Misesian is different from being a complete Rothbardian. And when I say “complete” or “true,” it’s good to clarify that being a Rothbardian doesn’t mean agreeing with everything Rothbard said about everything. We are not part of a cult. True, or complete, Rothbardians disagree with Rothbard on some points. For example, Kinsella disagreed with Rothbard on some approaches to intellectual property. He corrected and developed them, using the Rothbardian framework, and we can say that Rothbardians today are Kinsellians on intellectual property. Another example: Hoppe disagreed with Rothbard on his positive view of Democracy as an evolution, and we can also say that Rothbardians today are Hoppeans regarding democracy. Another point… Most Rothbardians disagree with Rothbard’s position on abortion, but that doesn’t make them any less Rothbardians.

But there are issues on which it is impossible to disagree with Rothbard and remain a Rothbardian, as they are contrary to the Rothbardian essence. Therefore, Mises is not a Rothbardian, and Rothbard is not a Misesian, because Mises was not an anarcho-capitalist. Mises, like all liberals, was a walking contradiction. The contradiction of Mises that Rothbard freed himself from, and freed us from, was that of “ attacking monopolies but at the same time defending monopolies .” Mises concluded that monopolies are bad. That everything provided through monopolies is more expensive and of lower quality than it would be if provided by the free market environment. But he defended the monopolistic provision of justice and security services by the state.

Rothbard, like Gustave de Molinari before him, overcame this contradiction and defended the private production of security and justice! So, we can say that the complete Rothbardian is an anarcho-capitalist praxeologist… But Rothbard was not only that, and being a true Rothbardian requires more than that.

To be a Rothbardian means to have a passion for justice. But passion and hatred go hand in hand. So it is also necessary to hate injustice. Rothbard made this clear in his article “ Do You Hate the State? ” There he compares himself to another anarcho-capitalist, David Friedman. Friedman makes a cold analysis and concludes that a stateless society would be superior to one with a state… Not that the state is particularly bad. Just that there is a better alternative. He doesn’t hate the most criminal and murderous institution in history. He shows no feeling towards the endless list of injustices perpetrated by him. At this point Rothbard says he prefers minarchists, who demonstrate a hatred of the state, to indifferent anarcho-capitalists.

To be considered a true Rothbardian, one must hate the state and want to end it as quickly as possible. In his book The Ethics of Liberty , Rothbard wrote:

The libertarian must be possessed of a passion for justice, an emotion derived from and channeled by his rational insight into what natural justice requires. Justice, not the weak reed of mere utility, must be the motivating force if liberty is to be attained; … (and) this means that the libertarian must be an “abolitionist,” ie, he must wish to achieve the goal of liberty as rapidly as possible…. [He] should be an abolitionist who would, if he could, instantly abolish all invasions of liberty

Rothbard also believed that libertarianism alone would not be sufficient to achieve and maintain a free society, and he considered cultural conservatism to be a sociological presupposition of libertarianism.

Furthermore, another fundamental characteristic of a Rothbardian is historical revisionism. In the talk “Coming of Age with Murray,” Hoppe recounts that one of the two main lessons he learned in the 10 years he spent daily with Rothbard was to be a revisionist. He said:

Furthermore, in our countless conversations, I learned from Murray about the importance of complementing Austro-libertarian theory with revisionist history in order to come up with a truly realistic assessment of historical events and global affairs. …But above all it was Murray, who taught me never to trust official history, invariably written by the victors, but to conduct all historical research instead like a detective investigating a crime.

So to speak…

And lastly, but no less important, a Rothbardian must be anti-war. Opposition to war was the fundamental piece in the formation of Rothbard’s philosophy, which began in the American Old Right. The American Old Right was a group that united against the New Deal and against the US entry into World War II. The issue of war was so important to Rothbard that he, later in life, even attempted an alliance with the Left, solely because of their opposition to the Vietnam War. But above all, Rothbard’s opposition to war stemmed from his opposition to aggression. And war is the ultimate aggression. It involves increased state interference in the economy and large-scale murder and destruction of property.

So, to recap, the complete and true Rothbardian must be:

Misesian Praxeologist
Anarcho-capitalist
Abolitionist who hates the state.
Cultural conservative
Historical revisionist; and
antiwar

This is the basic Rothbardian kit.

So, what do we have of true and false Rothbardianism today, on the centenary of Rothbard’s birth?

First, let’s talk about the first president elected in history who calls himself a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist, Javier Milei. Milei is not a praxeologist. His economic discourse is heavily based on statistics, and he does not reject the positivist economic schools which, epistemologically, are diametrically opposed. opposed to the Austrian School. Milei’s intellectual confusion could already be seen in the names he gave to his 4 Cloned dogs: Murray, Milton, Robert, and Lucas. He mixed positivists with Austrians, which are actually incompatible. And a guy who considers Ben Bernanke one of the best economists in history and says he saved the world! can never be considered an Austrian.

Milei is clearly not an abolitionist, since he received the mandate from the ballot box to abolish the main source of money, and power, of the state, the central bank, and he did not do so. On the contrary, he saved Argentina’s central bank!

Milei is not a historical revisionist; on the contrary, he swallows all mainstream history to the point of considering the villain Churchill as his great hero.

And worst of all, Milei is not anti-war, quite the opposite. While Rothbard identified only two just wars in history (the secession of the 13 American colonies and the attempted secession of the South), Milei considers all wars of the American Empire just. He most vehemently supported the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the US-sponsored Israeli genocide in Gaza, and the current US-Israeli war against Iran.

Milei is the archetype of the false Rothbardian. And although many Americans don’t pay him any attention, denouncing the fraud that is Milei is one of the most important missions in this Rothbard centenary period. That’s why one of the greatest champions of Rothbardianism today is a Paraguayan musician named Oscar Grau, who has dedicated much of his energy to combating not only the Milei farce but also its apologists within the Austro-libertarian movement, such as Phillip Bagus and Jesús Huerta de Soto.

And besides these two propagandists, there are others who may not be considered Milei followers, but whose positions regarding Milei and his propagandists reveal their true priorities. Milei is currently at the center of an institutional crisis that is shaking Rothbardianism in the centenary of Rothbard’s birth.

In recent years, we’ve had three issues that served as Rothbardian tests for individuals and institutions: Covid, Ukraine, and Israel. Most passed the first test. When the globalist alarmism surrounding the Covid pandemic began, virtually all Rothbardians and libertarian institutions raised their voices to oppose this tyranny being imposed on humanity: LewRockwell.com, Mises Institute, Ron Paul Institute, Libertarian Institute, Future of Freedom Foundation, American Institute for Economic Research, FEE… Only institutions we already knew weren’t libertarian remained silent or sided with the tyranny… such as Reason and Mises Brazil, which advocated for staying home, vaccines, and even sold masks. The mask issue is interesting because, for me, it was the first sign that something was very wrong with Milei. At the time, I followed Milei ‘s social media, and he was campaigning for Congress. Campaigning in the streets, outdoors, he appeared wearing a mask all the time. The thing is, almost no one around him was wearing a mask. So it wasn’t even an obligation. He truly believed in it. An absolutely ridiculous measure that anyone could discover in 5 minutes of research is a thousand times larger than the virus. But there he was, every day displaying this symbol of the fear induced by the Covid dictatorship. I couldn’t stand it and I stopped following him. I unfollowed him. Then I ended up letting it go… saying “okay, he’s not a true libertarian. But he’s someone who’s out there saying that taxes are theft and that he’s going to abolish the central bank, etc… ”

But Milei was never in favor of mandatory masks, nor mandatory vaccination. He was against lockdowns, published a book defending individual liberties during the pandemic… so I’d say he passed that test. Not with merit. He also said a lot of nonsense.

The war in Ukraine was another test that most libertarians passed, and in this one, Milei failed. In Brazil, there was one of the few who also failed, a YouTuber who calls himself an ancap, and who, because of his popularity, diverted many potential Rothbardians away from Rothbardianism.

And the third test, Israel, Milei failed spectacularly. And although most libertarians passed, this test also failed one of the, until then, greatest libertarians in the world: Walter Block. Block was considered by many to be among the three greatest Rothbardians, alongside Lew Rockwell and Hoppe, and he passed the first two tests with merit. He did very well with the articles he wrote about Ukraine, and he did relatively well on Covid, too. He spouted some nonsense, but he did well.6 But his perverse position in favor of Israel and its wars revealed that he is neither a Rothbardian nor even a libertarian. It showed that he never ceased to be a genocidal collectivist Randian.

Of course, defending Israel’s monstrosity in Gaza is absolutely incompatible with Rothbardianism, but institutions and people who did not oppose or simply remained silent in the face of the Gaza genocide also simply cannot be considered Rothbardian. But what about those who do not oppose those who actively defend Israel’s atrocities? (like Block and Milei ) How does this affect the degree of Rothbardianism?

So I would say that Block and Milei—Milei especially—represent the fourth Rothbardian test that predated this centenary period.

This brings us to the main institutional crisis in Rothbard’s centenary year. A crisis within the institute he founded and served as academic director until his death, and which was the cornerstone of Rothbardianism worldwide: the Mises Institute.

By becoming a propagandist for Milei, Jesús Huerta de Soto not only betrayed Rothbardianism, but also his Catholicism, by supporting an agent of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Jewish sect that hates Christ. Judaism itself is already a cult based on hatred of Jesus. Chabad is even worse. But the institutional crisis in question came to light when this apologist for Milei was invited to speak at this year’s Austrian Scholars Conference. Following this invitation, Hoppe published the commemorative book for Rothbard’s centenary, with a highly critical introduction to Milei. Apparently, so as not to displease the guest of honor at his conference, the Mises Institute refused to publicize the book and publish the introduction.

Then Huerta de Soto gave his lecture, in which he called Milei the greatest Austro-libertarian hero of all time, and was applauded. The funny thing is that he considers Milei a hero for something that is actually the greatest tragedy of the Milei phenomenon, which is that he drew the attention of a huge audience to Austro-libertarian ideas. But this is terrible, because now this audience associates libertarianism and the Austrian School with Zionism, inflationism, wars, censorship, genocide, and all the other imbecility that Milei has been defending and practicing. The Austrian School is having its reputation tarnished by this fraud. And perhaps we have already lost the term “libertarianism” forever. Perhaps we need a new name.

After that, Hoppe published an article, “Mises Institute: Quo vadis?” , and revealed what lay behind the entire institutional crisis that culminated in this dark moment for Rothbardianism. He exposed a system of incentives and conflicts of interest within the institution involving over $70 million. This went a long way toward explaining why the institute cast Rothbardianism aside and embraced the apologists for a monumental fraud. Quo vadis?—where is it headed?—was the question. And the Mises Institute has already gone somewhere. Where to?

Away from Rothbardianism. It expelled Hoppe and remained with Milei ‘s apologists. It distanced himself from intransigent radicalism and has promoted classical liberals and Hayekians. It still has good collaborators and good content, but it is no longer a reliable source for Rothbardians. Now it is necessary to filter this content to avoid consuming impurities. Or poisons! The position of reliable source is being filled by the PFS blog and journal. And at the Rothbard Institute, we try to be faithful to Rothbard’s legacy, giving exclusivity to praxeology and anarcho-capitalism, publishing a lot of revisionist and culturally conservative content. And we are always fighting against war. It’s one of the most frequent themes there.

Well, we’ll soon have Hoppe’s first lecture since the eruption of this crisis and his break with the Mises Institute, and we may get a glimpse of the current state and future of Rothbardianism in the world. Hoppe is not only Rothbard’s main intellectual heir, but he has also assumed the role of beacon of Austro-libertarianism. Rothbardian. All of this makes this Mises Portugal event a historic occasion of the utmost importance, and I thank you once again for the opportunity to be here and to have been able to make this humble contribution.

Thank you.

[Original Brazilian Portuguese]

O rothbardianismo no centenário de RothbardObrigado Manuel pelo convite e por ter concretizado este evento.

