Mises Daily

One of the most blatant examples of this non sequitur occurs in discussions of the "free rider problem" and the alleged solution of government provision of so-called public goods.

During the 1920s, the emerging individualists and libertarians — the Menckens, the Nocks, etc. — were generally considered Men of the Left. This all changed with the New Deal.

Man discovered the value of free markets, free competition, and free enterprise. But then the governments man created to "protect" these rights destroyed them instead. 

The uneasiness that impels a man to act is caused by a dissatisfaction with expected future conditions as they would probably develop if nothing were done to alter them.

For a while the postwar ideological climate seemed to be the same as during the war: internationalism, statism, adulation of economic planning and the centralized state, were rampant everywhere.

One must not forget that the scale of values or wants manifests itself only in the reality of action. These scales have no independent existence apart from the actual behavior of individuals.

Like many others, Mises anticipated the outbreak of World War I years in advance. Unlike many others, he dreaded it.

For Hayek, "coercion" of course includes the aggressive use of physical violence, but the term unfortunately also includes peaceful and nonaggressive actions as well.

"The State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime … and it makes this monopoly as strict as it can. It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale."

Out of false theories of employment, money, and interest, Keynes has distilled a fantastically wrong theory of capitalism and of a socialist paradise erected out of paper money.