The core of this book is a systematic treatment of the historic transformation of the West from monarchy to democracy. Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy is a lesser evil than democracy, but outlines deficiencies in both. Its methodology is axiomatic-deductive, allowing the writer to derive economic and sociological theorems, and then apply them to interpret historical events.

A compelling chapter on time preference describes the progress of civilization as lowering time preferences as capital structure is built, and explains how the interaction between people can lower time all around, with interesting parallels to the Ricardian Law of Association. By focusing on this transformation, the author is able to interpret many historical phenomena, such as rising levels of crime, degeneration of standards of conduct and morality, and the growth of the mega-state. In underscoring the deficiencies of both monarchy and democracy, the author demonstrates how these systems are both inferior to a natural order based on private-property.

Hoppe deconstructs the classical liberal belief in the possibility of limited government and calls for an alignment of conservatism and libertarianism as natural allies with common goals. He defends the proper role of the production of defense as undertaken by insurance companies on a free market, and describes the emergence of private law among competing insurers. Having established a natural order as superior on utilitarian grounds, the author goes on to assess the prospects for achieving a natural order. Informed by his analysis of the deficiencies of social democracy, and armed with the social theory of legitimation, he forsees secession as the likely future of the US and Europe, resulting in a multitude of region and city-states. This book complements the author's previous work defending the ethics of private property and natural order. Democracy--The God that Failed will be of interest to scholars and students of history, political economy, and political philosophy.

The core of this book is a systematic treatment of the historic transformation of the West from monarchy to democracy. Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy is a lesser evil than democracy, but outlines deficiencies in both. Its methodology is axiomatic-deductive, allowing the writer to derive economic and sociological theorems, and then apply them to interpret historical events. A compelling chapter on time preference describes the progress of civilization as lowering time preferences as capital structure is built, and explains how the interaction between people can lower time all around, with interesting parallels to the Ricardian Law of Association. By focusing on this transformation, the author is able to interpret many historical phenomena, such as rising levels of crime, degeneration of standards of conduct and morality, and the growth of the mega-state. In underscoring the deficiencies of both monarchy and democracy, the author demonstrates how these systems are both inferior to a natural order based on private-property. Hoppe deconstructs the classical liberal belief in the possibility of limited government and calls for an alignment of conservatism and libertarianism as natural allies with common goals. He defends the proper role of the production of defense as undertaken by insurance companies on a free market, and describes the emergence of private law among competing insurers. Having established a natural order as superior on utilitarian grounds, the author goes on to assess the prospects for achieving a natural order. Informed by his analysis of the deficiencies of social democracy, and armed with the social theory of legitimation, he forsees secession as the likely future of the US and Europe, resulting in a multitude of region and city-states. This book complements the author's previous work defending the ethics of private property and natural order. Democracy - The God that Failed will be of interest to scholars and students of history, political economy, and political philosophy.

The collapse of socialism across Eastern Europe - as manifested most dramatically by the events of the forever memorable November 9, 1989, when the Germans of East and West reunited, moved and overjoyed, on top of the Berlin Wall - has added more support and urgency to the central thesis of this volume than I had ever hoped for. Whether the following studies deal with economic topics, such as employment, interest, money, banking, business cycles, taxes, public goods, or growth; with philosophical problems as the foundations of know ledge, and of economics and ethics in particular; or the reconstruction and theoretical explanation of historical and sociological phenomena such as exploitation, the rise and fall of civilizations, international politics, war, imperialism, and the role of ideas and ideological movements in the course of social evolution - each ultimately contributes to but one conclusion: The right to private property is an indisputably valid, absolute principle of ethics and the basis for continuous 'optimal' economic progress. To rise from the ruins of socialism and overcome the stagnation of the Western welfare states, nothing will suffice but the uncompromizing privatization of all socialized, that is, government, property and the establishment of a contractual society based on the recognition of the absoluteness of private property rights. *** In writing the following studies I received help from many sides. Special thanks go to my wife Margaret, who again took on the task of de Germanizing my English; to Llewellyn H."