O Manifesto Comunista foi publicado em 21 de fevereiro de 1848. 69 anos depois, os bolcheviques marxistas, que na maioria nem eram realmente russos – 85% deles eram judeus – tomariam o poder na Rússia através de um golpe de estado. O movimento marxista conquistou um poder em 7 décadas.

O movimento abolicionista ganharia forma no Reino Unido entre religiosos cristãos. Os Quakers seriam os principais fundadores da Sociedade para Efetuar a Abolição do Comércio de Escravos em 1787. 20 anos depois, em 1807 eles conseguiram acabar com o comércio britânico de escravos. E em 1833, 46 anos depois da fundação dessa sociedade abolicionista, o fim da escravidão em todo o Império Britânico seria alcançado.

Em 2014, o Stephan Kinsella deu uma palestra com o título “Libertarianismo após cinquenta anos: O que aprendemos?” onde ele estimou que o início do movimento libertário havia sido 50 a 60 anos antes. Então hoje, em 2026, no centenário de Rothbard, o movimento libertário teria entre 60 e 70 anos. E antes disso, há 80 anos, Leonard Read havia fundado a Foundation for Economic Education.

Não preciso nem dizer que em comparação com esses outros dois movimentos citados, o movimento libertário, em termos de resultados práticos, fracassou.

Os abolicionistas britânicos queriam a abolição da escravidão e conseguiram, em poucas décadas, que a escravidão fosse abolida em todo o império britânico. O movimento libertário, formado por minarquistas e anarcocapitalistas, pregou o estado mínimo ou a abolição do estado. Então, se tivesse o mesmo sucesso dos antiescravagistas, o estado grande, fora das funções de proteção e justiça, já teria sido abolido ao menos em todo o império americano – que é onde o movimento libertário surgiu. Comparem a fundação da Sociedade Abolicionista, que 46 anos depois aboliu a escravidão no Império, e a fundação da FEE, Foundation for Economic Education, fundada em 1946, 80 anos atrás: o Império Americano está ainda mais longe do que antes do minarquismo que eles defendiam. . . só foi pra trás. . . o estado só cresceu.

Chegamos às 6/7 décadas de movimento, e 100 anos de Rothbard, sem muitos “resultados práticos” para mostrar; temos apenas com um falso libertário que se tornou presidente de um país na América do Sul, e não fez nada para acabar ou diminuir o estado. . . ao contrário, ele aumentou o estado. (Vou dar detalhes sobre isso mais pra frente)

Acho que só os libertários mais ingênuos querem “mudar o mundo”, por que o resto de nós, só quer ser deixado em paz, no nosso canto. Por isso a secessão é nossa principal bandeira política. Mas não conseguimos ainda alcançar uma sociedade livre em nenhuma parte do planeta. E nem precisávamos de um grande país, pois nem existem muitos milhões de libertários no mundo. A maioria das pessoas rejeita o produto que estamos oferecendo. Elas não querem liberdade. Querem um líder. Querem segurança, estabilidade. Querem ser mandadas. . . preferem permanecer escravas. Ou seja lá o que for que elas querem.

Então, apenas um pequeno território estaria bom pra começar. Temos muitos projetos libertários, como Seasteading, Free Cities e o Free State Project de New Hampshire. E entre esses projetos existe uma tentativa promissora em andamento, numa pequena ilha de rio entre a Croácia e a Sérvia, a Liberland. A Liberland tem contado com a colaboração de 3 dos maiores austrolibertários rothbardianos do mundo atualmente, que estão presentes aqui hoje, Kinsella, Alessandro Fusillo e Hoppe. Esses 3, em 19 de dezembro do ano passado, estiveram em um evento da Liberland, onde palestraram e discutiram sua constituição. Se esse projeto se viabilizar, levando em conta o conselho desses 3 mestres, teremos algo prático de valor para mostrar no futuro.

Mas não é o que acontece agora.

Se estivesse vivo, Rothbard comemoraria seu aniversário de 100 anos vendo o movimento libertário muito atrasado em seu objetivo, quando comparado ao movimento abolicionista e ao comunista. E não é só isso. Ele também testemunharia no seu aniversário uma grande crise do rothbardianismo, com instituições e pessoas traindo seu legado.

Mas claro, ele certamente teria muito o que comemorar. Suas ideias tiveram um enorme crescimento em popularidade, com pessoas e instituições fazendo jus ao seu legado. (as principais delas reunidas aqui hoje nesta celebração). Então, eu quero falar sobre quem seriam os verdadeiros e os falsos rothbardianos, e pra isso, precisamos entender o que é ser um rothbardiano.

Rothbard era um economista austríaco, mas ser um economista austríaco não significa ser um rothbardiano. Em economia, Rothbard era um misesiano. Então, para ser rothbardiano é preciso ser misesiano, ou seja, entender a ciência econômica como um ramo da praxeologia. A economia é uma ciência axiomática lógico-dedutiva. Isto quer dizer que suas proposições possuem o mesmo status dos axiomas de que são derivadas, ou seja, são irrefutáveis. Isso já é, por exemplo, bem diferente de ser um hayekiano. Hayek era uma wieseriano influenciado por Popper que desprezou a praxeologia.

Rothbard foi o principal e maior economista depois de Mises. Mas Rothbard não era só um economista. Então, ser apenas um praxeologista não significa ser um rothbardiano. Rothbard era um polímata, com profundo conhecimento em diversas ciências, mas o rothbardianismo se caracteriza pela ética rothbardiana, e as implicações dessa ética em sua filosofia política.

Nisso Rothbard se afasta de Mises. Rothbard não é um misesiano em ética e filosofia política, somente em economia. Então, ser misesiano completo é diferente de ser um rothbardiano completo. E quando eu falo de “completo” ou “verdadeiro”, é bom esclarecer que ser rothbardiano não significa concordar com tudo que Rothbard falou sobre tudo. Não fazemos parte de um culto. Os rothbardianos verdadeiros, ou completos, discordam de Rothbard em alguns pontos. Por exemplo, Kinsella discordou de Rothbard em algumas abordagens sobre propriedade intelectual. Ele as corrigiu e as desenvolveu, usando a estrutura rothbardiana, e podemos dizer que os rothbardianos hoje são kinsellianos em propriedade intelectual. Outro exemplo. Hoppe discordou de Rothbard em sua visão positiva sobre Democracia como uma evolução, e também podemos dizer que os rothbardianos hoje são hoppeanos em relação a democracia. Outro ponto. A maioria dos rothbardianos discordam da posição de Rothbard em relação ao aborto e não deixam de ser rothbardianos por conta disso.

Mas existem temas que não é possível discordar de Rothbard e permanecer um rothbardiano, pois são contrárias à essência rothbardiana. Então Mises não é um rothbardiano, e Rothbard não é um misesiano, pois Mises não era um anarcocapitalista. Mises, assim como todo liberal, era uma contradição ambulante. A contradição de Mises que Rothbard se livrou, e nos livrou, foi a de “atacar monopólios mas ao mesmo tempo defender monopólios”. Mises concluiu que monopólios são ruins. Que tudo que é fornecido através de monopólios é mais caro e com menos qualidade do que seria se fosse fornecido pelo ambiente de livre concorrência do mercado. Mas ele defendia que os serviços de justiça e segurança fossem fornecidos monopolisticamente pelo estado.

Rothbard, como tinha feito Gustave de Molinari antes dele, superou essa contradição e defendeu a produção privada de segurança, e de justiça! Então, podemos dizer que o rothbardiano completo é um praxeologista anarcocapitalista. . . Mas também Rothbard não era só isso, e ser um rothbardiano verdadeiro exige mais do que isso.

Ser um rothbardiano significa ter paixão pela justiça. Só que paixão e ódio andam juntos. Então também é preciso odiar a injustiça. Rothbard deixou isso claro em seu artigo “Você odeia o estado?”. Ali ele se compara com outro anarcocapitalista, David Friedman. Friedman faz uma análise fria e conclui que uma sociedade sem estado seria superior a uma com estado. . . Não que o estado seja particularmente ruim. Apenas que existe uma alternativa melhor. Ele não odeia a instituição mais criminosa e assassina da história. Não demonstra nenhum sentimento em relação a lista interminável de injustiças perpetrada por ela. Nesse ponto Rothbard diz preferir minarquistas, que demonstram um ódio ao estado, do que anarcocapitalistas indiferentes.

Para ser considerado um rothbardiano verdadeiro, é preciso odiar o estado e querer acabar com ele o mais rápido possível. No livro A ética da liberdade Rothbard escreveu:

“O libertário deve possuir paixão pela justiça, uma emoção originada e canalizada por sua percepção racional que a justiça natural exige. A justiça, e não discursos débeis ditados por mera utilidade, deve ser a força motriz para alcançar a liberdade… (e) isto quer dizer que o libertário deve ser um “abolicionista”, i. e., ele deve desejar atingir o objetivo da liberdade o mais rápido possível… [Ele] deveria ser um abolicionista que, se pudesse, aboliria instantaneamente todas as invasões de liberdade.”

Rothbard também acreditava que só o libertarianismo não seria suficiente para se alcançar e se manter uma sociedade livre, e ele considerava que o conservadorismo cultural era uma pressuposição sociológica do libertarianismo.

Além disso, outra característica fundamental de um rothbardiano é o revisionismo histórico. No discurso “Amadurecendo com Murray”, Hoppe conta que uma das duas principais lições que ele aprendeu nos 10 anos que conviveu cotidianamente com Rothbard, foi ser um revisionista. Ele disse:

“em nossas inúmeras conversas, aprendi com Murray a importância de complementar a teoria austrolibertária com a história revisionista, a fim de apresentar uma avaliação verdadeiramente realista de eventos históricos e assuntos globais. . . . acima de tudo, foi Murray que me ensinou a nunca confiar na história oficial, invariavelmente escrita pelos vencedores, mas a conduzir toda a pesquisa histórica como um detetive investigando um crime.”

So to speak

E por último, mas não menos importante, o rothbardiano tem que ser antiguerra. A oposição à guerra foi a peça fundamental na formação da filosofia de Rothbard, que começou na Velha Direita americana. A Velha Direita americana era um grupo que se uniu contra o New Deal e contra a entrada dos EUA na Guerra Mundial. A questão da guerra era tão importante para Rothbard que ele, mais pra frente em sua vida, até ensaiou uma aliança com a Esquerda, apenas por causa da oposição dela à guerra do Vietnã. Mas acima de tudo, a oposição de Rothbard à guerra derivava de sua oposição a agressão. E a guerra é a agressão máxima. Ela envolve aumento da interferência do estado na economia e assassinato e destruição de propriedade em larga escala.

Então, recapitulando, o rothbardiano, completo e verdadeiro, deve ser:

Praxeologista misesiano
Anarcocapitalista
Abolicionista que odeia o estado
Conservador cultural
Revisionista histórico; y
antiguerra

Então, o que temos de rothbardianismo verdadeiro e falso, hoje, no centenário de Rothbard?

Primeiro vamos falar do primeiro presidente eleito na história que se autodenomina anarcocapitalista rothbardiano, Javier Milei. Milei não é um praxeologista. Seu discurso econômico se baseia fortemente em estatísticas e ele não rejeita as escolas econômicas positivistas que, epistemologicamente, são diametralmente opostas a Escola Austríaca. A confusão intelectual de Milei já poderia ser vista nos nomes que ele deu aos seus 4 cachorros clones: Murray, Milton, Robert e Lucas. Misturou positivistas com austríaco, que na verdade são incompatíveis. E um sujeito que considera que Ben Bernanke foi um dos melhores economistas da história e diz que ele salvou o mundo! nunca pode ser considerado um austríaco.

Milei claramente não é um abolicionista, pois recebeu o mandato das urnas para abolir a principal fonte de dinheiro, e poder, do estado, o banco central, e não o fez. Ao contrário, ele salvou o banco central da Argentina!

