Mises Search

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.  —Frédéric Bastiat Let me begin with the definition of a state. What must an agent be able to do to qualify as a state? This agent must be able to insist that all conflicts among the inhabitants of a given territory be brought to him for

I have three goals. First, I want to clarify the nature and function of private property. Second, I want to clarify the distinction between “common” goods and property and “public” goods and property, and explain the construction error inherent in the institution of public goods and property. Third, I want to explain the rationale and principle of

I was born shortly after the end of World War II, in 1949, in the British occupied zone of West Germany. My parents were both refugees, endangered at or forcibly expelled from their original homes in Soviet-occupied East Germany. As countless others of my generation, then, I was raised by a generation of parents and teachers who had just

Libertarianism is logically consistent with almost any attitude toward culture, society, religion, or moral principle. In strict logic, libertarian political doctrine can be severed from all other considerations; logically one can be—and indeed most libertarians in fact are: hedonists, libertines, immoralists, militant enemies of religion in

On March 2, 1966, Murray N. Rothbard, the founder and twenty-year editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies , would have celebrated his seventieth birthday. This issue of the JLS , as well as a simultaneously appearing special issue of its sister publication, the Review of Austrian Economics , likewise founded and edited by Rothbard, is a

States, regardless of their constitution, are not economic enterprises. In contrast to the latter, states do not finance themselves by selling products and services to customers who voluntarily pay, but by compulsory levies: taxes collected through the threat and use of violence (and through the paper money they literally create out of thin

[Editor’s note: Earlier this month Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe appeared on SERVUS TV for a discussion “On State, War, Europe, Decentralization and Neutrality.” An English translation of the transcript was prepared by Leonhard Paul, a law student from Germany.] Interviewer: I would like to welcome our second guest in the studio. It is the philosopher

[ See this lecture as a video. ] States, regardless of their constitution, are not economic enterprises. In contrast to the latter, states do not finance themselves by selling products and services to customers who voluntarily pay, but by compulsory levies: taxes collected through the threat and use of violence (and through the paper money they

My speech last year here in  Bodrum  on Germany’s role in the ongoing war between Russia and the Ukraine, or better and more accurately: between Russia on the one hand and the US, as the boss of NATO, its various European vassals and in particular Germany, and the Ukraine and the Ukrainians as their proxy: as their dispensable tools, useful idiots

[This article is the foreword to Stephan Kinsella’s,  Legal Foundations of a Free Society  (Houston, Texas:  Papinian Press , 2023)] The question as to what is justice and what constitutes a just society is as old as philosophy itself. Indeed, it arises in everyday life even long before any systematic philosophizing is to begin. All throughout