Mises Wire

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• The Great Nonsense of the Great Reset
• Understanding Money Mechanics
• The Seen, the Unseen, and the Unrealized
• Economy, Society, and History
• European Unification as the New Frontier of Collectivism: The Case for Competitive Federalism and Polycentric Law
• Minimum Wage
• Forced Vaccinations in France Bring Both Repression and Protest
• Markets and Medical Care
• Libertarianism: A Fifty-Year Personal Retrospective
• The Curse of Economic Nationalism
• Bidenomics
• Getting to Galt's Gulch: Everyday Secession

The Great Nonsense of the Great Reset Posted: 22 Jul 2021 02:00 PM PDT Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 22 July 2021.

Understanding Money Mechanics Posted: 22 Jul 2021 02:00 PM PDT Download the slides from this lecture at Mises.org/MU21_PPT_33. Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 22 July 2021.

The Seen, the Unseen, and the Unrealized Posted: 22 Jul 2021 01:00 PM PDT Download the slides from this lecture at Mises.org/MU21_PPT_31. Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 22 July 2021.

Economy, Society, and History Posted: 22 Jul 2021 12:15 PM PDT In June 2004, Professor Hoppe visited the Mises Institute in Auburn to deliver an ambitious series of lectures titled Economy, Society, and History. Over ten lectures, one each morning and afternoon for a week, Dr. Hoppe presented nothing short of a sweeping historical narrative and vision for a society rooted in markets and property. Delivered only from notes, to an audience of academics and intellectuals, the lectures showed astonishing depth and breadth.Even the most jaded scholars in the room were blown away by the erudition and scholarship of Hoppe's presentation. This project brings together the core of Hoppe's lifetime of theoretical work in one vital and cohesive source. Here we find provocative themes developed by Hoppe in the 1980s and 90s, particularly in his essays found in A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism and The Economics and Ethics of Private Property. We also find his devastating critique of democracy, made famous in his seminal book Democracy—The God That Failed. We've taken the recordings, edited them, and put them into a printed book. As always, Hoppe is equipped—and unafraid— to tackle history, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, ethics, politics, and economics, melding them into one coherent thesis: Chapter 1: The Nature of Man and the Human Condition: Language, Property, and Production   Property developed naturally, not artificially, as a consequence of human action. What is the philosophical justification for private property, and what does property mean for economics and justice? Chapter 2: The Spread of Humans Around the World: The Extension and Intensification of the Division of Labor How did man evolve to develop trade and specialization? What did that mean for the development of society? Chapter 3: Money and Monetary Integration: The Growth of Cities and the Globalization of Trade Money solves problems of barter and trade; good money makes global economics possible. But money is always and forever subject to corrupting monopolization by states and central banks. How do we separate money from the state, and separate trade from politics? Chapter 4: Time Preference, Capital, Technology, and Economic Growth Time, and our preference for present goods over future goods, informs everything we do. Low time preference, demonstrated by capital accumulation, is the key to advancing civilization. How do we encourage capital accumulation when the forces of statism work against us? Chapter 5: The Wealth of Nations: Ideology, Religion, Biology, and Environment How did the West get rich? What intellectual movements threaten progress, or advance it? Chapter 6: The Production of Law and Order: Natural Order, Feudalism, and Federalism Must law be positive rather than evolved? Who creates it, and who enforces it? Chapter 7: Parasitism and the Origin of the State How did we get here? How does the ruling class derive its putative legitimacy, and what can the distant origins of governance teach us about the vast managerial social welfare states we endure today? Chapter 8: From Monarchy to Democracy Is democracy really the great advancement in human liberty we have been taught to believe? What is the role of natural and artificial elites? Chapter 9: State, War, and Imperialism States are necessarily expansionist and bellicose. How do we tame their warring and intervening nature? Chapter 10: Strategy: Secession, Privatization, and the Prospects of Liberty Can private covenant communities replace the state? Why is a private property order morally urgent? Is secession viable? How do we move forward strategically? As you can see, this book is a tremendous addition to Hoppe's body of work, and a hugely important contribution to the "big picture" outlook for the West. Hoppe's work is more important today than ever, given the penchant of modern bureaucratic states to war, intervene, tax, regulate, debase, and generally plunder the engines of peace and civilization. Economy, Society, and History is a blueprint for understanding the world, rethinking it, and creating a better one.

European Unification as the New Frontier of Collectivism: The Case for Competitive Federalism and Polycentric Law Posted: 22 Jul 2021 12:00 PM PDT Frankfurt, Bremen, Hamburg, Luebeck are large and brilliant, and their impact on the prosperity of Germany is incalculable. Yet, would they remain what they are if they were to lose their independence and be incorporated?" — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1 From the extent of our country, its diversified interests, different pursuits, and different habits, it is too obvious for argument that a single consolidated Government would be wholly inadequate to watch over and protect its interests; and every friend of our free institutions should be always prepared to maintain unimpaired and in full vigor the rights and sovereignty of the states and to confine the action of the General Government strictly to the sphere of its appropriate duties." — Andrew Jackson2 One essential of a free government is that it rests wholly on voluntary support. And one certain proof that a government is not free, is that it coerces more or less persons to support it, against their will. — Lysander Spooner3 In Europe, one of the most important contemporary debates concerns unification and the project to create a centralized state with a single currency, a democratic parliament, and a monopolistic government. In this context, the current crisis of the European Monetary Unit (EMU) becomes a good argument in favor of an even-more-accelerated path toward the transfer of powers from the old nation-states to Brussels and Strasbourg. According to many economists and political scientists, the poor performance of the European single currency is the consequence of a lack of institutional unity. Hoping for a reversal in the declining power of Western socialist ideals, they call for more political centralization and economic planning. These discussions are plagued by certain superstitions, so, in the first part of this article, I will try to show the irrationality of unifying this continent, as well as how this plan is an absurd treason of the best European liberal traditions. Europeans seem to have accepted the project of a "European democracy" without analyzing its implications. They not only underestimate historical and extraordinary differences among European societies, they also ignore the benefits of competition between independent political structures and seem totally unaware of the distributive consequences of a massive democracy.4 They seem to ignore their history, particularly the medieval roots of their historical success, which would have been impossible if the European continent had ever been unified by a single political power. In the second part of my analysis, I will try to point out the advantages of a true federal alternative, based on institutional competition and communities by consent.5 Federalism, correctly understood, is firmly in the tradition of libertarianism. In the logic of radical and authentic federalism, political communities are "federations of individuals," and these institutions develop new voluntary relationships establishing "federations of federations." Thus, the term and concept of a "federal state" is a contradiction in terms, because a state always suggests the notion of a permanent chain of command incompatible with federalism and its logic of free agreements. In fact, federalism is a set of voluntary relations working within communities as well as among individuals. American history offers us a tragic example of the failure to comprehend the true nature of federalism: the American Civil War. Political theorist John C. Calhoun considered the Union to be a federation —the "United States" were several states joined in a free compact. For this reason, he defended the Southern point of view. However, heirs of the Hamiltonian tradition, including President Lincoln, were persuaded that the "United States" was a single state: a permanent and unified democracy. The bloody struggle between Northerners and Southerners from 1861 to 1865 was the dramatic consequence of the absurd effort to link the conflicting notions of "state" and "federation."6 Europeans have an opportunity to make good use of the lessons from this tragic American experience. In other words, Europeans must avoid the consequences of a vague definition of the federal compact. The main task is to build federal institutions and, for this reason, to coordinate a strong resistance against rising centralism.7 To pursue this objective, European peoples must elaborate a new vision of Europe—a vision based on property rights, individual liberty, the free market, local autonomies, federalism, and the right of secession. This is the glorious past of the Old Continent, and this can be—while the age that saw the triumph of the modern state and totalitarian ideologies seems to be fading—its future. FOUR SUPERSTITIONS ENTERTAINED BY THE DREAMERS OF A CENTRALIZED SUPERSTATE Superstition # 1: Individual liberty and juridical polycentrism cause tensions and, ultimately, wars. For the last few centuries, European countries have engaged in many wars, chiefly caused by imperialism and statist ideologies. Yet, these tragedies are often explained with recourse to the notorious Hobbesian argument. For many contemporary intellectuals and politicians, European peoples were enemies in the past because they were separated by the frontiers of independent states. Consequently, they can achieve a peaceful future only if they build common political institutions. In this philosophy, European unification is only one step in the long path toward the political unification of the whole world. In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes, frightened by religious divisions, conceived Leviathan as the only possible apparatus capable of imposing peace. Individuals lost their freedoms through the social contract, and received peace and life in return.8 The state affirmed itself as the condition for the avoidance of chaos, wars, and anarchy. Its first justification was the individual's fear of being killed by a fellow man. This interpretation remains well accepted, with the implicit idea that the state can be a "neutral" power, having no ideology of its own, and, thus, can be competent to nullify any religious, social, or ideological conflict. However, these arguments are not consistent with the facts. The religion wars faded away only when a new sort of religion (statist ideology) imposed its power over civil society and traditional faiths. At the beginning of modern history, secular power became "sovereign," losing its moral bounds after such onslaughts as Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis and Machiavelli's Il Principe.9 But the success of this kind of "peace" marks the beginning of a more important statist aggression to free confessions. It was also the precondition for implementing contemporary totalitarian regimes.10 