Milei não é um revisionista histórico, ao contrário, ele engole toda a história mainstream a ponto de considerar o facínora Churchill como seu grande herói.

E pior de tudo, Milei não é antiguerra, muito pelo contrário. Enquanto Rothbard identificou apenas duas guerras justas na história (a secessão das 13 colônias americanas e a tentativa de secessão do Sul), Milei considera justas todas as guerras do Império Americano. Ele apoiou mais veementemente a guerra por procuração dos EUA contra a Rússia na Ucrânia, o genocídio de Israel em Gaza, patrocinado pelos EUA e a guerra atual de EUA e Israel contra o Irã.

Milei é o arquétipo do falso rothbardiano. E embora muitos americanos não deem importância a ele, denunciar a fraude que é Milei é uma das missões mais importantes neste período do centenário de Rothbard. É por isso que um dos maiores paladinos do rothbardianismo hoje é um músico paraguaio chamado Oscar Grau, que tem dedicado grande parte de sua energia para combater não só a farsa Milei como também os seus apologistas dentro do movimento austrolibertário, como Phillip Bagus e Jesús Huerta de Soto.

E além destes dois propagandistas, existem outros que podem não ser considerados mileístas, mas que suas posições em relação a Milei e seus propagandistas revelam suas verdadeiras prioridades. Milei é atualmente o pivô de uma crise institucional que está abalando o rothbardianismo no centenário de Rothbard.

Nos últimos anos tivemos 3 temas que serviram como provas rothbardianas para pessoas e instituições. Covid, Ucrânia e Israel. Na primeira prova a maioria passou. Quando começou o alarmismo globalista da fraudemia Covid, praticamente todos os rothbardianos e instituições libertárias levantaram suas vozes para se opor a essa tirania sendo imposta a humanidade. LewRockwell.com, Mises Institute, Ron Paul Institute, Libertarian Institute, Future of Freedom Foudantion, American Institute for Economic Research, FEE. . . Somente instituições que já sabíamos que não eram libertárias se calaram ou se posicionaram ao lado da tirania… como por exemplo a Reason e o Mises Brasil, que defendeu o Fica em Casa, Vacinas e até vendeu máscaras. O negócio das máscaras é interessante pois pra mim foi o primeiro sinal de que havia algo muito errado com Milei. Na época eu acompanhava as mídias sociais de Milei, e ele estava em campanha para deputado. Fazendo campanha, nas ruas, ao ar livre, ele aparecia o tempo todo de máscara. Isso que em volta dele, não se via quase ninguém de máscara. Então não era nem uma obrigação. Ele acreditava realmente naquilo. Uma medida absolutamente ridícula que qualquer um em 5 minutos de pesquisa descobriria que o tamanho dos orifícios das máscaras é mil vez maior que o vírus. Mas ele estava lá, todo dia exibindo esse símbolo do medo induzido da ditadura covidiana. Eu não aguentei e parei de seguir ele. Dei unfollow. Depois acabei relevando. . . dizendo “okay, ele não é um verdadeiro libertário. Mas é alguém que está aí dizendo que imposto é roubo e que vai abolir o banco central, etc. . .”

Mas o Milei nunca foi a favor da obrigatoriedade de máscara, nem da obrigatoriedade de vacina. Ele foi contra lockdowns, publicou um livro defendendo liberdades individuais durante a pandemia. . . então eu diria que ele passou nesse teste. Não com méritos. Falou muita bobagem também.

A guerra da Ucrânia foi outra prova que a maioria dos libertários passou, e nessa, Milei foi reprovado. No Brasil teve um dos poucos que também não passou, um youtuber que se autodenomina ancap, e que por causa da sua popularidade, desviou muitos potenciais rothbardianos para longe do rothbardianismo.

E a terceira prova, Israel, Milei fracassou estrondosamente. E embora a maioria dos libertários tenha passado, essa prova acabou reprovando também um dos, até então, maiores libertários do mundo. Walter Block. Block era colocado por muitos entre os 3 maiores Rothbardianos, ao lado de Lew Rockwell e Hoppe, e ele passou com mérito nas duas primeiras provas. . Mas, sua posição perversa a favor de Israel e suas guerras revelaram que ele não é rothbardiano e nem sequer um libertário. Mostraram que ele nunca deixou de ser um randiano coletivista genocida.

Claro, defender a monstruosidade de Israel em Gaza é absolutamente incompatível com o rothbardianismo, mas instituições e pessoas que não se opuseram ou simplesmente se calaram diante do genocídio de Gaza também simplesmente não podem ser consideradas rothbardianas. Mas e quanto a quem não se opõem a quem ativamente defende as atrocidades de Israel? (como Block e Milei) Como isso afeta o grau de rothbardianismo?

Nisso chegamos na principal crise institucional no centenário de Rothbard. Uma crise no instituto que ele fundou e atuou como diretor acadêmico até sua morte, e que era o pilar do rothbardianismo no mundo, o Mises Institute.

Ao se tornar um propagandista de Milei, Jesús Huerta de Soto não só traiu o rothbardianismo, como traiu seu catolicismo, ao apoiar um agente do Chabad-Lubavitch, uma seita judaica que odeia Cristo. O Judaísmo em si já é um culto baseado no ódio a Jesus. O Chabad é ainda pior. Mas a crise institucional em questão, veio à tona quando este apologista de Milei foi convidado para palestrar na Austrian Scholars Conference deste ano. Após esse convite, Hoppe publicou o livro comemorativo do centenário de Rothbard, com uma introdução altamente crítica a Milei. Aparentemente, para não desagradar o convidado de honra de sua conferência, o Mises Institute se recusou a divulgar o livro e a publicar a introdução.

Então Huerta de Soto deu sua palestra, em que ele chamou Milei de o maior herói austrolibertário de todos os tempos, e foi aplaudido. O engraçado é que ele considera Milei um herói por algo que é na verdade a maior tragédia do fenômeno Milei, que é ele ter chamado a atenção de um enorme público para as ideias austrolibertárias. Mas isso é terrível, porque agora esse público associa o libertarianismo e a Escola Austríaca com o sionismo, o inflacionismo, as guerras, a censura, o genocídio e todo o resto de imbecilidade que Milei vem defendendo e praticando. A Escola Austríaca está tendo sua reputação manchada por esta fraude. E talvez já tenhamos perdido para sempre o termo “libertarianismo”. Talvez precisemos de um novo nome.

After that, Hoppe published an article, “ Mises Institute: Quo vadis? ”, and showed what was behind the entire institutional crisis that culminated in this dark moment for Rothbardianism. He revealed a scheme of incentives and conflicts of interest within the institution, involving more than 70 million dollars. This explained much of why the institute abandoned Rothbardianism and embraced the apologists of a monumental fraud. Quo vadis?, Where are they going? was the question. And the Mises Institute has already gone. Where to?

Away from Rothbardianism. He expelled Hoppe and remained with Milei’s apologists. He distanced himself from intransigent radicalism and has promoted liberals and Hayekians. He still has good collaborators and good content, but he is no longer a reliable source for Rothbardians. Now it is necessary to filter this content to avoid consuming impurities. Or poisons! The position of reliable source is being filled by the blog and journal of the Property and Freedom Society. And at the Rothbard Institute we try to be faithful to Rothbard’s legacy, giving exclusivity to praxeology and anarcho-capitalism, publishing a lot of revisionist and culturally conservative content. And we are always fighting war. It is one of the most frequent themes there.

Well, in a little while we’ll have Hoppe’s first lecture since the eruption of this crisis and his break with the Mises Institute, and we can get a glimpse of the current state and future of Rothbardianism in the world. Hoppe is not only Rothbard’s main intellectual heir, but he has also assumed the role of beacon of Rothbardian Austrolibertarianism. All of this makes this Mises Portugal event a historically significant event, and I thank you once again for the opportunity to be here.

Thanks.

See also PFP327 | Fernando Fiori Chiocca, “The First Knight of Libertarianism” (Rothbard at 100); Fernando Chiocca, How to win the economic debate (PFS 2012).
See Walter Block, “Forced Vaccinations,” LewRockwell.com (Feb. 4, 2013); see also Libertarianism and Compulsory Vaccinations and others listed here. And more recently, Walter Block, “A Libertarian Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” J. Libertarian Stud. 24 (2020): 206–37. Jeffrey Tucker criticized Walter for some of these views here; a few days later the same program had Walter on to defend his pro-Covid lockdown/mandate views he had expressed at the height of the pandemic lockdown period. Tucker also rightly called out Block for his illiberal and unlibertarian views on infectious diseases, including his bizarre defense of jailing “Typhoid Mary,” in The Downfall of the Gurus. See, e.g., Walter Block, “My Response to Jeffrey Tucker on COVID,” Epoch Times (Feb. 8, 2023; substack version); Jeffrey A. Tucker, “The Downfall of the Gurus,” Epoch Times (Jan. 23, 2023); Block’s appearance online talking about the Typhoid Mary issue. And Walter Block, “Rejoinder to Slenzok on COVID,” J.Libertarian Stud. 25 (1) (2021): 264–68. Other “libertarian” groups like Cato were also bad on this. See Kinsella, What Kind of Libertarian Are You? (see the “COVID Update” section).
See Walter E. Block & Alan G. Futerman, “Rejoinder to Hoppe on Israel vs. Hamas,” MEST Journal (2024) which is a response to Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “An Open Letter to Walter E. Block,” LewRockwell.com (Jan. 31, 2024). See also David Gordon and Wanjiru Njoya, “The Classical Liberal Case For Israel,” LewRockwell.com (Feb. 2, 2024; Mises.org version) and Walter’s response, Alan G. Futerman and Walter E. Block, “Rejoinder to Gordon and Njoya on Israel and Libertarianism,” MESTE Journal (Position Paper) (2024).
On Milei, see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “PFP280 | Special: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Javier Milei” (PFS 2024),” Property and Freedom Podcast (Dec. 23, 2024); idem, “Resignation from the Scientific Advisory Board of the Ludwig von Mises Institute Germany,” HansHoppe.com (Aug. 18, 2025); idem, “PFP290 | Hoppe: Considerations and Reflections of a Veteran Reactionary Libertarian (AERC 2025),” Property and Freedom Podcast (March 23, 2025); idem, “A ‘Great Thinker’ at Work,” Power & Market (June 19, 2025); Kristoffer Mousten Hansen, “PFP306 | Kristoffer Mousten Hansen: Mileinomics (PFS 2025),” (Jan. 12, 2026). See also, concerning Milei and the (non-)closure of Argentina’s central bank, Hoppe, “A ‘Great Thinker’ at Work,” and the recent interchange between Philipp Bagus and Jörg Guido Hülsmann, beginning with Philipp Bagus, “Credit Money, Pesos, Dollars and Argentina,” Power & Market (Oct. 20, 2025), first published, in German, as Philipp Bagus, “Kreditgeld, Pesos, Dollars und Argentinien,” Ludwig von Mises Institut Deutschland (Oct. 20, 2025). The Power & Market article contains links to others in the interchange.

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Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 337.

This is the speech by Yorick De Mombynes at 100 Years with Rothbard (Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026): Rothbard & Bitcoin.

Powerpoint (.pptx), transcript and summary below.

See also Kinsella, Rothbard Takes Portugal: 100 Years with Rothbard: A Personal Account, and the Cataláxia Editora Rothbard 100 Youtube playlist.

What would Rothbard think of Bitcoin?

imho, he would:

1) note that BTC is not (yet) money but a “secondary medium of exchange” in Mises’ sense

2) maintain his proposal to remonetize gold

3) acknowledge that, in the long term, BTC could supplant goldhttps://t.co/273lF6GlrM pic.twitter.com/vPXfE5Vsxs

— Yorick de Mombynes (@ydemombynes) July 20, 2026

SummarySummary of Yorick de Mombynes’ Talk: “Rothbard & Bitcoin”

Yorick de Mombynes explores what Murray Rothbard would likely think of Bitcoin, framing it as “digital gold” in light of Rothbard’s strong advocacy for separating money from the state via a gold standard.