In recent years, libertarian impulses have increasingly influenced national and economic debates, from welfare reform to efforts to curtail affirmative action. Murray N. Rothbard's classic The Ethics of Liberty stands as one of the most rigorous and philosophically sophisticated expositions of the libertarian political position.

What distinguishes Rothbard's book is the manner in which it roots the case for freedom in the concept of natural rights and applies it to a host of practical problems. An economist by profession, Rothbard here proves himself equally at home with philosophy. And while his conclusions are radical--that a social order that strictly adheres to the rights of private property must exclude the institutionalized violence inherent in the state--his applications of libertarian principles prove surprisingly practical for a host of social dilemmas, solutions to which have eluded alternative traditions.

The Ethics of Liberty authoritatively established the anarcho-capitalist economic system as the most viable and the only principled option for a social order based on freedom. This edition is newly indexed and includes a new introduction that takes special note of the Robert Nozick-Rothbard controversies.

Die folgenden Studien behandeln die Frage, Wie soli eine Gesellschaft geordnet wer- den; und warum so und nicht anders'? Derart mit normativen Problem en befagt, unterscheiden sie sich grundsatzlich von der in der sozial- und politikwissenschaftli- chen Literatur gegenwartig immer exklusiver gepflegten Form empirischer For- schung, bei der normative Fragen entweder vollstandig ausgeblendet oder - ver- breiteter noch und fragwurdiger! - durch beliebig herbeizitierte subjektive Meinun- gen, gelost' werden, und die von daher praktisch irrelevant bleiben mug oder als partikularistische (parteiliche) Propaganda einzustufen ist. Die vorliegenden Unter- suchungen knupfen demgegenuber bewugt an die Tradition der Klassiker politischer Theorie an. Wie etwa Th. Hobbes oder J. Locke, D. Hume oder J. J. Rousseau, A. Smith oder K. Marx in ihren Arbeiten allgemein, objektiv begrundete Losungen fUr praktische Probleme formulieren wollen, so auch diese Arbeit; wie sie sich nicht an den methodisch-methodologischen Kanon empirisch-analytischer F orschung halten, so folgen auch die hier vorgelegten Studien einer nicht-empirischen Forschungslo- gik; und wie sie sich nicht urn die Grenzen der wissenschaftlichen Fiicherteilung kummern (konnen), so reichen auch die folgenden Analysen von Philosophie bis Okonomie. * In inhaltlicher Hinsicht fallt die vorliegende Arbeit nicht weniger aus dem Rah- men. 1m Gegensatz zur von Th. Hobbes bis R. Nozick reichenden offiziell-offi- ziosen Tradition der politischen Theorie wird die These entfaltet und begriindet, daB es fur die Existenz eines Staates (auch eines liberalen Minimalstaates) nicht den Schimmer rechtfertigbarer Griinde gibt.

Anmerkungen zu Kapitell 1 Vgl. hierzu z.B. Ezekiel/Fox, Methods of Correlation and Regression Analysis, New York 1966; Rao/Miller, Applied Econometrics, Belmont 1971; PindyckiRubinfeld, Econometric Models and Economic Forecasts, New York 1976. 2 Vgl. hierzu z.B. L. Robbins, Tbe Nature and Significance of Economic Science, London 1935; L. v. Mises, Human Action. A Treatise on Economics, Chicago 1966. - Die Kritik der logischen (Gegensatz: mathematischen) oekonomen verdient darum besonders hervorgeho- ben zu werden, weil sie deudich macht, dass es keineswegs - wie von oekonometrikem regel- massig behauptet - um die Alternative, mathematische vs.literarische oekonomie' geht. 3 Vgl. H. Blalock, Causal Inferences in non-experimental research, Chapel Hili 1964; ders., Tbeory Construction, Englewood Cliffs 1969; ders. (ed.), Causal Models in the Social Sciences, Chicago 1971; Namboodiri/Carter/B1alock, Applied Multivariate Analysis and Experimental Design, New York 1975; 0.0. Duncan, Path-analysis: sociological examples, in: Blalock (ed.) 1971; ders., Introduction to Structural Equation Models, New York 1975; Goldberger/Duncan, (eds.) Structural Equation Models in the Social Sciences, New York 1973; ausserdem vgl. D. Heise, Causal Analysis, New York 1975.