The Hobbesian notion that a spontaneous order (such as a free market of rules, laws, and institutions) is a theoretical impossibility must be recognized as the most important cultural factor. It is this idea that now pushes continental leaders toward the increase of political cohesion and the reduction of economic competition. Yet, there are many arguments against this view, both theoretical and empirical. Concrete experiences demonstrate that men can, and do, create cooperation and harmony in the absence of a legal monopoly.11 Besides that, the creation of a European democratic power would reduce competition. For example, if the Italian government might now cut taxes because it fears that capital and firms might want to leave the country (e.g., in order to exploit new opportunities in Germany, France, or the United Kingdom), in a European unified state, even this remote possibility will disappear. In fact, "harmonization" is the catchword most utilized by the militant unificationists. The global economy is a space of peace and exchanges because, in the market, the relationships in which every actor participates are voluntary. Increasing political unification, however, is a sure way to generate more conflicts, since different peoples in different industries in different regions have different institutions, methods, and techniques. Political unification imposes a "one size fits all" solution on every issue, while, in a world of competition, different solutions will arise in different places. It is also important to remember that, in Spain or Britain, the persistence of centralist policies (despite the opposition of Basque and Irish secessionists) is a relevant factor in radical conflicts. The present European situation teaches us that it is impossible to unify peoples in a coercive way and, at the same time, pretend to peaceful relationships. A compulsory Union would be the premise for all sorts of tensions. In addition, the process of European democratization might also signify a more important presence of European armies around the world. The consequence would be a new form of imperialism, and, thus, it would copy the worst things of recent American history. Superstition # 2: The market requires the state: it is the result of the juridical order created by the political monopoly. James M. Buchanan is one of the scholars who have most insistently emphasized the necessity to unify Europe. His idea is that classical liberals and libertarians must encourage every effort "to move toward federalist structures in which political authority is divided between levels of government." In Buchanan's theory of federalism, a free-market society needs competition between separate state or provincial units. He remarks that localized politicians and coalitions are less able "to depart significantly from overall efficiency standards in their taxing, spending, and regulatory politics."12 But he adds that the exit option must be guaranteed by the central government, an option which effectively limits the ability of state or provincial governments to exploit citizens. As a consequence of this analysis, Buchanan says, in the U.S., "effective reform must embody devolution of power from the central government to the states," while in Europe, "reform requires the establishment of a strong but limited central authority, empowered to enforce the openness of the economy, along with the other minimal state functions."13 Buchanan's underlying thesis is that individual liberty cannot be protected by a simple competition of governments; for this reason, European peoples must accept a monopolistic continental power. The logic is clear, and Buchanan clarifies his position when he states that accepting the idea "that private and voluntary action can be efficacious over the whole social space (including basic protections to person, property, and contract)" would represent "a leap backward into the Hobbesian jungle."14 However, this analysis is weak, because the equation between liberty and chaos is not justified.15 One does not have to share libertarian ethical principles to observe that a juridical order emerges even in societies lacking a monopolistic group of rulers. Roman Law, Lex Mercatoria, and Common Law are important examples of rules emerging in a social order rather than in a state order. For centuries, and in many different contexts, people lived together in well-defined juridical systems without a common policy fixed by a king or a parliament.16 As Bruno Leoni pointed out in Freedom and the Law, for instance, the Romans accepted and applied a concept of certainty of the law that could be described as meaning that the law was never to be subjected to sudden and unpredictable changes. Moreover, the law was never to be submitted, as a rule, to the arbitrary will or to the arbitrary power of any legislative assembly or of any person, including senators or prominent magistrates of the state.17 One of the most important lessons of libertarian realism is that the state is not the protector of rights and liberties; rather, it is their worst enemy. Its existence is a continuous aggression against liberty, property, and autonomy. Accordingly, free-market relations exist in Western societies despite the state, rather than because of it. Classical liberals and libertarians must become more aware that the roots of our history of freedom lie in the institutional pluralism of the Middle Ages. As Boudewijn Bouckaert wrote, polycentric extended orders, such as Medieval Peace of God (1100–1500), do not conform with the Hobbesian intuition about power and order. . . . The Medieval order was an order without a sovereign power in the "modern" sense of the word, i.e., a central power disposing of a monopoly of a coercive power enabling it to rule a whole nation and to act as a conflict-solver of the last resort. 18 Robert Nisbet makes a similar observation: Medieval society, from the point of view of formal authority, was one of the most loosely organized societies in history. Despite the occasional pretensions of centralizing popes, emperors, and kings, the authority that stretched theoretically from each of them was constantly hampered by the existence of jealously guarded "liberties" of town, gild, monastery, and village.19 And Leonard Liggio remarks that, after 1000 A.D., while bound by the chains of the Peace and Truce of God from looting the people, the uncountable manors and bar-onies meant uncounted competing jurisdictions in close proximity. . . . This polycentric system created a check on politicians; the artisan or merchant could move down the road to another jurisdiction if taxes or regulation were imposed.20 At the origin of this complexity is the failure of the Imperial design to realize a political unification of the Christian world. European capitalism grew in part because of the weakness of political power. In the second part of the Middle Ages, the Emperor was not in condition to subjugate the Catholic Church, merchants, artisans, bankers, and the countless small armies. As a consequence, the last centuries of the Middle Ages were marked by the success of a pluralist order characterized—as it had been since the ninth century A.D.— by many allodial properties, free from regal control and from every form of political (eminent) domain.21 In his Edictum Pistense (864 D.C.), Emperor Charles "The Bold" censured all those who "built castles and fortresses without any permission and in an illegal way" (castella et firmitates et haias sine nostro verbo fecerunt). But the weakness of Imperial power encouraged the diffusion of self-protection and this "form of possession free from any obligation."22 Defenders of a libertarian European heritage must acknowledge their history of property rights, pluralism, and competition. They also have to rediscover a rational way to solve conflicts and manage quarrels without resorting to a compulsory state logic or to a central coercive power. Superstition # 3: The existence of a European identity calls for the construction of a single state in Europe. As there are important differences among England and Greece, Spain and Germany, or France and Poland, there are different ways to be European. While Europeans have in common many characteristics which distinguish them from, say, Africans or Asians, this fact doesn't imply the necessity of a single European state. On the contrary, as indicated earlier, one of the most important elements of this European identity is history, and history has not always been the nation-state's dominion. In fact, pluralism has been the key of European historical success, and such pluralism meant the absence (at the end of the Middle Ages) of a powerful center of political decisions. Europe had Church, Empire, a number of kings and princes, a multitude of feudal relationships, and, in some regions, independent cities, but it never had a small group of rulers able to organize economic life and civil society. "The dark centuries have undeniably diffused a spiritual order, but also a deep disorder in politics and the economy,"23 noted Jean Baechler in his important study about the origins of capitalism and the role of medieval anarchy. This manageable chaos explains our success. Nevertheless, the nation-state has been a compromise between the will to realize a universal political control and the resistance of the society (religion, economy, culture). The failure of the Imperial project at the end of the Investiture Contest was exploited by Norman theorists (Hugh of Fleury, for instance) who re-elaborated old concepts in relation to new "national" powers (regna).24 In Europe, the contrast opposing Church and secular institutions is a constant of the period prior to the full success of the state. In France, Spain, or England, power began a long journey toward absolutism, but the presence of multiple state organizations was always an opportunity for the freedom of individuals, even as it reduced the capacity of the ruling classes to exploit and dominate civil society. This is another reason why the will to unify Europe shows a serious misunderstanding of what European identity is, and prepares for a subversion of its deepest heritage. Superstition # 4: There will be harmony in a unified Europe, and political institutions will be able to support the development of poor societies (Eastern Europe, for instance). This idea of "forced" solidarity is not compatible with libertarian principles, or with the notion that people must be respected in their dignity and liberty. The public redistribution of resources implies a strong centralized power capable of controlling society. Recent Italian experience also teaches us that coercive solidarity creates hostility where there had been harmony and respect. Northern and Southern Italy enjoyed relatively good relations for centuries; traditional political divisions didn't hinder cultural and economic exchanges, and there was no intolerance. Current social and cultural tensions between these regions result from a unified policy, which is a consequence of the 1861 birth of the Italian Kingdom. At the end of the nineteenth century, protectionist governments aided Northern industries and damaged Southern agricultural exports. The situation changed in the twentieth century, when the creation of an important welfare state was the cause of massive redistribution from the rich North to the poor South. In addition, the various Italian peoples were forced to live together and abide by the same rules. The first consequence of these political decisions is that there is now a considerable and widespread hatred between Northern and Southern Italy. While the free market has a tendency to bring people together, coercive politics tend to divide them. Moreover, the Italian experience of political unification shows that statist solidarity has not been a tonic for poor economies. In the last fifty years, Northern firms and families have spent a great deal of money financing programs for the South. However, the occasional encouraging changes or trends come only from local and spontaneous initiatives. Welfare programs redistributed money to the mafia and to large firms, multiplied public employees, strengthened trade unions, and reduced incentives for work. Eastern Europeans in particular must keep this Italian lesson in mind, because they have to refuse a model of development based on political investments and bureaucratic regulation. The main source of economic and social growth is to be found in property rights, and it is quite evident that the logic of coercive solidarity is the explicit negation of this legal order. Hernando de Soto's most recent book offers us a useful confirmation of libertarian theses. In the analysis developed in The Mystery of Capital, poverty is seen not only as a consequence of the lack of private property rights, but also as the fatal result of a social order incapable of producing trust or of transforming concrete assets into immaterial and "abstract" capital (necessary to finance new ideas and realize capitalist growth). As de Soto points out, Third World and former communist peoples "have forgotten (or perhaps never realized) that converting a physical asset to generate capital—using your house to borrow money to finance an enterprise, for example—requires a very complex process." The creation of capital requires a conversion process, because "capital is first an abstract concept and must be given in a fixed, tangible form to be useful."25 This difficult evolution toward capitalism cannot be the outcome of a political economy based on state aid and regulation. Only the other path (free-market economy, competition, and individual responsibility) can present conditions to offer a future to Eastern Europe and to all countries in search of justice, wealth, and civilization. 