Rothbard’s Core Views on MoneyRothbard (drawing from Menger and Mises) argued that:

Governments should have no role in money.
Fiat money, fractional reserve banking, and central banks are disastrous, fraudulent, and the root of inflation, business cycles, and destruction of the market economy.
Gold naturally emerged as money over centuries and was artificially demonetized by states.
Solution: Remonetize gold by abolishing legal tender laws, defining the dollar (and other currencies) as a fixed weight of gold, ensuring 100% redeemability, transferring government gold to the private sector, allowing free private coinage and bank notes, and eventually eliminating the Fed and the “dollar” name itself.

He discusses two pragmatic scenarios for the gold definition (Fed liabilities only vs. full money supply/M1), favoring the latter for enabling full-reserve banking (~$1,696/oz historically; much higher today).

Would Rothbard See Bitcoin as Money? Politically: Rothbard would strongly approve of Bitcoin’s censorship resistance and individual sovereignty. * Economically: More nuanced. Bitcoin meets many criteria of money (scarce commodity/general medium of exchange emerging via market process, with strong properties like divisibility, portability, auditability, and improving technology via layers like Lightning). It has non-monetary uses (timestamping, payment infrastructure) that satisfy the regression theorem. * Currently, Bitcoin is not yet a full “general medium of exchange” but qualifies as a secondary medium of exchange (highly marketable non-monetary asset, like jewels or bonds historically) that reduces the opportunity cost of holding cash. * Bitcoin could become sound/hard money* due to its fixed supply, high production cost, lack of government control, and disinflationary nature (leading to beneficial price deflation and more equity-based funding).

Paradox: Still Remonetize GoldDespite Bitcoin’s promise, de Mombynes argues Rothbard would still prioritize remonetizing gold to eliminate fiat entirely:

Rejects legal tender for Bitcoin (e.g., El Salvador), government strategic reserves, or pure free-banking competition under Hayek’s proposal (fiat would persist and likely dominate due to familiarity).
The only reliable way to denationalize fiat is linking it to a commodity (gold preferred, as it was market-chosen; defining fiat to Bitcoin would be arbitrary since it’s not yet fully money).
Once fiat is tied to gold and taxes on Bitcoin are removed, free competition between gold and Bitcoin could occur — and Bitcoin might ultimately win.

Conclusion: Rothbard would love Bitcoin as a powerful tool for liberty and sound money but would insist on first destroying fiat via gold remonetization. He would likely own some Bitcoin himself and advise against betting everything on unproven new private currencies (including altcoins). The talk blends deep Rothbardian theory with pragmatic Bitcoin analysis.

The presentation is thoughtful, technical in places, and optimistic about Bitcoin’s long-term potential within a Rothbardian framework.

TranscriptOpening and Thanks to Organizers 0:07

Hola. Do I say it correctly?

Unfortunately, I will stop there in Portuguese. I’m very happy to attend this amazing event. It’s really a nice event. And I must tell you that it was not very easy to organize. It was organized by a very small team and they dedicated a lot of time and the result is really impressive. So I want to say a big thank you and congrats to the team, especially to Manuel Oando. [applause]

Topic: Rothbard and Bitcoin – Political and Economic Perspectives 0:49

So I’m very happy to talk about my favorite author, Rothbard, and my favorite technology, Bitcoin.

As you know, Rothbard was one of the main proponents to separate money and the state, but he wanted to do that with gold. So, since Bitcoin is often described as digital gold, what would Rothbard think of Bitcoin? Let’s try together to imagine that, knowing that it’s not easy to imagine because he was a genius. So very obviously he would come up with something much more intelligent than what I can guess, but let’s try anyway.

As regards the political aspect of Bitcoin, I think that he would love Bitcoin. He would love the censorship-resistant aspect, the individual sovereignty aspect. But as regards the economic aspect, probably it would be a bit more tricky, a bit more complex.

So I will focus on the economic aspect and I don’t know what you think, but my guess is that he would like Bitcoin as a potential sound money, but paradoxically he would still propose to remonetize gold. He would still propose to remonetize gold and despite that he would agree that Bitcoin may win in the competition against gold later on. So I will try to argue in favor of this thesis in three steps.

First, I will make a short synthesis of Rothbard’s view on money. Second, I will say why, according to Rothbard, Bitcoin may become sound money. And then I will explain why, according to Rothbard, governments should still remonetize gold.

Rothbard’s Theory of Money – Summary 2:58

So first, a short summary of Rothbard’s view on money.

As you know, his theory and history of money is based on Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises. According to them, governments should have no role in money. They have taken control gradually of money with very bad results. Fiat money is a disaster.

Fractional reserve banking is not a good idea. It’s not viable on a truly free market with real free banking and actually it’s fraudulent and it’s not economical. It was promoted by the state and if it survived it’s mainly thanks to the state, especially thanks to central banking, which is a capitalization device in favor of big banks and in favor of the governments.

So this has very bad consequences: price inflation, business cycles, the destruction of the price system and finally the destruction of money and the destruction of the market economy.

So the consequence is that gold became money over the centuries and it was artificially demonetized by the governments. So then we should remonetize gold. Of course, it was a very short summary and his analysis is much richer in his books. He proposed to remonetize gold.

What does it mean exactly? He had a very original theory of how to remonetize gold. Of course, the first step is to abolish legal tender and then we should define the dollar as a fixed weight of gold. The dollar should be a fixed weight of gold as it was before the 20th century.

So every existing dollar currently should be considered as a claim on some specific weight of gold. There should be genuine redeemability of dollars in gold and all the gold of the governments and the central banks should be transferred to the banks and to the people. And after that, no more Fed notes. They can be destroyed. We don’t need any Fed notes anymore. And each bank can issue their own notes with their own name on the notes. But each of them will represent some specific weight of gold. And then there will be free private coinage of gold coins as before, long time ago. And we can close the central bank. We don’t need it anymore. And we can even later on suppress the name “dollar.” We can replace it with a gram of gold or ounce of gold. So that people understand that the dollar doesn’t exist anymore. It’s not an autonomous independent entity anymore. Gold should be dollar, dollar should be gold. And then we can do that with the other currencies. He wrote about the dollar, but the analysis is the same for the other currencies.

Defining the Dollar in Gold – Technical Considerations 6:05

So now a few words about how to define the dollar in terms of weight of gold.

This is a tricky slide. It’s a bit technical. So if you are not crazy about economic theory, you can skip it. There’s no problem. But personally, I struggled to understand that. So I wanted to share it with you. It’s not really a price; it’s a weight of gold. It’s a definition. What definition should we adopt for the dollar?

The first element to take into consideration is that this definition should not be too low. For example, if we take the Bretton Woods system price of $35 per ounce of gold, this would be too low because there it will have a very big deflationary impact on the economy. Why? Because since that time a lot of dollars have been created. So there will be too many dollars. We will need to destroy a lot of dollars to be hard. The commercial banks should call in all existing loans and stop lending money. So it would not be a good idea.

Rothbard was very pragmatic. He didn’t want to impose a solution but he explored various scenarios. The two main scenarios:

The first option is that we should define the dollar so that the Fed’s gold stock covers all the Fed’s liabilities. What are the Fed’s liabilities? The Fed notes plus the deposits due to commercial banks (the reserves of the commercial banks at the central bank). So in that case he made the calculation. The definition of the dollar would bring a price of gold which would be $676 per ounce of gold.

But there’s a second option which is more interesting according to Rothbard. Instead of covering only Fed liabilities, the gold stock of the Fed should cover the whole money supply—all the liabilities issued by all the banks, not only the central bank but also the commercial banks. It’s more or less the monetary aggregate M1 as it was defined at the time of Rothbard: notes plus checkable deposits. He favors that because it would allow 100% reserve banking, full reserve banking, which he favors against fractional reserve banking. And in this calculation, it would bring a definition of $1,696 per ounce of gold. According to my own calculation, then it would be between $35,000 and $40,000 for one ounce of gold. So of course, the owners of gold would be very, very happy.

Why Bitcoin Could Become Sound Money According to Rothbard 9:17

So now, why can we think that Rothbard would think that Bitcoin can become money?

What money is not according to him: Money is not an abstract unit of account divorceable from a concrete good. This is not the case of Bitcoin. It’s not divorced from a concrete good. It’s based on energy, computers, infrastructure.

Money is not a useless token only good for exchanging. Money is not a claim of society (a very fashionable theory nowadays). It’s not a guarantee of a fixed price level. Money is simply a commodity—but not so simply a commodity. Actually, it’s a commodity that is a general medium of exchange. Money is a commodity that serves as a general medium of exchange. Very important definition. Every word is important.

And the concept of general medium of exchange is not so easy to grasp. And Rothbard is very honest on that. He adds that it’s impossible to define very precisely at what step something becomes a general medium of exchange.

So what about Bitcoin? We can argue that Bitcoin is a commodity. We know that Bitcoin is already a means of exchange. But we can guess that Rothbard would say that Bitcoin is still not a general medium of exchange. Whatever you define as a general medium of exchange, you can’t say that Bitcoin is a general medium of exchange now. So he would think that Bitcoin is not (yet) money.

Bitcoin is not yet money. But it can become money. So if it’s not money, what is it? I think that he would use a very important concept in Human Action by Mises: the concept of secondary medium of exchange.

What is it? It’s an asset that you keep with you. You know that you can’t use it to buy a coffee, but you know that you can sell it very easily the day you need some fiat money to buy a coffee. For centuries, those kinds of assets were jewels and now they are government bonds or very liquid assets. They are the most marketable non-monetary goods. You know that money is the most marketable good. But among non-monetary goods, there are goods that are more or less marketable. And the most marketable non-monetary goods are what Mises calls secondary medium of exchange.

And I don’t know what you think, but for me, Bitcoin is exactly that. It’s a secondary medium of exchange. You can own it, you can hold it and you know that you can sell it when you want to get some fiat if you want to buy a Lamborghini or a coffee. And the interest of those assets is to reduce the opportunity cost of holding cash. From an economic point of view, it’s exactly Bitcoin.

Another aspect: You can’t really own Bitcoin because it’s information and there’s no intellectual property as per Rothbard. You can control it. You can possess it because you can have practical control on this scarce resource if you have your private keys. So I think that Rothbard will agree on that, especially if he sees this fascinating talk by Stephan Kinsella who is here today and in 2019. So I advise you to watch it on YouTube.

But a very tricky question is: if you can’t own Bitcoin, if there’s no property title, can it become money? And libertarians don’t all agree on that. A possible answer by Stephan Kinsella is that money is not a legal phenomenon. It’s an economic phenomenon and it’s the economic phenomenon of a medium of exchange to avoid the problems of barter. So even if there’s no property title, even if you can’t own something, it can be money. So we can conclude that Bitcoin could be money despite that.

Another aspect is that Bitcoin has all the necessary physical properties to become money. Even if it’s not a physical thing, we can argue that it’s a digital commodity even if the fungibility is not completely perfect. It depends on if you talk about the fungibility on the protocol level or on the social and legal level. It’s a tricky question.

But it’s divisible, homogeneous, portable, tradable, auditable, etc., like gold actually. And of course, it’s scarce. And it’s emerging through a market process which is very important in the Rothbardian analysis for something to be money.

And I think that Rothbard will agree that there’s an increasing demand for a kind of asset that is very useful to protect savings against monetary inflation and political control and surveillance. So the context is good for Bitcoin to become money and it will not violate the regression theorem, which is a very important thing. I insist on that because here again there’s a lot of controversy among Austrians. Before May 2010 (the first purchase of goods with Bitcoin – pizza) there was a non-monetary use of Bitcoin which is the criteria for the regression theorem. Bitcoin was a collectible; it was an object of interest for geeks, computer scientists, cryptographers, activists, libertarians, anarcho-capitalists and anybody.