26 WHAT CAN WE DO? FOUR IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE Refusing European Political Unification, Defending Free Trade and Globalization Because the creation of this cartel of monopolist rulers would reduce institutional competition and individual freedom, we must oppose the project of European political unification. In a large and politically unified country, the welfare state will find no hurdles, so redistributive policies will become the rule. Every government expenditure affects a large number of people, but the single individual usually pays only a fraction, and, thus, prefers not to bother with organizing a resistance. The consequence is an increase in taxation and the satisfaction of many lobbies. Some economists believe that European unification would bring about the abolition of all internal barriers to free trade. However, this idea is not true. For instance, a directive adopted in 1973 allowed the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark to make chocolate containing up to 5% vegetable fats, but not to sell it as chocolate in other member states. As a result, the Italian, Belgian, and French governments obtained a prohibition of chocolate imports from other member states. Through health and safety regulation, there are now similar directives against Spanish strawberries, French camembert, and so on.27 In addition, the political leaders of a unified Europe might try to build a protectionist Europe, an unassailable fortress against Asian and American competitors. To pursue this kind of policy would be impossible in a small nation (incapable of self-sufficiency), but a large area, such as Europe, can help to foster the illusion that protectionism will help the economy, protect wages, and bring about full employment. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe emphasizes, "a country the size of the U.S., for instance, might attain comparatively high standards of living even if it renounced all foreign trade, provided it possessed an unrestricted internal capital and consumer goods market." On the contrary, in small jurisdictions, this error is less frequent, because "the smaller the country, the greater the pressure to opt for free trade rather than protectionism."28 Swiss Cantons, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Andorra, or Monaco never dreamed of obtaining advantages by refusing international trade. These small political communities— the true and only heirs of the great European spirit—are interested in the diffusion of libertarian and free-market principles. They want to export their specialties and buy all the goods they can't (or won't) produce. In fact, these small political entities are in the best position to teach an important lesson: the international division of labor is useful for individuals, families, communities, and companies. For this reason, it is urgent to reject the project of a politically unified Europe, and to adopt an alternative model—a more flexible one based on pacts and contracts. If "Europe" exists—and a European identity is clearly in our past and our present—it can exploit the opportunity of economic integration (globalization) and free movement of information. In the international circulation of money, goods, and ideas, we don't see a central planner: order emerges spontaneously as a result of voluntary cooperation. In a free society, it can be easy to satisfy our need to rediscover our common historical heritage and develop institutional and economic links. In a Europe based on property rights, the wall that still divides West and East could quickly disappear and, free from the rigid constructivism of their politicians, European peoples could organize new and truly federal relationships. Free European Relationships in a Polycentric World For centuries, within the structure of the nation-state, the idea of sovereignty guaranteed that the King and, then, Parliament were able to control society. But this hierarchical construction was also the premise of an anarchical international order. The Kantian idea of a world federation, the distant progenitor of contemporary European unification, must be explained as the logical consequence of an international regime based on sovereign entities.29 The paradox of the nation-state is in its promise of law and order only within its borders: internal hierarchy and external autonomy (the so-called international anarchy). But if modern political culture preferred hierarchy to anarchy (and it adopted the Hobbesian framework), the result was that our international (dis)order had to be modified. If the state had the task of avoiding violence inside its borders, Kant imagined a parallel solution to the problem of law and order in the international arena. In other words, the pursuit of peace and harmony among different peoples could happen only through a "higher" (both ethically and geographically) political center able to reduce conflicts to a minimum. The Kantian dream of "eternal peace" is the politically correct version of the projects of Napoleon and Hitler, the political leaders more seriously engaged in the construction of a European state. Present- day prophets of a united world share with these statesmen a strong preference for a society directed, more or less violently, by a small political elite. Furthermore, they have in common a similar distrust about human liberty. One must also understand that European unification is only one step toward global unification, and that the determination to abolish political polycentrism is the most important threat to freedom. As already noted, Europe's finest hour was characterized by a system of hundreds of semiautonomous entities with a free and open market.30 At the same time, opposing continental unification means rejecting the neo-protectionism of those media heroes, the "Seattle people." For this reason, European peoples must defend their traditional values: openness, competitiveness, respect for their fellow men and their rights, localism, and free spontaneous commonality. But they must also be honest and acknowledge the fact that many important European values migrated to North America in ships carrying European colonists and religious dissenters to the Atlantic coast. Our hope is that these traditional values have not left the continent forever. Federal Europe, Free Communities, and the Right of Secession Against the pseudo-federalism of Maastricht, classical liberals and libertarians must speak up on behalf of the true federal tradition. In the West, we have a great deal of historical experience: Jewish tribes, Greek poleis, ancient German communities, Italian and Flemish medieval Communes, the Hanseatic League, the Dutch United Provinces, the Swiss Confederation, and the early republic in Jeffersonian America. We also have classical liberal and libertarian thinkers who paid attention to this topic, from Althusius to Jefferson, from Calhoun to Lord Acton, and from Spooner to Nock. There are currently social theorists working on a correct vision of federal theory. For instance, some ideas of Bruno S. Frey can be useful in showing a possible evolution toward an increasingly free and competitive society. The project of FOCJ (functional, overlapping, and competitive jurisdictions) and the idea of a solid utilization of the "right of secession" (with the purpose of creating nations by consent and a true market for institutions, where individuals can shop for the best political arrangements) are the prerequisites for constructing federal relationships among individuals and groups.31 Despite his unjustified insistence about the role of direct democracy (and the inconsistent defense of the welfare-distributive logic), the institutional framework Frey imagined would be a good step toward a European federation. But a federal Europe is exactly the opposite of a unified Europe. In emphasizing the need to develop negotiated connections among small political communities, I want to stress the difference between the existing Europe and the voluntary political order that European libertarians favor. In a federal institution, Roland Vaubel wrote, "each member state would have the explicit right to leave the union at any time, if a simple majority of its population voted in favor of secession."32 The possibility for any community to dissolve the federal compact (the right of exit) is the only condition that can force the central power to respect the rights of the federation's members (states, regions, cities, and individuals). For this reason, it is important to support every political "devolution" of powers from the center to the separate local entities: from London to Scotland, from Rome to Lombardy, from Madrid to Catalunia. In the project of realizing a true federalist Europe, it is decisive that regions and cities can opt to secede, and that they can discuss their bond with the nation-state and the European Union. In this sense, we must also defend the idea that federalism can be a strategy to imagine and achieve political relationships without the state (or beyond and after the state). In fact, federal pacts imply mutual agreements and horizontal contracts. Federalism, the theory of political pacts, demands a new elaboration of the notion of political community. In a true federal society, the right to abandon the union must be preserved; after all, this is the most important guarantee that the federal authority will respect different realities. If European politicians and bureaucrats are, in fact, impatient to destroy our right to abandon the secular Paradise they are planning for us, the reason is that they want to be free to make it as close to Hell as possible. The Euro nightmare under construction will be a land with Italian bureaucracy, French regulation, Scandinavian taxation, German trade unions, and no right to opt out. Human Dignity and the Spirit of Europe Against socialist solidarity (whether nationalist or internationalist), classical liberals and libertarians must protect the dignity of human beings and their right not to become objects of political and coercive decisions. We have to defend our experience of true solidarity: in families, associations, churches, and so on. We must understand that state charity is a pretext of political rulers eager to increase their power at the expense of the people. Furthermore, we must explain that the political machine operates a redistribution that never helps the poor. In general, redistribution for benefits the strongest lobbies. It helps the rich, intelligent, and sophisticated