And even today we can say that Bitcoin has a non-monetary use. What is it? First, it’s a decentralized timestamping system. Very efficient, more efficient than other timestamping systems. And it’s useful in the industry and in legal services. And more importantly, it’s a payment infrastructure. It’s an infrastructure of value transfer. And it’s not a monetary use. If I want to send you $1 billion, I can use this infrastructure by converting my fiat into Bitcoin, send you some Bitcoin and then you convert the Bitcoin into dollars. So I have used the Bitcoin infrastructure as a payment infrastructure. But even if Bitcoin is not money, it’s a non-monetary use of Bitcoin. So if Bitcoin becomes money later on, there would be no violation of the regression theorem.

So in that case Bitcoin will be part of money in the narrower sense according to Mises and Bitcoin on layers two like the Lightning Network would be considered as a money certificate and not as fiduciary media.

This is a very interesting typology of money by Ludwig von Mises. I don’t have time to explain it but it’s very interesting. You should read Mises and you should read also Saifedean Ammous because in his very good book Principles of Economics he made a very good synthesis of this typology by Mises.

So I think that according to Rothbard, Bitcoin could become sound money. Why? Because it’s hard money. It is very costly to produce and the government has no influence. He will consider that there is very impressive volatility today but it’s probably a very temporary phenomenon. It will decrease if adoption continues. He will like the disinflationary emission of Bitcoin. He will understand that this is going to bring price deflation and it’s perfectly okay. Natural deflation is okay for Austrian economists and he will agree that in the Bitcoin economy there would be less debt to fund investments and business but there would be more equity funding which is fine.

And he could even think that Bitcoin can be better than gold on certain aspects: first because there’s a supply cap; second because we don’t need an additional money for small transactions as we needed some silver for transactions that are too small to use gold. We can use Bitcoin for very small amounts especially on the Lightning Network or other layers two. And contrary to gold, Bitcoin is an improving technology. There’s some progress over time. It can be improved over time. So it’s a huge advantage.

So Bitcoin, according to Rothbard, can become money and would be sound money.

Why Rothbard Would Still Propose to Remonetize Gold 18:51

But paradoxically I think that he would still propose to remonetize gold. Why?

First, let’s disregard three wrong options. The first wrong option is to give legal tender to Bitcoin – the choice that was made in El Salvador. But the problem is that it’s imposed by the government. So Rothbard would not favor that. It’s just impossible.

Second, we should disregard the strategic reserve as proposed by Trump because it would be government-managed. Of course, Rothbard wouldn’t like that. [laughter]

And more interesting, we should avoid the Hayek proposal because of private currencies competing with each other. Why? Because as Rothbard explained very extensively in the Hayek system, fiat money still exists. We don’t suppress fiat money and there’s a competition between fiat money and private monies and it’s not so obvious that people would choose the new private monies because they would prefer to continue to use something they already know. They have known the dollar and other currencies for a long time. So Rothbard explained that the Hayek proposal is not a good idea. It will fail.

So in a Bitcoin situation, probably Bitcoin would be more attractive for the public than new monies issued by banks but we can’t be sure that Rothbard would think that it’s enough for Bitcoin to win in this kind of competition where fiat still exists. I’m not totally sure but I think Rothbard would be skeptical on that. So I think he would still propose to get rid of fiat. This is the priority: to get rid of fiat.

How do we do it? According to him, the only way to denationalize fiat is to link it to a commodity. It’s the only way. And what commodity? It could be a market-based market basket of commodities. He analyzes this scenario but he doesn’t like it because it will be government-imposed and managed even if there is some Bitcoin in this commodity basket.

So we should link fiat money to a single commodity. And could it be Bitcoin? Maybe Rothbard would think okay, let’s ask the government to define fiat money into Bitcoin. This is possible but I don’t believe that. I think that he would not propose that because he would think that Bitcoin is not (yet) money. It would be arbitrary to ask the government to define fiat money into something that is not yet money. I think that’s the analysis that Rothbard would have.

So he would propose to remonetize gold. It was chosen by the market. And there’s an interesting question: would it be unjust to ask the government to define the dollar in gold? And he has an interesting answer. He says take the example of price control. If government creates price control, of course we should abolish the price control but the only way to abolish the price control is a government law, a government decree, a government bill. The government has to undo what it has done. It’s the only way. And it’s the same with money. The government should undo the demonetization of gold by redefining the dollar in gold.

And of course, we should remove taxes on Bitcoin and then let the market decide. There will be competition between Bitcoin and gold. And maybe Bitcoin will win. According to Rothbard, I think he would accept this possibility.

Conclusion 22:56

So in conclusion, he would like Bitcoin, he would still remonetize gold, he will accept that Bitcoin may win. And at the conclusion of his book chapter “The Case for a Genuine Dollar” he wrote: “I would not advise anyone to bet their life savings on any of these proposed new currencies getting anywhere in this competitive race.” So he was talking about the potential new monies issued by banks and probably today if he was talking about new currencies getting anywhere he would talk about the altcoins that are pretending to compete against Bitcoin.

I think he would say: “I would not advise anyone not to own any Bitcoin.” He would not say Bitcoin is money, we should all use Bitcoin. He would say I would not advise anyone not to own Bitcoin. And I think maybe he would buy some Bitcoin.

Thank you. [applause]

View Details

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 336.

From French, Rothbard as Intellectual Inspiration (Mises University, 2006): Douglas E. French, “Rothbard as Intellectual Inspiration,” Mises Daily (08/15/2006) (from Mises University 2006; mp3; local mp3)

Transcript and summary below.

OverviewMain Talk Summary In his 2006 Mises University talk, Doug French first honors entrepreneurs such as Willis Haviland Carrier, whose invention of modern air conditioning transformed daily life and made events like the conference possible, and Ron Yanke, the hardworking, generous Idaho businessman who co-founded Micron Technology and helped create Silver State Bank; he contrasts these men with the false Marxist stereotype of greedy capitalists and quotes Mises on the progressive role of entrepreneurial capital accumulation. French then recounts his personal experience as a UNLV graduate student who, despite being warned that Rothbard was a “kook,” took his electrifying History of Economic Thought and U.S. Economic History courses, wrote a thesis on speculative bubbles under Rothbard’s guidance, navigated departmental hostility from the chair and graduate coordinator, and continued to receive generous mentorship by letter after graduation, culminating in a final meeting just before Rothbard’s death. He closes by arguing that true greatness lies in the lasting influence of figures like Carrier, Yanke, and Rothbard, criticizes billionaire philanthropy of the Buffett-Gates variety as misguided, and urges the young audience to carry forward Austrian economics and free markets either as entrepreneurs or scholars.

Q&A Summary In the question period French explained that Bill Bradford’s Liberty magazine talk “Why Libertarians Love to Hate”1 portrayed both Rothbard and Ayn Rand as people who created enemies rather than consensus, though Bradford had once called Rothbard the best person with whom to share a martini; he noted that Rothbard himself, despite having been expelled from Rand’s circle, remained complimentary and urged French to read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. He recalled only a handful of fellow students who stayed connected to the Mises Institute, observed that UNLV classes were small and the broader campus lacked intellectual seriousness, admitted that Austrian insights had cost him money by making him overly wary of bubbles while missing the Las Vegas real-estate boom, yet still found business-cycle knowledge useful in banking, and said the rest of the faculty liked Rothbard personally but did nothing to help him or Hans Hoppe attract students and were jealous of their productivity.

Related Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) and various links and resources collected there * See especially Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Stephan Kinsella, “Appendix: Rothbard’s UNLV Evaluation and Syllabus,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, including “Memo from Douglas E. French to Stephan Kinsella” as well as Rothbard’s annual faculty review at UNLV by Chairman Mark A. Thayer (1991), followed by Rothbard’s draft comment in reply, and two letters from Rothbard to Doug French (Dec. 3, 1992 and Dec. 11, 1992) * Re: “Bill Bradford entitled “Why Libertarians Love to Hate”: see Douglas E. French, “Rothbard as Teacher,” Liberty (May 1995), p. 14 & 69; Liberty (March, 1995), p. 13 (offering for sale video and audiotape of “Why Libertarians Hate,” by R.W. Bradford, from the Liberty Editors’ Conference in Tacoma, Washington, 1994) * Stephan Kinsella, “My Years with the Mises Institute,” Property and Freedom Journal (May 2, 2026) (re the importance, and decline, of the Mises.org website) * Douglas E. French, “Remembering Murray Rothbard: Teacher, Friend, and Inspiration,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment * Douglas E. French et al., “Memories: Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) as Mentor and Teacher,” Property and Freedom Society Annual Meeting 2015, Bodrum, Turkey (Sep. 11, 2015), available at PFP129 | Memories: Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) as Mentor and Teacher, Hoppe, DiLorenzo, French, Iglody (PFS 2015) * French, Buckley’s Belligerent Obit * Doug was the recipient, in 2005, of the Center for Libertarian Studies’ Murray N. Rothbard Award and, in 2012, of the Murray N. Rothbard Medal of Freedom, and also endowed the Mises Institute’s Douglas E. French Prize. * Douglas E. French et al., “Murray Rothbard as a Teacher: The UNLV Years—A Panel with Rothbard’s Former Students,” Austrian Economics Research Conference 2023, Auburn, Alabama, Mises Institute (Oct. 7, 2017), available at Stephan Kinsella, “PFP252 | Bonus: Murray Rothbard as a Teacher: The UNLV Years—A Panel with Rothbard’s Former Students (AERC2023),” Property and Freedom Podcast (Oct. 2, 2023) * French, “Reminiscences of Murray,” LewRockwell.com (April 8, 2005), republished as “Studying Under Murray,” in I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians, Walter Block, ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute 2010) (based on a talk was delivered on the occasion of receiving the Center for Libertarian Studies’ Murray N. Rothbard Award in recognition of his dedication to the ideals of liberty in the Rothbardian tradition); * French, “Learning From the Master,” LewRockwell.com (Dec. 24, 2002) * Lee Iglody, “The Man Across the Hall: My Time with Professor Rothbard,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment * Jeff Barr, “The Last Lecture,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment * Hans Hoppe, “Coming of Age with Murray,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment* * APPENDIX

Summary (main talk)Honoring Entrepreneurs Through Willis Carrier 00:00:00

Doug French opens by noting the informal setting at Mises University in Auburn and the need to honor someone critical to the event’s comfort: Willis Haviland Carrier, the father of modern air conditioning. Carrier did not invent the first cooling system, but his was the first truly successful and safe one, founding Carrier Engineering Corporation in 1915 with $35,000 (about $650,000 in today’s terms). By the previous year the company had $12.5 billion in sales and 45,000 employees.

Cooling for human comfort began in 1924 with the installation at Detroit’s J.L. Hudson department store, where people flocked simply to enjoy the air. It quickly spread to theaters, restaurants, and malls, then to homes in 1928. Carrier transformed lives without public recognition. French asks how Mises University could be held in August in Auburn, or how cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas could grow, without air conditioning. Great entrepreneurs improve lives while receiving little credit.

Debunking Stereotypes of Businessmen 00:02:40

The public image of entrepreneurs as conniving, miserly, and greedy—shaped by Dickens’s Scrooge and Gordon Gekko in Wall Street—mirrors Marxist class-struggle theory. That theory claims the ruling class appropriates a social surplus product from the exploited for its own consumption. French calls this stereotype as false as Marxism itself. While people suffer under socialist regimes, capitalist entrepreneurs invest capital, organize resources, create products and jobs, and make the world better.

He quotes Mises from Human Action: economic progress comes from capital accumulation through saving and technological improvement. The agents of progress are entrepreneurs who adjust production to satisfy consumers best. In doing so they must share the benefits with workers, capitalists, and landowners until their own share melts away.

Ron Yanke as Exemplary Entrepreneur 00:04:58

French turns to Ron Yanke, an entrepreneur who touched thousands of lives and died a few years earlier in Boise. Yanke took over his father’s machine shop, which continued serving contractors, mining, and forestry for 64 years. Employees stayed decades because Yanke would do anything for them and they would walk through fire for him.