citizen; in brief, it helps only those who know how the system really works. Even in this case, a comparison between Europe and America is useful. Because the government is less invasive and property rights are more protected in the United States, there is an important net of private mutual aid associations. Our ability to attain a sense of true solidarity and community rests directly on our freedom. Against the new socialism of Philippe van Parijs (who proposes that everyone—including California surfers—be paid a universal basic income at a subsistence level),33 and against Habermas's idea of universal democratic integration,34 it is important that we preserve the individual's right to reject political obligation. Honest men don't respect unjust laws. But, in the new millennium, only a radical change in our vision of society can bring about a rebirth of European liberties. As Étienne de la Boétie pointed out,35 the power of the political elite can be explained only by the fact that people voluntarily obey laws (he called it the mystery of civil obedience). Consequently, when we cease to obey, unjust power will disappear, and we will have the opportunity to build a more civilized way to live together. The Catholic Church played an important role in the great miracle of medieval Europe, It was, undoubtedly, the main hindrance that Empire found in its attempt to build an absolute power. Its moral and cultural force (and also its economic and military importance) was influential in preventing the complete triumph of the imperial design. The strong relationship between the German Emperor and the Franciscans—both averse to the wealth of the clergy and the political power of the Pope—and the struggle of Philip "The Beautiful" against the Templars are two different confirmations of the fact that the presence of a rich and influential Church was, for a long time, a restraint to any political ambition to subjugate the society. While much in the contemporary context is radically changed from medieval Europe, religious communities can remain an obstacle for the ruling class. For this reason, every tradition, ethnic group, culture, and language (when they become the occasion for a conscious action of resistance in the face of state power and its will to standardize society) must be appreciated as instruments for the defense of everybody's freedom. The actual situation seems more complex, but, despite the philosophical and religious differences separating European individuals, there is a common heritage strictly related to the Christian roots of the continent: at the center of this culture, there is the idea of the infinite value of every individual. When Murray N. Rothbard developed his social ethics on the non-aggression axiom, he rediscovered an important element of European society, and suggested a hypothesis for how to overcome the present situation. During the modern age, Europeans have considered the existence of a two-class order, with rulers and subjects, as natural. Only a small group of libertarian thinkers have expressed their dissatisfaction with this situation, and have engaged in a cultural campaign for liberating the new slaves of monarchical and democratic regimes. But the current unqualified acceptance of despotism is also the consequence of a lack of ethical responsibility. This European crisis, generated by the widespread acceptance of aggression and the refusal to resort to self-defense, has moral origins. Therefore, a complete change in the way we connect with other people implies a rediscovery of human dignity and a more vivid sense of altruistic responsibility toward our fellow men, as well as ourselves. If Europeans will be generous and at the same time more respectful of individual natural rights, the claims of public authorities to justify their role as social benefactors will appear to everyone as a tragic farce. And we will all see that the Emperor—even the European Emperor—has no clothes. 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gespräche mit Eckermann, quoted in Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "What Made Germany Great," Rothbard–Rockwell Report 10, no. 9 (September 1999), p. 16. 2. Andrew Jackson, A Political Testament, in Social Theories of Jacksonian Democracy: Representative Writings of the Period, ed. Joseph L. Blau (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1954), p. 9. 3. Lysander Spooner, No Treason, No. 2, in The Lysander Spooner Reader (San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1992), p. 66. 4. For a strong critique of democracy from a libertarian point of view, see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy—The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2001). 5. This expression is a free borrowing from the Rothbardian idea of "nations by consent"; see Murray N. Rothbard, "Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State," Journal of Libertarian Studies 11, no. 1 (Fall 1994), pp. 1–10. 6. For an interesting analysis of the peculiarity of the Jeffersonian tradition with reference to differences between European and American ideas of sovereignty, see Luigi M. Bassani, "Jefferson, Calhoun, and States' Rights: The Uneasy Europeanization of American Politics," Telos 114 (Winter 1999), pp. 132–54. 7. An interesting analysis of the transition from the Articles of Confederation (1781–1789) to the federal Constitution is in Peter A. Aranson, "The European Economic Community: Lessons from America," Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines 1, no. 4 (December 1990), pp. 473–96. 8. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Some modern classical liberals accept Hobbesian utilitarian analysis of the necessity to move from the state of nature to an organized and monopolist government. See, e.g., James M. Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1975); and Richard A. Epstein, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985). 9. Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace, trans. Alan Gewirth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956); and Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (London: Penguin Books, 1961). 10. In the twentieth century, the persecution of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists in every communist and totalitarian regime (as well as in the secular propaganda of many Western democratic societies) has shown the real "religious" nature of the Machiavellian-Hobbesian solution. 11. See, e.g., Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984). 12. James M. Buchanan, "Federalism and Individual Sovereignty," Cato Journal 15, nos. 2–3 (Fall/Winter 1996), pp. 259 and 261. For a more complete introduction to the themes of public-choice competitive federalism, see George Brennan and James M. Buchanan, The Power to Tax: Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 13. Buchanan, "Federalism and Individual Sovereignty," p. 266. 14. Buchanan, "Federalism and Individual Sovereignty," p. 267. 15. In fact, Buchanan accepts the Hobbesian idea of freedom as "license," while classical liberal and libertarian traditions are closer to the Lockean definition of state of nature: "though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence." John Locke, Two Treatises of Government . . . The Latter is an Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government (London: Everyman, 1996), § 4, p. 117. 16. When Bruce Benson presents the Law Merchant, he stresses that "the reciprocity necessary for the recognition of commercial law arose due to the mutual gains generated by exchange." See Bruce Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1990), p. 31. In a similar way, Leoni built his legal theory on the hypothesis that rules are the result of an exchange of claims. The "claim" is the individual act that originates law, as demand and offer are the choices that create prices. See Bruno Leoni, "The Law as Individual Claim," Archiv für Rechts–und Sozialphilosophie (1964), pp. 45–58. 17. Bruno Leoni, Freedom and the Law (New York: Van Nostrand, 1961), pp. 84–85. 18. Boudewijn Bouckaert, "L'aria delle città rende liberi: Le città medievali come comunità volontarie," Biblioteca della libertà 29 (1994), p. 10, n. 127. An English version of this article, without the passage quoted above, is "Between the Market and the State: The World of Medieval Cities," in Values and the Social Order, ed. Gerard Radnitzky (Aldershot: Avebury, 1997), vol. 3, pp. 213–41. 19. Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1990) p. 99. 20. Leonard Liggio, "The Medieval Law Merchant: Economic Growth Challenged by the Public Choice State," Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines 9, no. 1 (March 1999), p. 65. 21. This situation lasted sometimes until the fifteenth century. As Peter Partner remarks about the Papal State, a large number of lords commonly described as barons "were, in reality, allodial landowners, whose tenure was in no way feudal." See Peter Partner, "The Papal State: 1417–1600," in Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe, ed. M. Greengrass (London: Edward Arnold, 1991), pp. 34–35. 22. Giovanni Tabacco, "L'allodialità del potere nel Medioevo," Studi Medievali 11, no. 2 (1970), p. 571. 23. Jean Baechler, Les origines du capitalisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), p. 111. On p. 126, Baechler wrote that "the expansion of capitalism has its origins and its rationale in the political anarchy" of medieval times.     See also Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); E.L. Jones, The European Economic Miracle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983); David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (New York: Norton, 1999); and Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999). 24. Hugh of Fleury (Hugonis monaci Floriacensis), Tractatus de regia potestate et sacerdotali dignitate, vol. 2, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Libelli de lite, ed. E. Sackur (Hanover: Hahn, 1892), pp. 466–94. 25. Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 40, 42–43. 26. See Hernando de Soto, The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), in which he discussed the economies of developing nations. 27. Fred Aftalion, "Regulatory Competition, Extraterritorial Powers and Harmonization: The Case of the European Union," Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines 9, no. 1 (March 1999), pp. 98–99. 28. See Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Small is Beautiful and Efficient: The Case for Secession," Telos 107 (Spring 1996), p. 100. 29. Immanuel Kant, Plan for a Universal and Everlasting Peace (New York: Garland, 1973). 30. German history, in this sense, is interesting. Before the Napoleonic wars, Germany consisted of hundreds of independent political units. There were important regional states such as Prussia or Bavaria, but also a multitude of free cities, knightly manors, and other small territorial entities. Besides any other consideration, in that institutional context, the rise of a Hitler was an evident impossibility. 31. Bruno S. Frey and Reiner Eichenberger, "Competition Among Jurisdictions: The idea of FOCJ," in Competition Among Institutions, ed. L. Gerken (London: Macmillan, 1995). 32. Roland Vaubel, "The Political Economy of Centralization and the European Community," Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines 3, no. 1 (March 1992), p. 41. From a libertarian point of view, it is not easy to understand why, in Vaubel's statement, the right of secession is given only to states, and not to regions, cities, or individuals. The reference to the coercive decisions of majority groups is also ethically unacceptable. 33. Philippe Van Parijs, "Why Surfers Should be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income," Philosophy and Public Affairs 20, no. 2 (Spring 1991), pp. 101–31. 34. See Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998). 35. Étienne de la Boétie, Discours de la servitude volontaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983).

Minimum Wage Posted: 22 Jul 2021 11:00 AM PDT Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 22 July 2021.