He expanded into Montana sawmills, a charter air service, firefighting-equipment manufacturing, ranching, vast timberlands, real-estate projects, mechanical contracting, manufactured housing, and two banks. Most famously, with Tom Nicholson and Allen Noble he funded the Parkinson brothers who started Micron Technology in a dentist’s basement in 1978. Micron became a New York Stock Exchange company with $8 billion in assets, $5.8 billion in equity, and 19,000 employees worldwide—the largest private employer in Idaho.

At Yanke’s funeral speakers described a man with not a mean bone in his body, a true gentleman, the hardest worker and hardest player anyone had seen, operating at “pedal to the metal.” Despite great wealth he lived simply—flying Southwest Airlines to Las Vegas bank meetings and eating at a casino soup-and-salad bar. He and Nicholson put $5 million into starting Silver State Bank, which grew to $1 billion in assets and 190 employees; that investment became worth $100 million. French, employee number 11, credits Yanke and Nicholson for opportunities that enriched both the material and the human world. Yanke’s constant cheerfulness matched only one other person French had known: Murray Rothbard.

Encountering Rothbard at UNLV 00:09:37

Everyone present knows Rothbard; a few knew him personally, and French is proud to be one. After moving to Las Vegas in 1986 he pursued a master’s in economics at UNLV, having minored in the subject as an undergraduate. MBA degrees were the fashion, but he chose economics anyway.

By fall 1990, with twelve credit hours completed and determined to avoid econometrics and statistics, he spotted “History of Economic Thought—Rothbard” in the catalog. A classmate warned that Rothbard was a “kook” and urged independent study instead. French knew nothing of Austrian economics or libertarianism and had no time to arrange alternatives, so he enrolled.

The first night Rothbard entered already talking—about politicians attacking oil companies during the Gulf War—and launched straight into centuries of economic thought without roll call or syllabus. Eight or ten students took furious notes; half were auditors who returned every semester because Rothbard varied the emphasis (that term it was financial history). The lectures were narrative “good guys versus bad guys” delivered at Robin-Williams speed, punctuated by cackles and a dozen precise reading references each night. French recognized this as economics taught as it should be—far superior to graphs and equations.

He took U.S. Economic History the next semester. His first real conversation with Rothbard occurred during a bomb scare at Beam Hall: French suggested sending underclassmen to find the bomb; Rothbard replied, “I like the way you think, Douglas.”

Thesis Advising and Mentorship 00:15:12

Needing to choose between a comprehensive exam and a thesis, French was steered toward the thesis. After another professor declined, he asked Rothbard, who accepted warmly and immediately listed about twenty sources on speculative bubbles. French was among the last students to graduate under the Theory and Policy track designed for those studying with Rothbard and Hans Hoppe; the department later abolished it to discourage such students.

During the thesis work French came to know Rothbard well. Rothbard nicknamed him “the efficient banker” for handling forms and copying. Over time French realized Rothbard’s brilliance: he knew everything yet never acted pompous, always answering “in my opinion” or “in my view.” Bankers, customers, and especially regulators constantly claimed brilliance; Rothbard simply possessed it. At a Stanford Mises seminar people begged French for class notes once they learned he was Rothbard’s student, revealing the professor’s stature. Rothbard was a walking bibliography, supplying full citations on every meeting. His best writing advice was to read H.L. Mencken to cure wordiness.

Department Hostility and Thesis Defense 00:19:45

Department chair Dr. Thayer’s 1991 evaluation rated Rothbard only satisfactory, criticizing limited student contact, “disappointing” scholarly growth, and insufficient service, while demanding more departmental participation and role-modeling for junior faculty. Rothbard replied with a 3,000-word rebuttal calling the evaluation an outrage, listing eleven overlooked 1991 accomplishments, and defending his attendance at meetings, committee work, teaching, advising, and office hours. He asked what other “daily life” was expected and suggested the best role model is a scholar left free of harassment.

Graduate coordinator Tom Carroll circulated a sarcastic memo pretending ignorance of French’s thesis topic and committee (Rothbard, Hoppe, Terry Ridgeway) despite having signed the prospectus and appointment forms months earlier. Rothbard withheld the memo until after the defense so French would not be upset. The defense lasted a torturous hour and a half in an un-air-conditioned room; Rothbard calmed French beforehand by saying he knew more about bubbles than anyone present.

Post-Graduation Mentorship and Final Meeting 00:24:46

After graduation French moved to Reno but stayed in touch by long, single-spaced letters. Rothbard urged him to submit the tulip-mania section of the thesis to mainstream journals, believing it made a real contribution. After repeated rejections Rothbard wrote that referees always seemed “a pack of morons” who missed the point, and that he himself rarely submitted to journals any longer; he suggested further outlets including the Review of Austrian Economics.

In December 1994 French waited an hour outside Rothbard’s office, then met him by chance as the elevator opened. They talked before Rothbard’s last final exam; afterward Rothbard would grade the ten-page papers and essay exams and catch the red-eye to New York. French described a Liberty magazine conference talk by Bill Bradford titled “Why Libertarians Love to Hate,” focused on Rand and Rothbard.1 Rothbard howled with laughter and they planned to listen to the tape together after the holidays—a laugh they never shared. Rothbard never returned from New York.

True Greatness and a Call to Action 00:28:41

Carrier, Yanke, and Rothbard continue to influence lives after death; that is true greatness. In contrast, the press gushes over Warren Buffett’s $31 billion gift to the Gates Foundation. Both men are skilled at accumulating capital yet now seek praise by throwing money at problems free markets already solve—malaria (DDT banned by government) and education (remove government). Capital accumulation, whoever owns it, raises the demand for labor and enriches everyone. If they truly wished to help, they should fund the teaching of Austrian economics and the message of free markets.

John Mackey of Whole Foods argues that well-executed business is the greatest force for good, ending poverty and improving lives. He believes the left captures young idealists; French disagrees, pointing to the room full of idealistic young people at Mises University. They can change the world either as entrepreneurs serving customers or as scholars following Rothbard. Austrian economics is the intellectual backbone of the freedom movement and the Mises Institute its wellhead. The future of that movement and of Rothbard’s legacy rests in their hands.

Summary (Q&A)Q&A: Bradford’s Talk on Libertarians and Hate 00:33:23

An audience member asked what was on Bill Bradford’s tape from the Liberty magazine conference. French explained that the talk, titled “Why Libertarians Love to Hate,”1 focused on Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand. Bradford’s essential point was that both men did nothing but create enemies rather than build consensus; they preferred to fight with everyone. French recalled that Bradford once wrote that Rothbard was the best person in the world to have a martini with, but beyond that he did not have many positive things to say. That was the thrust of the presentation.

Q&A: Rothbard’s View of Ayn Rand 00:34:43

Asked whether Rothbard was a Randian, French said he would not call him one. At the time French knew almost nothing and had never heard of Rand. It was Rothbard who introduced him to her work, recommending Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Even though Rothbard had been excommunicated from Rand’s circle, he remained complimentary rather than antagonistic. French noted that Rand had a choice of economists—Rothbard or Alan Greenspan—and she chose Greenspan.

Q&A: Fellow Students and Career Paths 00:35:48

French was asked about other students from Rothbard’s classes. He recalled only a few names associated with the Mises Institute: someone named Fiametta (last name forgotten) and James Philbin. In one class there were MBA students who were completely befuddled by the pure lecture format and essay exams; they were used to multiple-choice tests and complained constantly. A number of people audited the courses, including Lee Iglody and Jeff Barr, who were still around town. French observed that Rothbard and Hans Hoppe had produced a surprising number of lawyers (in Hoppe’s case, probably a good idea) but not many economics professors. [Ed. note: also including Joe Becker; Kinsella is also an attorney]

Q&A: The Atmosphere and Class Size at UNLV 00:37:52

When asked about the intellectual climate, French noted that UNLV was known mainly for gaming studies and food-and-beverage programs. There was little intellectual rigor among students coming from other disciplines, and the classes themselves were small—only eight to ten people.

Q&A: Practical Applications of Austrian Economics 00:38:52

An audience member asked about real-world applications. French admitted the ideas had cost him money: after studying with Rothbard he began looking for a bubble around every corner and bought gold at $500, only to watch it fall to $250. Living in Las Vegas, he should instead have borrowed heavily and invested in real estate. Still, knowledge of the business cycle is useful in banking. Most bankers and business owners are not particularly smart about cycles. Entrepreneurs, when money is cheap, will borrow and build until they go broke and then start over. French said he had lent as much as possible on Las Vegas real estate over the previous decade and it had worked so far, though he could not predict the next few years. He also received emails asking whether an MBA or a master’s in economics is better; employers sometimes find an economics degree intimidating, while an MBA intimidates no one.

Q&A: Faculty Attitudes Toward Rothbard and Hoppe 00:42:19

French was asked how the rest of the faculty viewed Rothbard. He said they universally thought Murray was a good guy, yet they did him and Hans Hoppe no favors in attracting students. Virtually all the publishing in the department came from the east end of the hall where Rothbard and Hoppe had their offices; the other faculty published almost nothing and there was jealousy. Murray was impossible not to like, but the department never encouraged anyone to become an Austrian.

TranscriptHonoring Entrepreneurs and the Father of Air Conditioning 00:00:06

Thank you, Lou. Thank you, everyone above me, behind me. Jeff said this would be very casual and informal. Actually, I find it kind of intimidating, actually, to be surrounded. But I am going to talk about Murray, but that’s going to come a little later.

I think that given the conditions here in Auburn, I think there’s someone that we really need to honor as someone who’s critical to the Mises Institute. A guy named Willis Haviland Carrier. No, he wasn’t an Austrian economist, but he’s recognized as the father of air conditioning.

Carrier didn’t invent the very first system to cool an interior structure. However, his system was the first truly successful and safe one and started a science of modern air conditioning. He and six engineers started Carrier Engineering Corp. in 1915 with only $35,000. That’s not very much today. The equivalent today would be $650,000. But last year, Carrier sales topped $12.5 billion, and the company employs 45,000 employees.

Now, cooling for human comfort rather than just industrial need began actually in 1924, which is not all that long ago. They installed it in the J.L. Hudson department store in Detroit. And strangely enough, people flocked into the store just to enjoy the air conditioning. They then started putting air conditioning in movie theaters, restaurants, theaters, and shopping malls. And then it was very quickly began in 1928 putting air conditioners in residential units.

Now William Carrier made a huge difference in people’s lives, people that have never really heard of him. And can you imagine having the Mises University in August in Auburn without air conditioning? Would millions of people be moving to Phoenix or Las Vegas if there was no air conditioning? But that’s what great entrepreneurs do. They make people’s lives better, and most of the time they receive little or no credit for it.

In fact, the public’s image of entrepreneurs and businessmen as conniving, miserly, greedy crooks has been shaped since the time of Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge, to the modern-day Michael Douglas character of Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street. This image essentially puts a face on Marxist class struggle theory. According to the theory, the primary form of exploitation is economic. The ruling class… It appropriates part of the productive output of the exploited, or as Marxists say, it appropriates a social surplus product and uses it for its own consumptive purposes.

Of course, this negative stereotype of businessmen is as false as Marxist theory itself. While millions continue to struggle and have struggled under Marxist and socialist economic regimes, entrepreneurs are at work in the capitalist world, investing capital, organizing resources, and developing new products and creating jobs to make the world a better place.

Mises wrote in Human Action, the vehicle of economic progress is the accumulation of additional capital goods by means of saving and improvement in technological methods of production. The execution of which is almost always conditioned by the availability of new capital. The agents of progress are the promoting entrepreneurs intent upon profiting by means of adjusting the conduct of affairs to the best possible satisfaction of customers. In the performance of their projects for the realization of progress, they are bound to share the benefits derived from progress with the workers and also with the part of the capitalists and landowners and to increase the portion allocated to those people step by step until their own share melts away entirely, unquote.