Forced Vaccinations in France Bring Both Repression and Protest Posted: 22 Jul 2021 09:00 AM PDT In a speech to the nation just ahead of Bastille Day on July 14 celebrating the French Revolution, President Emmanuel Macron delivered a paradoxical blow to the Republic's famous slogan: Liberté, égalité, fraternité. He announced a series of measures to speed up the pace of covid-19 vaccinations which undermine individual liberties and threaten a strong political and economic backlash. Already during the covid-19 pandemic, the French had to cope with some of the most severe lockdowns in the world, which curtailed both economic freedom and important civil liberties. Government's Pretense of Superior Knowledge Invoking a surge in infections with the covid-19 delta variant, Macron urged French citizens to get vaccinated in order to achieve a 100 percent vaccination rate across the country. Vaccination was made compulsory for all healthcare workers after September 15, and proof of vaccination or a negative test in the form of a health pass will need to be shown by everyone who wants to get into a café, restaurant, shopping mall, and cultural places like cinemas, theaters, or concert halls or in order to board a train or a plane.1 In autumn, PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests will no longer be free of charge and the new measures will apply also to twelve- to seventeen-year-olds. Although Macron claims that vaccination is not compulsory for the general public for now, he is de facto obliging everyone who wants to live a normal life to take the shot. Within a few hours after the announcement, close to 1 million people rushed to book jabs and a few hundreds of thousands more followed the next day. At the same time, over a hundred thousand people took to the streets across France to protest against vaccination and covid-19 health passes. People are baffled by the severity of Macron's decisions, in particular when the pace of vaccination in France was actually not that slow. About 54 percent of the French have received at least one vaccine dose as of July 15, which is almost similar to the EU and US averages and double the world average of 26 percent. Moreover, the UK experience shows that although more contagious, the delta variant is much less dangerous, causing far fewer hospitalizations and deaths. The French government's 100 percent vaccination target also seems disproportionate when most experts agree that herd immunity is reached when around 70–90 percent of the population has acquired immunity either through vaccination2 or by contracting the disease and developing antibodies. Strangely enough, the measures also apply to adolescents even though it may be that healthy young people are more vulnerable to the side effects of the freshly launched vaccines than to covid-19 itself.3 Overall, Macron's arguments do not seem to add up. Moreover, the pretense of superior knowledge, which is the usual pretext for government intervention, i.e., official experts know better than the ignorant public what is good for it, seems clearly misplaced in this case too. The government is requiring all staff in the healthcare system to get inoculated against covid-19, but the latter can hardly be called laymen. They are qualified healthcare professionals who have been battling the virus in the frontlines for almost a year and a half now and who probably also understand better than the rest of the population the benefits and risks of the covid-19 vaccines. In principle, medical staff should be best placed to make a cost-benefit analysis of the risk of catching the virus and taking the jab. And yet the government has stepped in to oblige the majority of them to get vaccinated, because only about 42 percent of hospital workers and 49 percent of those working in the care system have been vaccinated twice so far in France. This ex-cathedra imposition of vaccination on a group of qualified medical professionals is certainly not going to reduce the overall vaccine skepticism among the French. Heavy Attack on Individual Liberties Prominent French politicians from both right and left criticized Macron's expanded use of the health pass with strong words, calling it a "deprivation of freedoms" and a "health coup d'état." Indeed, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union protects the right to the integrity of the person (article 3), which requires "the free and informed consent of the person concerned" in the field of medicine. The same EU fundamental law upholds other individual rights, such as the right to own and use property, choose an occupation and seek employment, conduct a business, and enjoy freedom of thought and association with other people, which seem curtailed by Macron's recent measures. The government-mandated health pass artificially divides the French population into two categories—vaccinated and unvaccinated—and this despite the fact that the medical effects are not that clear, as vaccinated people can also transmit the virus, but apparently with lower intensity. Nevertheless, one should not have high hopes that the new measures could be overturned in court. Ironically, the EU's fundamental law also stipulates for the majority of citizens' rights that they are subject to "national laws" or the "public interest." From the rational ethics perspective of human action developed by Murray N. Rothbard, Macron's compulsory vaccination campaign appears even more problematic. Central to Rothbard's libertarian theory is the concept of property rights that should guide all aspects of human action. The right of every person to own his physical body and the natural goods transformed with its help represents an absolute ethical rule and determines all human rights. Rothbard shows very convincingly that all human rights must be grounded in property rights. Otherwise individual liberties risk being relativized and weakened on behalf of the public interest and other policies. In a free society based on peaceful cooperation and voluntary interpersonal relations, aggression occurs when somebody invades the property of another—be it the person or the goods he owns—without the victim's consent. In the case at hand, the aggressors of peaceful social cooperation are neither the vaccinated nor the unvaccinated, unless someone purposefully puts at risk the health or property of somebody else. This does not mean that someone cannot be prevented from accessing certain venues or activities when their rightful owners set preventive sanitary rules, but Macron's blanket extension of the health pass to activities and businesses which are not 100 percent owned by the state represents a blatant encroachment of property rights and discriminates against unvaccinated people. And although France is far from being a free market paradise, the vast majority of shopping malls, cafés, restaurants, cinemas, theaters and other cultural places are private property. Private ownership can be found also in the healthcare and transport sectors, although at a smaller scale. It is not difficult to imagine the discontent of private businesses facing a significant negative economic impact from Macron's edict. Rothbard defends the validity of his theory also in extreme cases, the so-called lifeboat situations, and the logic fits the covid-19 pandemic as well. It was claimed that no theory of absolute inviolable rights could function properly in extreme crisis situations. However, Rothbard countered that the apparent war of all against all in a "lifeboat situation" is precisely due to the fact that the property rights have not been well defined. If the ownership and rules governing a property are clear, a nonviolent solution can be found even in a crisis situation. Although this solution may seem harsh to some, and may not comply with all personal moral values, there is unfortunately no other principle of property allocation that would be more tolerable or could endorse a coherent human rights theory. The controversy and dissatisfaction raised by the extension of the government-mandated health pass in France proves once more the validity of Rothbard's theory. Conclusions Far from being a ticket to freedom as portrayed by President Macron, the government-mandated health pass is weakening further the French people's fundamental freedoms. It also creates an artificial division among vaccinated and unvaccinated people, causing resentment and undermining peaceful social cooperation. However, the new rules could still be reversed. This way France would have a chance of living up to the famous slogan of its revolution. 1. Italy made vaccination mandatory for healthcare workers at the end of March and had been the exception so far. Greece has also announced that it will follow suit. 2. Which means that the share of the vaccinated should be significantly lower than the immunity threshold. Even the hard-line provaccine Dr Fauci estimated once that not everyone, but 75 to 85 percent, of people would have to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity. 3. In the US and other countries, the covid-19 vaccines have received only emergency use authorization so far. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Markets and Medical Care Posted: 22 Jul 2021 09:00 AM PDT Download the slides from this lecture at Mises.org/MU21_PPT_29. Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2021.

Libertarianism: A Fifty-Year Personal Retrospective Posted: 22 Jul 2021 08:30 AM PDT ABSTRACT: This retrospective, covering half a century, is a personal history of modern libertarianism. It provides some historical perspective on the growth of libertarianism and its impact on society, especially for those who were born into an existing libertarian movement, including political and academic paths. As outsiders, Austrians and libertarians can expect more than their share of difficult times and roadblocks, although that situation has improved over time. It also shows the limitations of the political path to liberty and the importance of the Austrian view that society changes via emphasis on sound economic science, its practicality, and its subsequent impact on ideology. Finally, it conveys the importance of solving practical problems and puzzles via the thin, radical version of libertarianism. Keywords: libertarianism,  libertarian party,  mises institute,  lew rockwell,  murray rothbard,  austrian economics,  auburn university Mark Thornton (mthornton@mises.org) is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute. The author would like to thank I. Harry David, Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., and Joseph T. Salerno for helpful commentary. This article is dedicated to Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. This paper was first published in Studia Humana, vol. 9, no. 2 (2020), pp. 100–109. Reprinted with no changes as permitted under the original CC: BY-NC-ND license. 1. INTRODUCTION This personal retrospective, covering half a century, is an extremely thin slice of the history of modern libertarianism. Its purpose is to provide some historical perspective on the growth of libertarianism and its impact on society, especially for those who were born into an existing libertarian movement. As outsiders, Austrians and libertarians can expect more than their share of difficult times and roadblocks, although that situation has improved over time. If you attempt to make a career in these academic areas, you should view it more as a vocation than as a profession (Salerno 2019). It also shows the limitations of the political path to liberty and the importance of the Austrian view that society changes via emphasis on sound economic science, its practicality, and its subsequent impact on ideology. Finally, I hope it conveys the importance of solving practical problems and puzzles via the thin, radical version of libertarianism, rather than the thick and compromised versions.1 2. IN THE BEGINNING In 1970 libertarianism did not exist as a coherent term meaning opposition to government coercion. Murray Rothbard (1926–95) would often lament that many of the good terms, such as liberalism and capitalism, had been hijacked by the bad guys. However, it turns out that the term libertarian is one of the few stolen by the good guys from the bad guys.2 At this time there was no significant libertarian social movement or political party to represent libertarianism. Although I was moving toward this political view by the age of eight, I would not hear the word for more than another decade. The only institutional forms of libertarianism were the Foundation for Economic Education, which was founded in 1946 by Leonard Read, Robert LeFevre's Freedom School, which began in 1956, and the Institute for Humane Studies, founded by F. A. Harper in 1961. The National Libertarian Party in the United States began in 1972, and the Center for Libertarian Studies was founded by Burt Blumert and Murray Rothbard in 1976. However, I never heard of any of these organizations until the early 1980s. I began listening to an alternative-rock AM radio station at age thirteen. You could only get its signal at night. The program that I listened to was sponsored by the John Birch Society. Its advertisements were long, thoughtful commentaries on events of the day. I rarely disagreed with its views, but I think it avoided airing its most controversial viewpoints. I guess I was a thirteen-year-old Bircher. 