Ron Yanke: Entrepreneur Who Touched Thousands of Lives 00:04:58

Now a guy you haven’t heard of is probably a guy named Ron Yanke. He was an entrepreneur who touched thousands of lives, died a couple years ago up in Boise, Idaho. Yanke grew up working in his father’s machine shop and took over the business when his father died. Yanke Machine Shop is now in its 64th year in business, serving contractors, mining companies, and the forestry industry.

Speaking at Yanke’s Funeral Services, his friend Tom Nicholson mentioned that there are a number of people that have worked for the machine shop for over 50 years. Yanke would do anything for an employee, and in turn, the employees would walk through fire for him. The machine shop business was just the beginning for Yanke. He owned two sawmills in Montana, Charter Air Service Company, a company that manufactures firefighting equipment. He was a rancher. He owned vast amounts of timberland in western United States. He developed a number of real estate projects. Held significant ownership in a mechanical contracting firm and manufactured housing firm in two banks.

But Yanke is best known as being one of the three original investors in a little company called Micron Technology, second largest memory chip manufacturer in the world, and the largest private sector employer in Idaho. Yanke, along with Nicholson and a friend, Allen Noble, funded brothers Ward and Joe Parkinson when they started Micron in 1978 in the basement of a dentist’s office. From those humble beginnings, Micron’s now traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It has $8 billion in assets, $5.8 billion in shareholder equity, and employs 19,000 employees worldwide.

Reverend James Wilson said at the Yanke funeral that there was not a mean bone in Ron Yanke’s body. He described him as a gentleman in the true sense of the word, a gentle man. But Ron Yanke was, believe me, the hardest worker anybody had ever seen and the hardest player anybody had seen, as I can attest when I went to a little snowmobile trip with Ron. Nicholson, his friend, amplified the point, telling the crowd that he had one speed for work and play, pedal to the metal.

Now, Ron Yanke was a man of considerable wealth, but his tastes were not very expensive at all. He’s a big supporter of the Boise State football team, and he would allow the coaches to use the airplane on their recruiting trips. However, when he would come down to Las Vegas for bank board meetings, he, his son-in-law, and his friend Tom Nicholson would fly Southwest Airlines. And after the board meeting, we’d all have lunch at the soup and salad bar at a local casino. He also was interested in any free drink tickets any of us had for Southwest.

Now, Boise Media did not mention Ron Yanke’s investment in a community bank in southern Nevada after he died. Because in relation to Micron and some of his other businesses, the bank was really too small to merit any attention. But just in the case of Micron, there wouldn’t be a Silver State Bank if it wasn’t for Ron. Yanke and Nicholson invested $5 million to start the bank 10 years ago. Today the bank has a billion in assets, employs 190 people, and that $5 million investment is now worth $100 million.

Now, I’m one of those 190 employees. In fact, I think I was employee number 11, I believe. But I thank my lucky stars for Ron Yanke and his friend Tom Nicholson for the opportunities that they created for me. And if it was not for people like Ron Yanke, the world would be not only a poorer place, but an emptier place. Ron Yanke was a big man. He was larger than life personality. It’s been said that he never had a bad day. And you should believe it. The only other person I’ve been around who was as constantly cheerful as Ron Yanke was a person very near and dear to my heart, Murray Rothbard.

Meeting Murray Rothbard at UNLV 00:09:37

Of course, everybody in this room knows who Murray Rothbard is. And a few of us know him personally. And I’m proud to say that I’m one of those people. I moved to Las Vegas in 1986. And I got the bright idea to pursue a master’s in economics at UNLV.

Why economics, you might ask? Well, I minored in the subject during undergrad, and I kind of liked it. But at the time, MBA degrees were all the rage, and they probably still are. I was advised that an MBA degree would be much better for my career. But I decided on economics anyway. By the fall of 1990, I had 12 hours of master’s credit under my belt, and I was desperately running out of options in terms of trying to avoid econometrics and statistics. So I was looking through the catalog, the UNLV course catalog, and I saw an entry, History of Economic Thought, Rothbard. Perfect.

I mentioned this to one of my classmates that I’d be taking the course under Rothbard, and he said, no, no, you shouldn’t do that at all. Guy’s a kook. Don’t want to think about it. He said I should go take the course independent study with another instructor. Now, I didn’t know who Murray was. I didn’t know whether he was a kook or not. I didn’t know what Austrian economics was. I hadn’t heard of the term libertarian. But I worked all day at the bank, and I was taking classes at night, and frankly, I didn’t have time to go screwing around lining up an instructor for independent study. So I went ahead and took Rothbard.

Well, the first night of class, Murray hit the door and he started talking immediately, like he had started his lecture out in the hallway somewhere. And it was something about dumb politicians threatening the evil oil companies that were raising gas prices. Some things never change, I guess. It was during the first Gulf War, I believe. And from that thought, he just continued right into the history of economic thought lecture. He didn’t take roll. He didn’t hand out a syllabus. He didn’t have time for any of that. He had centuries to cover. So the eight or ten of us in class furiously took notes to keep up.

And I didn’t know it at the time, but only about half of us were taken for credit. The other half had already taken the course, and they were just auditing because Murray changed his history of economics class every semester focusing on a different aspect of economic history. And in the fall of 1990, the course had a financial history emphasis. And in fact, if you want to read essentially the notes from Murray’s history of economics class, pick up his history of economics from an Austrian perspective book.

As Murray launched into this lecture, I knew that this was economics the way it should be taught. Forget the graphs, the equations, the other nonsense that I endured for previous two semesters. This was good guys versus bad guys, human action stories told at a pace of a Robin Williams monologue. Occasionally punctuated with occasional cackle and a dozen or so reading references a night. He’d give you the book title, the author, the year published, the publisher name. It’s really quite extraordinary.

So I went ahead and took Murray for U.S. Economic History the following semester, but I didn’t really know Murray at all. And to illustrate that point, someone asked me last night, the first book that I ever read by Murray. I said, well, it’s America’s Great Depression. And really, why? And I said, well, I decided to write a paper on America’s Great Depression. And I went into Murray to see if he was okay with the topic. He said, yeah, yeah, that’s great. I said, do you have any suggestions for sources? He says, well, I wrote a book about that, and you might want to take a look at it. I said, is it in the library? He goes, yeah, yeah. That’s a little tip for you students. If your instructor has written a book on your subject, you should probably consult it and quote it liberally. That’s probably the way to do that.

But anyway, the only time we spoke actually was one night when there was a bomb scare at Beam Hall over at UNLV. And so I couldn’t get into the classroom. So I went over to the student union, and I saw Murray sitting with one of my classmates. And I walked up and I said, what’s going on? And Murray said, oh, there’s a bomb scare. And I said, well, we should send some of the underclassmen in there to find it. He goes, I like the way you think, Douglas. And that was essentially my first kind of conversation with Murray.

Thesis Work and Mentorship Under Rothbard 00:15:12

But I was getting close at this point to, I needed to make a decision whether to take a comprehensive test to get a master’s or write a thesis. And I was actually leaning toward taking the test, but thankfully somebody convinced me to write a thesis. But I still didn’t know Murray well enough, actually, to pursue him as my thesis coordinator or chairman, if you will. So I asked somebody else, and in another huge break, that instructor turned me down. So I went to Murray and reintroduced myself to him and asked him if he’d be my advisor and I proposed a subject and Murray welcomed me with open arms. And then he proceeded to rattle off about 20 sources on speculative bubbles to, you know, just get me going. And away we went.

Something else I was very lucky about, at UNLV they used to have something called the Theory Policy Track. And it was really geared for students who wanted to come and study under Murray and Hans Hoppe. And I think I was the last, or I believe that I am, the last student who was able to graduate via that theory policy program. Subsequent to that, the economics department graduate coordinators and others managed to dump that program to actually keep people from coming to UNLV to study under Murray and Hans.

I really got to know Murray during the researching and writing of my thesis. Spent a lot of time with him. But I really didn’t realize his greatness. To me, he was just a good guy. He called me the efficient banker because I was fairly adept at getting approval forms signed and getting things copied. You know, things like that. Probably because I wasn’t his smartest student, so he had to call me something. But anyway. But over time, I realized how brilliant he was. And as a banker, I meet a lot of people. And I have a lot of people who are trying to convince me that they’re brilliant. Whether they be other bankers, customers, regulators. They all think they’re brilliant and they want to convince you of that. Especially regulators.

And talk to anybody who’s made millions of dollars in real estate investment. They’re all real smart. Just ask them. But Murray was actually a guy who did know everything. But he didn’t act like it. He was never pompous. He never talked down to me or anybody else that I knew of. When I asked him a question, he’d start with an answer. Well, in my opinion or in my view, he didn’t act like he had all the answers, but he did.

And as for his professional stature, I really didn’t have a sense of it until I attended a Mises seminar in Stanford. And when I told some people at the table I didn’t know anybody there other than Murray, I told them I was from Vegas. And they said, well, do you know Murray Rothbard? I said, yeah, I’m actually a student of his. And then these people proceeded to beg me for my class notes. And I guess it was at that point it kind of hit me that this guy was something special. Of course, Murray was a walking bibliography. Every time I would meet with him on my thesis, he had more sources, just title, author, publisher, year published. I can’t imagine a better weapon as far as having a thesis advisor.

But actually, Murray’s best advice came and concerned my writing. My initial drafts and my thesis were very wordy. I had these long, complicated sentences. And Murray told me, if you want to learn how to write well, just read H.L. Mencken. And that started my love affair with Mencken. And I would urge anyone who’s struggling with their writing to do the same.

Department Conflicts and Thesis Defense 00:19:45

Now, as great as I thought Murray was, the department chair, Dr. Thayer, didn’t give Murray high marks in his 1991 annual evaluation. And although the chairman, and the chairman, by the way, his claim to fame, I think, was a professional paper on the various potency of sunscreen and how that would affect. That was his contribution to economic literature, Dr. Thayer. Anyway, he criticized Murray for having only, quote, only limited contact with most economic students, unquote. Incredibly, in the area of scholarly research or creative activity, Thayer wrote, Professor Rothbard’s performance in the area of professional growth has been disappointing. Thayer also wrote that Murray was disappointed in the area of service. Thayer gave Murray an overall satisfactory rating, but he concluded his evaluation with, quote, also we expect Professor Rothbard to participate in departmental affairs to teach more students to be available as a role model for junior faculty, unquote.

Now you can imagine, Murray blasted Thayer with this 3,000-word comment, he called it, calling Chairman Thayer’s evaluation an outrage. Murray pointed out 11 of his scholarly accomplishments in 1991 that for some reason Thayer had overlooked. And commenting on Thayer’s rating him disappointing for service, Murray wrote, In the economics department, I have attended and participated in all department meetings, and I have not refused appointment to any department committees. I don’t know what Chairman Thayer means by seldom participating in the daily life of the department, teaching courses, advising students, keeping office hours, attending department meetings. What other daily life am I supposed to be missing?

The only clue in Chairman Thayer’s remarks is that I am supposed to be available as a role model for junior faculty. Apart from wondering why Mr. Thayer should possibly want someone of limited professional growth to serve as a role model, I must say that the best way someone, including myself, can so serve is to be allowed to go about his business as a scholar and teacher without being subject to harassment.

Along with Chairman Thayer, the graduate coordinator, Tom Carroll, or the evil Tom Carroll, as we now called him, was also antagonistic toward Murray and Murray’s students. After I subjected my committee and the others who attended my torturous one-and-a-half-hour thesis defense, by the way, if you’re ever defending your thesis, you want to thin out the crowd, keep the questions at a minimum, go for an hour and a half. Especially in an unconditioned room. Murray handed me, after the defense, Murray handed me a sarcastic memo that Carroll had circulated to the Economics Department faculty. It read, on Thursday, April 2nd at 3 p.m., Doug French will defend his thesis in room 518. Since he has not shared his thesis topic with me, you will have to learn that on Thursday. As far as I know, his committee consists of Murray Rothbard, Hans Hoppe, and Terry Ridgeway. Nevertheless, all graduate faculty from the department are permitted to attend the presentation, ask questions, and make recommendations to the candidates committee.

Now, the idea that Carroll, as graduate coordinator, didn’t know what my topic was or who was on my committee is complete nonsense. In fact, he signed off on my thesis prospectus on October 2, 1991, approving my topic, he signed my appointment of examination committee on November 21, 1991, approving my committee members. See, I’m the efficient banker. I kept all these records. Carroll’s memo clearly bothered Murray, but he didn’t want me upset, so he didn’t show me the memo until after I’d completed the defense. I also remember being quite apprehensive the day of my thesis as the thesis defense approached and knowing that all the graduate economics faculty were invited. But Murray calmed me down. He said, don’t worry, you know more about bubbles than anyone in the room.

Continued Mentorship and Final Meeting 00:24:46

Murray’s mentoring didn’t stop when I completed my thesis and graduated. I moved to Reno, but we did stay in touch by mail. I was actually talking to Jeff on this iPod thing we did today. Whatever an iPod is. Tell me. But a guy as busy and productive as Murray had time to write letters to me, two and three pages long, single space, just staying in touch with an ex-student. It was really quite extraordinary. And Murray was very, very generous with his time.

But Murray encouraged me to take part of my thesis that dealt with tulip mania. Submitted as an article for publication in various mainstream economics journals. He felt I had a good chance for publication, believing that I had made, as he put it, a contribution. However, for whatever reason, none of the seven or eight mainstream economics journals shared Murray’s view. And actually, he wrote me in a letter in December of 92. Your experience with the journals reminds me that every time I’ve been rejected by a scholarly journal, I’ve been infuriated, not because of the rejection, but because the referees all seem to be a pack of morons. I’ve missed the point of the article. Hence, I rarely submit stuff to the journals anymore. But Murray wanted me to continue to try and mention three other journals to submit to, which I did. But then a year later, after these rejections, Murray wrote me, that’s monstrous about these rejections. I might have told you that I’ve never received a rejection letter that furthered the alleged purpose of the offering, of offering helpful criticisms, and I guess it’s still a perfect record. If you haven’t tried Economic Inquiry and the Southern Economic Journal, you might try them if the Journal of MCB turns it down. If all else fails, don’t forget the Review of Austrian Economics, which will certainly be receptive.

I was back in Vegas in December of 1994, and I went to see Murray. I hadn’t seen him in a few years since I’d moved to Reno. And went up to his office and actually waited in the hallway, as I had many, many times, for an hour to see him. Thankfully, over the years, they’ve started putting a chair out there so you didn’t have to sit on the floor. But I waited for an hour. He didn’t show up, so I gave up. I actually took the elevator down to leave. But the elevator opened, and there he was. So we went up to his office. We chatted for a while before he was going to give his last final. And what Murray would do would give his last final. He’d grade all the papers. Everybody had to write a 10-page paper, if I remember right, and all the exams, which were all essay questions. And then he’d catch the red-eye in New York. And so I was catching him on that last night.

But I told Murray about a Liberty Magazine conference that I had attended that fall. It was given by Bill Bradford, I guess the late Bill Bradford, which was entitled, Why Libertarians Love to Hate.1 And the speech was essentially about Ayn Rand and Murray. I told Murray about it. He just howled with laughter when I told him about it. And I had ordered the tape of Bradford’s talk, and we were actually going to get together when he got back from the holidays and play the tape, and what fun that would have been to do that with Murray. Unfortunately, that’s a laugh we were never able to share. He never made it back from New York City.

True Greatness Versus Billionaire Philanthropy 00:28:41

But these gentlemen that I’ve talked about, have had and continue to influence lives even after their deaths. And that is true greatness. In contrast, the mainstream press is gushing over Warren Buffett’s $31 billion contribution to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And all these guys are very astute at accumulating wealth. And now they want to bask in the glow of the worldwide praise, they’re essentially going to throw their money at solving problems that money’s not needed to solve. Gates said he and Buffett are looking for problems that the free market cannot or will not solve, and Buffett claims the market system has not worked in terms of poor people.

I tend to agree with Doug Casey, who wrote in his recent International Speculator newsletter that he calls Gates and Buffett idiot savants, that they are anti-capitalistic limousine liberals. Buffett is on record as being pro-high property taxes and along with Bill’s dad. Bill Gates is dead, supports taxing the dead. And the Gates Foundation, by the way, focuses on world health and on improving U.S. libraries and high schools. Ironically, one of the diseases the foundation focuses on is malaria, but as Lou wrote a couple weeks ago, it’s already a cure for malaria. DDT and the government’s banned it. And as far as improving high schools, again, get the government out of the education business and that problem would be solved. Don’t need Warren’s $31 billion to fix that problem.

Gates and Buffett should continue to do what they do best, make money and accumulate capital. The accumulation of capital, no matter who owns it, adds to the demand for everyone’s labor and so enriches everyone. If these billionaires want to truly help the poor and sick and insist on donating their vast fortunes, they should support the teaching of Austrian economics. What the world needs now are free markets and unfettered capitalism. Gates and Buffett should use their billions to spread that message. But something tells me they haven’t dropped by the Mises Institute to drop off a check. So it’s left to us to carry on Murray Rothbard’s work and ideas. Ideas that will stop the devolution of society and allow entrepreneurs like Carrier and Yanke to make the world a better place.

There’s only free markets that can do that, not increasing amounts of government interference, not billionaires spreading their money around perpetuating the same frauds, or rich ex-basketball stars being governor. John Mackey, the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods, believes, quote, business has a much greater purpose than just profits and is possibly the greatest force for good on the planet today. He said, when executed well, business increases prosperity, ends poverty, improves the quality of life, and promotes the healthy and longevity of the world population at an unprecedented rate. But Mackey also thinks the left has the young audience captured because leftists are idealists who want to change the world.

Well, I think Mackey is wrong. I think we have a room full of idealistic young people that want to change the world right here. You have your whole lives in front of you. And with that, you have the chance to change people’s lives for the better, either by serving customers as an entrepreneur or following in Murray’s footsteps as a scholar and teacher. Austrian economics is the intellectual backbone for the freedom movement. The Mises Institute is the wellhead for its education. You in this room are the best and brightest we have. The future of the Freedom Movement and Murray Rothbard’s legacy is in your hands. I know you’re up for the task. Thank you.

Q&A: Bradford’s Talk on Libertarians and Hate 00:33:23

Audience Member: What was on Bradford’s tape?

Doug French: It was essentially that Murray and Ayn Rand did nothing but create enemies. And that was… That was essentially, instead of building consensus, they wanted to fight with everybody. And that was essentially his take on both Murray and him. I mean, I think that Bill wrote once that Murray was the best guy in the world to have a martini with. But other than that, I don’t know if he had all that many good things to say. That was essentially the thrust of his presentation.

Audience Member: Is that right?

Doug French: Yeah.

Q&A: Rothbard and Ayn Rand 00:34:43

Audience Member: What’s that?

Doug French: Well, interestingly enough, I wouldn’t call him a Randian, and I didn’t know who Rand was at the time. In fact, as you can tell, I didn’t know much of anything. Probably still don’t. But Murray is the one who introduced me to Ayn Rand. And since he was, of course, excommunicated from the circle, you would expect that maybe Murray would be somewhat antagonistic about Rand. But he wasn’t. He was very complimentary. Oh, you should read Atlas Shrugged. You should read Fountainhead. So when I talked to him about Ayn Rand, he was very complimentary, but I certainly wouldn’t call him a Randian. So, you know, Rand picked her economist. She had a choice, Murray and Alan Greenspan. So the choice was obvious. She went to Greenspan.

Q&A: Other Students and the Theory-Policy Track 00:35:48

Audience Member: Yes, sir.

Doug French: Yeah. Yeah, you know, a few of them you know. Fiametta. I forgot our last name, James Philbin. It’s the only two that I can really remember that I think at all have been associated with the Mises Institute. I know in one class we had, I remember we had some MBA students, and they were completely befuddled by A, it was complete lecture, and B, the tests were essay, and they were all used to multiple choice. And so they did nothing but complain. But there were a number of people, like I say, that took it for auditing purposes. Lee Iglody, Jeff Barr, a few people that are around town. Hans and Murray have been, actually, they’ve produced a lot of lawyers for whatever reason. [Ed. note: also including Joe Becker; Kinsella is also an attorney] In Hans’ case, it’s probably a good idea.2 But not many economics instructors, so anyway.

Q&A: Intellectual Atmosphere at UNLV 00:37:52

Audience Member: Right.

Doug French: I mean, UNLV is known for its gaming studies, I think, and food and beverage, I believe. So, yeah, there wasn’t a lot of intellectual rigor going on in terms of students coming from other disciplines. And there wasn’t very many people in class. There were only about eight to ten people.

Q&A: Practical Applications of Austrian Economics 00:38:52

Audience Member: Yeah.

Doug French: Yeah, it’s cost me a lot of money, actually. Yeah, you know, I took Murray and then fell into this hook, line, and sinker. So I immediately thought, I’m looking for a bubble around every corner. So I buy gold. So I was buying gold at $500 and watched it go down to $250. Instead, I was in Las Vegas, and I should have been taking my money and putting it in real estate, borrowing all I could. But I think that in banking, certainly, there is an application in terms of a knowledge of the business cycle that I think that a lot of people believe that bankers are smart, their average banker is smart, and he’s not. And the average business owner that’s out there…

I think there was a question in the macro panel today about entrepreneurs, why don’t they anticipate when things are going to be bad? And that’s not the way entrepreneurs are. If money’s cheap, and I’ve literally had real estate developers say this to me, I’m going to borrow money even if it’s wrong because the money’s so cheap. And they also will build until they go broke. If it doesn’t work out, then they’ll hit the wall and they’ll start all over again. And I’ve heard the chairman of the National Association of Income Property essentially say that. So I think as a banker you get a better sense for business cycles, and that’s especially probably the most handy thing about it. However, I think we tend to be a little early. We see things and probably miss some opportunities, and that’s why you can be sure, folks, that I’ve lent as many dollars as I possibly can on real estate in Las Vegas in the last nine or ten years. And to this point, it’s been successful, but I can’t say, you know, what it will be in the next few years. But, yeah, there are some applications.

But as far as, and I have received e-mails about whether it’s better to get an MBA or a master’s in econ. And that’s maybe an open question, but I think that employers, an economics degree sometimes might intimidate them, whereas an MBA I don’t think intimidates anybody. And it certainly shouldn’t.

Q&A: Faculty Attitudes Toward Rothbard and Hoppe 00:42:19

Doug French: I think that universally the faculty thought that Murray was a good guy, but that they certainly didn’t do him or Hans any favors in terms of trying to help them attract students. All of the publishing that was being done at the east end of the hall where Professor Hoppe and Murray’s office was. None of the other faculty were publishing anything, and I think there was a fair amount of jealousy because of that. But Murray was impossible not to like. I mean, they liked the guy, but they certainly didn’t encourage anyone to become an Austrian.

Audience Member: You guys aren’t going to spit on me.

Doug French: Thank you very much.

See Douglas E. French, “Rothbard as Teacher,” Liberty (May 1995), p. 14 & 69; Liberty (March, 1995), p. 13 (offering for sale video and audiotape of “Why Libertarians Hate,” by R.W. Bradford, from the Liberty Editors’ Conference in Tacoma, Washington, 1994). —Ed.
See Kinella, “The Ordeal of Hoppe” (with Jeffrey Tucker), The Free Market, Volume 25, Number 4 (April 2005). —Ed.

View Details

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 335.

AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file.

The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The final entry:

Rahim Taghizadegan, “Murray N. Rothbard and the Demystification of Economics”