3. THE WORD LIBERTARIAN Even though my political views were libertarian by the time I was eighteen years old (Thornton 2002), the encounter between me (on the one hand) and the concept and term of libertarianism (on the other) was still a couple of years away. During my sophomore year at St. Bonaventure University, I declared my major to be economics, acquainted myself with the writings of Milton Friedman, and saw the television advertisement for the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate, Ed Clark. I was really excited about having a term for my political views and knowing that others out there that held similar views. Some people took a dimmer view of my new political home base. Only a couple of my professors were market oriented, and apparently only one, Scott Sumner, had ever heard of the Austrian school of economics. Even though the Austrian school was minuscule then, I knew that it had been very important in the past and I suspected it still had a lot to offer. Unfortunately, my history-of-economic-thought professor assigned Joseph Schumpeter's Ten Great Economists: From Marx to Keynes, and the only chapter that we did not cover was the one on Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian school. We did cover the chapter on Joseph Schumpeter's professor Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, but my professor did not discuss the connection to the Austrian school. The topic I was most interested in was the Austrian business cycle theory, and I was very excited when a special course on business cycles was added in my junior year. The elderly professor who taught the course told us that he was retiring and they needed to put him in some classes, so they resurrected this course from the old curriculum. On day one he told us that Keynesian economics had cured the business cycle, so the course was no longer needed. How he could say such a thing given that the economy was in the worst shape since the Great Depression was beyond my comprehension. Maybe that was why he was being retired. The class and the textbook covered nine business cycle theories, and the Austrian theory was never mentioned—not even in the index! I decided that I would be a guerrilla student activist. My main outlet was to discuss libertarian ideas and government failure with my friends and my professors in my economics, history, philosophy, and political science classes. I also pinned libertarian pamphlets around campus on billboards. One day, I found a note attached to my dorm-room door asking for a meeting. It was from the dorm monitor, a position I did not even know existed. It turns out the monitor was the most feared man on campus. He was a former US Marines officer turned Franciscan friar—that is, a monk. He taught calculus and went to class in only his brown robe and leather sandals even if there was two feet of snow on the ground. I was frightened to death, and my roommates and friends would howl in laughter about my predicament. It turns out that he had discovered my guerrilla activism. He recommended that I stop it because I might be considered either insane or a criminal. It was such a relief! The confusion over the meaning of libertarianism at this time was rampant—anything from communism, to libertinism, to the John Birch Society belief system was suspected—and I eventually developed a good, disarming explanation of what the term really meant. I mention all this to note, importantly, that these were very dark early days for liberty and libertarianism. The United States had been taken off the gold standard; had experienced Watergate, the Vietnam War, gas lines, and the Great Stagflation (1971–82); and was currently mired in an economic depression. So, however despondent one might become about the libertarian moment now, remember that much progress has been made and that a massive amount of knowledge about libertarianism and the Austrian school is readily available to fuel future progress, thanks largely to Lew Rockwell and the donors to the Mises Institute. As Murray Rothbard would remind me several times, he was always a pessimist in the short run but an optimist in the long run. Remember, we measure libertarian progress in terms of ideology, not votes, and there is no question that ideological progress of significant proportions has occurred. Most Austrian economists support the idea that ideological change is what causes social change (Stringham and Hummel 2010). The next semester, improvements started to take place. I took a course on international economics from a new professor, Scott Sumner, an ABD from the University of Chicago. He was a free market economist, and his course could have been renamed Why Arguments for Protectionism Are Stupid. One day before an exam, I went to his office hours to ask a technical question. After we were done with my question, I noticed he had a copy of Human Action on his bookshelf.3 I asked him about it, and he said his grandfather had given it to him and it was not part of the University of Chicago curriculum. I later asked him if he would do a directed-readings class for me on Mises's book The Theory of Money and Credit, and he agreed. I think I had bought the book on sale from Laissez Faire Books or Liberty Fund. My performance in trying to understand Mises was less than optimal, but Scott knew Mises's work on business cycles and that kept me on track. I really did not think much about Scott again until 2012, some thirty years later, when I learned that he was ranked fifteenth on Foreign Policy's influential list of the top hundred global thinkers. Sumner was tied with Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke! I was astonished, but with a little research I confirmed it was the same Scott Sumner. His ideas were circulated through his blog, Money Illusion. Apparently, academia was losing its stranglehold on the flow of ideas. Scott's ideas were related to nominal-GDP targeting where the central bank uses monetary policy to achieve an annual increase in nominal GDP, of say for example 5 percent. Bolstered by the historic performance of Ed Clark's presidential campaign in 1980, I decided to join the political fight, which seemed at the time the most direct path to liberty. I also wanted to learn more about Austrian economics. I joined the Libertarian Party and started doing volunteer work, such as getting signatures that would permit Libertarian Party candidates to get on the ballot. I eventually realized that the combination of ignorance and politics would make the political route to freedom a difficult one. In terms of ignorance, the vast majority of people had never heard of the Libertarian Party, and of those who had heard of it, most did not know what it really meant. In terms of politics, the one thing that Democrats and Republican could almost completely agree on was keeping third parties off the ballot by making the number of signatures prohibitively high for small nonprofit organizations—that is, third parties. The combination of these two factors would be toxic to the party's success and growth. 4. GRADUATE SCHOOL Note that libertarianism at this time was 99 percent based on the idea of limited government, where government would consist of police, courts, and national defense and maybe some local government activities. The idea was to borrow some ideas of the Founding Fathers to assuage people's fears of society breaking down into chaos. The vast majority of libertarians were minarchists and constitutionalists who supported the ideal of the night-watchman state, an idea popularized by philosopher Robert Nozick in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. This was the idea that government should be viewed as a necessary evil. For the minority, the anarcho-capitalists, it was merely a tactic—a way to make political progress. I include myself in the latter group. I also started applying to graduate schools, I think eleven in all, including New York University's and George Mason University's PhD programs in economics and Auburn University's master's program in economics. The rest were MBA programs. I was accepted to all these programs, but I chose Auburn because of its low cost and because I had already met Auburn University economist Roger Garrison at an Institute for Humane Studies summer conference in Kentucky. I had also researched the Auburn faculty's publications, and the faculty all seemed to be writing interesting and practical academic papers, even some on Austrian economics. I was told it was in the top-three master's-only programs in the country. Things were looking up when I was granted funding as well. Things did not go well upon arriving at Auburn University. During my first week, one of the professors, upon learning of my interest in Austrian economics, said that Austrian economics is a historical fact but dead as a school of economic thought. He said that there were virtually no Austrian economists working at doctorate-granting universities and even if there was one and you wrote an Austrian dissertation, you would never find a decent job. However, the next term the esteemed Leland B. Yeager joined the faculty at Auburn University from the University of Virginia. Yeager was a macroeconomist but was also noteworthy in international economics and economic philosophy. Garrison taught first graduate macroeconomics course, and Yeager was scheduled to teach the second and third macro courses. I was told he was a fellow traveler of the Austrian school and that he was translating one of Ludwig von Mises's books. At the time, I was reading Murray N. Rothbard's America's Great Depression, a book that had a profound effect on me and my understanding of Austrian business cycle theory as well as the Great Depression in the United States. I was very excited I could possibly write my master's thesis on the Great Stagflation of the 1970s using Rothbard's book as a template under the supervision of Garrison and Yeager. I knew Garrison liked the Austrian business cycle theory, but when I broached the topic with Yeager, he responded that the theory was a "grizzly embarrassment." I was distraught and without a thesis subject heading into the third term. You write your thesis in the fourth term. I thought of dropping out of the graduate program and made the decision to do so, only to quickly reverse that decision. I got past my first year of graduate school.4 I think it was shortly thereafter that Roger Garrison called me into his office and sat me down. He told me that that Lew Rockwell was moving the Ludwig von Mises Institute to Auburn University and would be bringing Austrians from around the world to give seminars, publishing books and newsletters, and supporting the economics department's new doctoral program. Rockwell would be giving me a full scholarship for my next year in graduate school. This all sounded too good to be true. I had never heard of Rockwell or the Mises Institute and not a word about a new doctoral program. I was naturally very skeptical, as Garrison was a well-known prankster and provocateur. He must have seen the disbelief in my eyes because he pointed to a large box to my right and behind my chair. He said that Rockwell had sent it and that I should take a book from it. I reached in and pulled out a copy of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State, one of the largest economics books I had ever seen. The only Rothbard book I had was Power and Market, and when Garrison said it was originally supposed to be part of Man, Economy, and State, I had no idea what to think. I left Garrison's office stunned with disbelief (Salerno 2002). The Mises Institute showed up in the summer of 1983. It consisted of Lew and Mardi Rockwell, some boxes of pamphlets, and its technology: an electric typewriter. They moved into a tiny office in Thach Hall on Auburn University's campus. It was attached to a small conference room and actually in a very prominent location in the College of Business. Pat Barnett soon joined them, and Lew got to work, with Murray Rothbard running the academic affairs from afar. They were attempting to bring the world true economics and true libertarianism. What the Rockwell, Rothbard, Burt Blumert, and Ron Paul foursome have done is build an enormous worldwide libertarian movement. It all is now centered at the Mises Institute (Rockwell 2018). As the luckiest person in the world, I have had the privilege of seeing Lew and his colleagues build the Mises Institute into a worldwide powerhouse in the realm of ideas. He built the institutional framework, including Mises.org, that has helped support thousands of teachers and maybe millions of students. There are too many details of this tremendous success story to provide in this essay, but it is critical to highlight here that Lew provided the structural home for true economics and true libertarian political theory. 5. MY POLITICAL CAREER Shortly after I arrived in Auburn, I saw the Libertarian Party candidate for governor of Alabama being interviewed on a local TV station. I had never seen a Libertarian politician on television in my hometown of Geneva, New York, so I was pleasantly surprised. However, I was also overwhelmed by moving to a new city and state and the tougher workload of graduate school. Fortunately, the citizens, students, and professors were all friendly to me. Walking down sidewalks on campus and even around town, total strangers would say hey as an informal greeting. Graduate work was nothing like college. You had to do the readings, you had to do the assignments, and of course you had to come to class under all circumstances. Exams were competitive and often graded on a curve, and a final grade of C was considered failing. There was simply no time for politics until the end of the spring term. Sometime after my exams were over, I contacted the party's national office and it put me in contact with state headquarters. When I contacted one of the top officers of the state party, he invited me to the next executive-committee meeting in Birmingham—about a two-hour drive—the following Sunday. I asked myself: an executive-committee meeting on a Sunday at someone's house? The meeting found me sitting on the floor listening to people talking about bylaws and Robert's Rules, but there was no political action until late in the meeting, when several votes were taken about officers and candidates for political office. I thought I was going to be there all night, but fortunately every vote had no candidate or a single candidate, so things went quickly. Leaving the meeting on time to return to Auburn before dark, I found myself elected as state representative for District 3 (thirteen counties and 750,000 citizens in east-central Alabama). More puzzling, I was elected to be the party's candidate for the district's Alabama House of Representatives seat. As a six-foot, four-inch Yankee, I stuck out like a sore thumb, plus on election day I would only be twenty-four and therefore ineligible for the job. I would soon learn who my opponent was. Alabama was a solid Democratic state, and the Republican Party was not running a candidate (things have obviously changed). The Democratic candidate was Bill Nichols, who had been in Congress for twenty-two years, was a football hero at Auburn University, was a vice president of the most important textile factory in the district (an industry that has now abandoned the district), and was crippled on D-Day on the beaches of Normandy and therefore a war hero. Fortunately, I could turn to Lew Rockwell, who had some political experience, as an unofficial advisor. He said that given that the probability of winning was zero and given the demands of graduate school, I should run an educational campaign or nothing at all. I decided to give the educational campaign a try. On Sunday afternoons I would write fundraising letters once a month and letters to the editors of the state's newspapers each week. It would be about six hours before everything was enveloped and stamped. The campaign distributed pens, t-shirts, and posters, mostly to Auburn students. I feel like I was successful in getting a very large number of people to learn what libertarianism was, and I got 4 percent of the votes. I also met Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, who helped out with the campaign. This campaign was also successful in getting David Bergman, the 1984 Libertarian Party candidate for president to visit Auburn University and give a speech to students and faculty. That was followed by Ron Paul in 1988, Andre Marrou in 1992, and Harry Browne in 1996 and 2000. These events were well attended by students and often generated interviews in the student newspaper. I was also the faculty advisor to the Auburn University Libertarian Club for many years. My mother died unexpectedly in 1987, and given that I was editor of the Austrian Economics Newsletter, I decided to buckle down and finish my dissertation. No more politics. Then one day, the state-party chairman paid me a surprise visit and begged me to run for Congress. I told him under no circumstance would I do it and gave my reasons. He then suggested I be a line holder and run for constable, which had no duties. I agreed just to get him out of my office. I did not think I thought about the campaign until months later, when I was rudely awakened early on a Sunday morning. It was the politics editor of the local paper. "Is this Mark Thornton, Libertarian candidate for constable in Lee County?" My response was yes. "Did you know that you are running unopposed and that you will be the first Libertarian Party candidate ever elected in Alabama?" I lied and said, "Yes, of course." His next question was "What is your campaign platform?" I responded that I would abolish the office. That brief interview was apparently enough for his article, which was picked up by the Associated Press and newspapers across the state. I did interviews with all the major newspapers in the state and several smaller ones. My little ten-to fifteen-minute phone calls took no money and little effort, but generated more publicity than any campaign in the state party's history. The fact that I had lied made me realize I was becoming a politician. I knew that I never actually had the power to dissolve the office. Then 1995 rolled around, and my effort to stay out of politics took a big blow. My libertarian friend on the Birmingham city council called me and told me he was running for US Senate as a Republican and that he wanted me to run for vice chairman of the Alabama Libertarian Party to prevent it from running a candidate for Senate. He said it would be a one-day effort, the position carried no active duties, and I could step down later. I agreed. The convention was a real ruckus. I was elected vice chairman as planned. However, the elected chair did not want to waste the ballot access the party had earned, so he forced through a candidate for US Senate; mission not accomplished. Worse yet, just as I arrived home, the telephone rang. It was the chairman, who stated that he and the candidate for US Senate had resigned. At that point he informed me that my only duty was activated. I would take over as chairman, and, with no volunteers coming forward, I would also have to take over as the candidate for US Senate as my friend did not get the Republican nomination. I designed the campaign to be hard-hitting and educational. I never once said that any government function was necessary. I knew more people by now, in and out of libertarian circles. I restricted my campaign time to weekends, Wednesday afternoons, and scheduled interviews and events. I built what I think was one of the first campaign websites and designed and purchased t-shirts and large road signs. I even produced thirty- and sixty-second radio ads, which I peddled to small rural stations, hoping to get requests for interviews. It worked. I would often be on the air longer than the ad time I purchased! I got the endorsement of the Reform Party, Gun Owners of America, and some local groups, and I almost got the Constitution Party's endorsement until the chairman, Howard Phillips, violated a core belief of his party in order to deny me the endorsement. I came in third place with over 4 percent of the vote. Then one day not long after the election, the sitting governor of Alabama, Fob James, came to Auburn University, his alma mater, where he had studied engineering and had been a star football player. He was going to give a speech at the brown-bag seminar that I had been running for several years. In his speech he strongly supported the gold standard. After his speech was over, he said: "Now where is that libertarian fellow who ran for Senate?" Sitting next to him, I raised my hand and said: "Governor, welcome to my seminar." The place roared with laughter. Then the governor said that he and his wife had seen me on TV and that he liked what I said and how I said it. A few day later I was offered the position of assistant superintendent of banking and was told that I would actually be working for the governor's office and investigating all aspects of state government. After leaving this office, I worked briefly for the Alabama attorney general Bill Pryor. Describing those experiences would unnecessarily lengthen this essay, and I am working on a book on that subject that will explain it in detail. 6. DISSERTATION My best professor, Robert B. Ekelund Jr., posed a titillating question in class one day. What does prohibition do to the quality of alcohol? I raised my hand and said it would decrease it, and my fellow graduate students agreed. He said no, it would increase it. We were told it was a question on the preliminary exams of the economics department at the University of Chicago. He explained that smugglers would buy expensive whiskey and cross the Detroit River into the United States. Given the high risk, it paid better to make the attempt with high-quality whiskeys and scotches, which commanded a much better price. I knew there was something wrong with the answer and felt like if I could solve it, I might have a dissertation topic. Eventually I found data that tracked the potency of cannabis—that is, marijuana—and showed that it had increased in line with the money spent on the War on Drugs. Now all I would need was a theory. I remembered an argument in University Economics, the famous textbook by Armen Alchian and William Allen, called "shipping the good apples out." The argument is that the fixed cost of shipping lowers the relative price of higher-quality apples to distant consumers and leads to an outflow of high-quality apples. I reasoned that the risk of smuggling illegal drugs into the United States increased the total cost of transportation and risk by a tremendous amount and that this reduced the relative price of higher-potency cannabis versus lower-potency cannabis. In layman's terms, you get more bang for the buck. This changed the incentive of smugglers to smuggle higher-potency cannabis, and that in turn altered the incentives of growers to grow higher-potency cannabis in terms of the active ingredient, THC. The smuggled product would be stripped of all of its non-essential attributes and pressed into bricks for shipment. No stems, no seeds, just the medicinal part that has an intoxicating effect, and also no pleasantries like the rolled paper cigarettes with filters like we find in the legal tobacco market. Growers would eventually be able to genetically engineer cannabis to increase THC levels at the expense of CBD. This would change the cultural question "Do you want to get high?" to "Do you want to get stoned?" I wrote my first paper on the subject, "The Potency of Illegal Drugs," in the mid-1980s and shared it with several friends and colleagues. In 1986 Richard Cowan dubbed my results "the iron law of prohibition." I outlined my dissertation on 3′′ x 5′′ cards but could not start my dissertation until after passing all my classes and all my preliminary examinations. Still, I remained excited at the prospect of a dissertation that was a simple application of basic economic theory, that would be tested not with econometrics, because of a lack of data, but rather by looking back at the history of alcohol prohibition (1920–33) and at other illegal drugs. Plus, it seemed that the main logical argument was that the more you tried to prohibit drugs, the worse the results would be. No need for a cost-benefit analysis because there were no benefits, just costs. There was no trade-off. There was no need for value judgment. Thus I would be staying within the confines of Austrian economics and I would be striking a direct hit for libertarian political economy, against the dreaded War on Drugs. Eventually, I took my outline for a traditional-format economics dissertation to Professor John Jackson, a man who seemed to know everything. He also seemed to work well with the entire faculty and was very well respected by everyone. He asked who I wanted as readers on my committee. I responded that I wanted Richard Ault and Leland Yeager. Richard Ault was the best microeconomist on a faculty of mostly good microeconomists. Leland Yeager was known more as a macroeconomist, but he actually knew everything, including libertarian political theory. These two men were libertarian from a practical or utilitarian perspective. These three professors were known for being helpful with students, and they deserve a great deal of credit for the success of my dissertation. In the early stages of the dissertation, I was called in and asked to drop the subject and format of my dissertation. Instead of a dissertation on the economics of prohibition written in the traditional book format, it would instead be on the economics of the 1920s and written in the new three-essay format. It would consist of an essay on the tax cuts of the 1920s that I already had written, an essay on income distribution in the 1920s that I had already done a good deal of work on, and an essay on alcohol prohibition in the 1920s that I had started working on as a chapter of my original dissertation. The committee justified the change by noting correctly that I could finish it quicker and get three papers submitted to academic journals, and it would be better for my job-market prospects once I finished. I saw the merits of their arguments and complied, but I was crushed that what I thought was a second great dissertation idea was being discarded. I only realized many years later that that dissertation would have been a dangerous one during the pinnacle of Reagan and Bush's War on Drugs. It would have been dangerous for me and my job prospects—and, in terms of things like budgets and grants, the department, the college, and the university. I assembled an abstract and the work I had completed on the three essays of my proposed dissertation, submitted the result to my committee, and scheduled a time to present my proposal. The presentation took about fifteen minutes and was pretty straightforward. I was excused from the room and asked to sit outside the seminar room so that the committee could discuss the proposal. This discussion seemed to take forever, but the committee finally emerged about forty minutes later. They had rejected my proposal, and they said that I was to proceed on my original proposal on the economics of prohibition! Many months later, after about six iterations of all of the chapters, an outside reader was appointed and a final oral exam was scheduled. The outside reader had many excellent questions and suggestions, including the suggestion that the entire dissertation should be edited again before being submitted for publication by an academic publisher. I had never thought about doing that, but about eighteen months later it was published by the University of Utah Press and would become one of their best-sellers. I went on to write many articles on this subject, both academic and popular. 7. ACADEMIC CAREER All this time I was the editor or coeditor of the Austrian Economics Newsletter under the stewardship of Murray Rothbard. He emphasized to me that the publication should emphasize things that were controversial within Austrian ranks and not Austrian economics compromised by mainstream economics and that the publication was rapidly losing its comparative advantage in the presentation of news about Austrian economics. He also prodded me to write on the economics of antebellum slavery after I took the Austrian stance in an impromptu debate with Robert Higgs at a Mises University conference in which Higgs took the Fogel and Engerman view that capitalism kept slavery profitable, during a question-and-answer session. This resulted in me supervising a master's thesis and dissertation and publishing several academic journal articles in which my coauthors and I showed that it was government intervention that kept slavery economically viable, not capitalism per se. Reading books about the Civil War had been a hobby of mine, and I included a footnote in my dissertation that the Union blockade was like the War on Drugs in that it radically changed the type of goods that were smuggled. That suggestion would ultimately lead to several academic articles and a book published with Robert B. Ekelund Jr. We showed that the intervention in the economy by the Confederate government was the reason they lost the war. In the interest of time and space, I will just mention that I have been writing about Richard Cantillon, the first economic theorist and a proto-Austrian (Deist 2019), for over twenty years, including doing a modern retranslation of his Essay with Chantel Saucier. I have also written many articles on how Austrian economists have done much better than mainstream economics at predicting economic crises and articles on the skyscraper curse, which culminated in the publication of a book in 2018 that predicted an economic crisis in 2020. 8. CONCLUSION When you see the lowly beginnings of libertarianism in America, with the Austrian school of economics on the brink of extinction, it is hard to believe how much progress has been made. The progress has occurred around the globe. I had never heard the word libertarian until I was an adult, and my discovery of the word led me to discover the Austrian school, which was otherwise not in my college curriculum. Having the good fortune to graduate from college during the depression of 1982, I moved to Auburn, Alabama, which, in addition to the scholars already mentioned, led me to scholars such as Randy Beard, Don Bellante, Mark Jackson, Bob Hébert, Randy Holcombe, Dave Laband, Dave Kaserman, John Sophocleus, Bob Tollison, and many more. Then, with the arrival of the Mises Institute, I was exposed to several Nobel Prize winners and most of the prominent people in the Austrian school, including especially my colleague Joe Salerno—not to mention all the great students I have had the pleasure of mentoring. These people have taught me the value of practical solutions to social problems and the importance of solving social puzzles. These solutions not only help people, they demonstrate the power of good economics and the free market. Based on my experience in political campaigns, which are seemingly the most direct path to liberty, I think most of them are of limited value, with the important exception of dealing directly with the general public and engaging in the battle of ideas, especially Ron Paul's campaigns. At some point in the future, possibly the near future, such engagements will bear fruit. 1. See Walter Block and Kenn Williamson's (2017) case that thin libertarianism is libertarianism and thick libertarianism is not. 2. The word libertarian was first used to describe a variety of socialists (Wikipedia 2020). 3. I did not know this at the time, but this book was very important for the development of modern economic theory (Salerno 1999). 4. Otherwise, Yeager was wonderful, and I took four of his courses and participated with him in seminars and festive occasions.

The Curse of Economic Nationalism Posted: 22 Jul 2021 08:00 AM PDT Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 22 July 2021.

Bidenomics Posted: 22 Jul 2021 07:00 AM PDT Download the slides from this lecture at Mises.org/MU21_PPT_27. Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 22 July 2021.

Getting to Galt's Gulch: Everyday Secession Posted: 22 Jul 2021 04:00 AM PDT This month, the United States once again celebrated her independence on the Fourth of July. After a year of lockdowns, masks, and now even mandatory vaccinations in workplaces and universities, the idea that the USA is a beacon of freedom to the rest of the globe seems far-fetched. This attitude was reiterated in the new Toby Keith song "Happy Birthday America." Keith's downtrodden lyrics reflect on his observed disappearance of the American patriotism which had been present not long ago.  The problem with the version of national pride of the singer of "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" is that it equates love for his country with approval of imperialist tendencies. When invading foreign countries and toppling their governments is the source of pride in one's country, then diminishing military power and a disrespected flag at the Olympics feels crushing. For the libertarian with a foundation in property rights, personal responsibility, and financial literacy, the way forward is not joining in left-right political boxing matches, but secession. When the rule of law fails Derek Chauvin and common sense regarding gender-based separation in sensitive spaces disappears, libertarians need not wallow in their pillows and chocolate like after a devastating breakup. The political pendulum brings hope or disappointment for those loyal to a particular party. Instead, journal the grievances against Uncle Sam and hypothetically block him from dominating your life.  Secession is needed daily, especially in education and healthcare. The immense suffering of individuals in 2020 caused by government bureaucracy and politics illustrates the importance of personal independence.  Education The character of the public education system revealed its true colors. Many teachers protested over returning to in-person teaching in the classroom despite the unsubstantiated fears that children are superspreaders. Where schools resumed formally, administrations and states masked children without evaluating secondary consequences such as extended exposure to bacterial growth on masks.  The outcomes of virtual schooling were worse. Accusations of virtual truancy prompted Child Protective Services visits, especially where internet access was problematic. The "learning loss" disparity was largest in low-income communities, hurting academic outcomes for black and Hispanic students. Unfortunately, the priority is not the health outcomes of children even now, a year later. With covid vaccination being required for school attendance, there is concern that for children, the vaccines are statistically more deadly than the illness. In Washington, DC, minors may be coerced by school administrators into vaccination without a parent's consent or knowledge. The public education system is failing children and, thankfully, school secession provides a silver lining. Homeschooling rates approximately tripled during the pandemic, when public education options were unsatisfactory. In 2021, a plethora of options for home education are present, ranging from self-paced curriculums to more community-based plans. Support for this lifestyle can be obtained through formal online communities, co-ops, and homeschool groups.  "Unschooling" for the elementary grades supports flexible education styles where children are free to discover and obtain skill proficiency based upon their interests. This early learning supports specialization and entrepreneurial tendencies from youth, benefitting children far into adulthood. If the purpose of education is to enrich the whole child, public schooling clearly falls miserably short of this goal. Secession enables primary caregivers to raise their children with their values, over those of government overlords, and keep them safe physically from bullying, emotionally, and socially from teachers and students with misplaced priorities alike. Healthcare Similar to public education, American healthcare already had preexisting conditions of inadequacy. The pandemic clearly demonstrated the problems that plague the US medical care system, directly covid related or otherwise. Mothers suffered poor birth outcomes resulting from the policies of hospitals and government bureaucrats. Inexpensive, unpatented drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were either made unavailable altogether or certainly more difficult to obtain despite having positive success at treating the manifested illness.  In the current healthcare system, doctors, even those with good intentions, are restricted by hospital procedures and follow the recommendations given by larger authorities, both public and private. The reality is that the American medical system is not free market in any sense of the word, no matter how often the claim is countered. Doctors in mainstream medical care do not have the autonomy to make specialized decisions for their patients. For example, insurance companies require that a certain percentage of children be fully vaccinated according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) recommended vaccine schedule, otherwise the pediatrician may not meet the threshold for quality of care bonuses. Unyielding support for these one-size-fits-all recommendations comes not only from the governing agency and the health insurance company, but also from the major professional organization for pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics. Swimming counter to the stream is neither financially nor reputationally wise for physicians, even if specific patients have a higher risk of adverse reactions. In the specific treatment of covid, procedure dictated that hospitalized patients be placed on ventilators (with a death rate for covid patients on ventilators being approximately 58.8 percent). Oxygen supplementation, a noninvasive treatment, should have been provided initially for low oxygen levels but there were financial incentives to diagnose for covid-19 and ventilate. Thanks to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bureaucracy, doctors were limited in their ability to prescribe drugs with high success rates to patients earlier in the pandemic. How many lives were needlessly lost due to red tape? With the release of Dr. Tony Fauci's emails, the public may now observe that the CDC pandemic recommendations were not based on "science" or concern for the public's health. Fauci understood masking was inefficacious at halting viral spread, kept successful treatments from becoming widely practiced, and knew that the covid death rate was similar to that of a severe influenza season. Shutting down the economy was never warranted. Under a system bogged down with the conflicting interests of regulating agencies, medical practice procedures, and health insurance companies, patients may have a simple solution: fire the doctor. Demand more midwives and home births because of better health and birth outcomes. Visit alternative care providers who prescribe highly successful vitamin C and zinc treatments. Take business to noninvasive practitioners like chiropractors and naturopaths, who desire to treat the underlying conditions rather than purely symptoms. Fear is sadly associated with taking this leap. But the overlooked reality is that preventable medical error persists as the third leading cause of death in the US. Secession from health insurance networks may not only provide better overall health outcomes but may be more affordable as practitioners resort to refusing health insurance payments to gain greater autonomy. Getting to Galt's Gulch The success of libertarianism is independence from the state's influence. Increasing one's reliance on free markets, where personal responsibility and decision-making prevail over complacency, makes for an effective patriotism. Stopping the Randian motor of the world so that libertarians may thrive in the hypothetical Galt's Gulch beyond government's grasp (i.e., in external markets) requires exit. Leave a school or healthcare system which does not deliver desired ends. Finally, be brave. Courage is not restricted to standing in the public square at Tiananmen. The defense of liberty is often more mundane: removing your children from the influence of tyrants in schools or exiting a job where an employer requires injections, which violate your moral principles. While these actions seem daunting, and they indeed are, those who love liberty are the ones who will be the impenetrable bulwark against evil. In the words of Mises's favorite motto by Virgil, "Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito." (Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.) This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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