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Here is Hans Hoppe's first treatise in English - actually his first book in English - and the one that put him on the map as a social thinker and economist to watch. He argued that there are only two possible archetypes in economic affairs: socialism and capitalism. All systems are combinations of those two types. The capitalist model he defines as pure protection of private property, free association, and exchange - no exceptions. All deviations from that ideal are species of socialism, with public ownership and interference with trade. Within the structure of socialism, he distinguishes the left and right version. "Conservative" socialism favors high regulation, behavioral controls, protectionism, and nationalism. The "liberal" version tends more toward outright public ownership and redistribution. The consequences of socialism vary based on their degree and kind, but they have similarities: high costs, resource waste, low growth. This treatise has long been out of print, but is now avaiable again for use in comparative systems classes and for an orientation to the theory of economic systems. The theoretical apparatus is Rothbardian to the core, and its main contribution is to provide an organizing principle for understanding the structure of real-world economies as measured against pure types. A tour de force. This edition preserves the formatting from the original publisher, for reasons of citation. Though it was published by a major academic publishing house, the visuals are not what they might have been. Nonetheless, the book is well cited and this edition makes it possible to navigate those citations.

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"Do not steal" is an excellent principle of ethics; it is also the first principle of sound economic systems. In our time, no one has done more than Hans-Hermann Hoppe to elaborate on the sociological implications of this truth. And this is his great work on the topic. The Austrian tradition is known for offering the most hard-core defense of private property, and the most consistent application of that principle, of any school of economics. The work of Hoppe--a leading student of Rothbard's whose books have been translated into a dozen languages--has focused heavy philosophical and economic attention on this principle. This book, the 2nd expanded edition after a long period in which it has been unavailable, collects his most important scholarly essays on the topic. The topics covered by Hoppe are wide ranging: employment, interest, money, banking, trade cycles, taxes, public goods, war, imperialism, and the rise and fall of civilizations. The core theoretical insight uniting the entire discussion is as consistently applied here as it is neglected by the economic mainstream: the absolute inviolability of private property as a human right as the basis of continuous economic progress. The right to private property is an indisputably valid, absolute principle of ethics, argues Hoppe, and the basis for civilizational advance. Indeed, it is the very foundation of social order itself. To rise from the ruins of socialism and overcome the stagnation of the Western welfare states, nothing will suffice but the uncompromising privatization of all socialized, that is, government, property and the establishment of a contractual society based on the recognition of private property rights. Hans Hermann-Hoppe is professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. This edition is an expansion of the original edition (1993), with new essays on epistemology, ethics, and economics.

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With eleven chapters by top libertarian scholars on all aspects of defense, this book edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe represents an ambitious attempt to extend the idea of free enterprise to the provision of security services. It argues that "national defense" as provided by government is a myth not unlike the myth of socialism itself. Defense services are more viably privatized and replaced by the market provision of security. From the introduction: "Even aside from day-to-day security risks, the reality of terrorism and its resulting mayhem has demonstrated the inability of government to provide adequate security against attacks on person and property. The lesson of September 11 is indisputable: government had not only failed to act as a guardian of security and protection but had actually been the primary agent in creating insecurity and exposure to risk, and, moreover, did not achieve secure justice once the crime had been committed. "However, this was not the lesson that was drawn from the affair. Instead, the political elite successfully exploited public fears to vastly increase government spending, central credit inflation, bureaucratic management, citizen surveillance, regulation of transportation, and generally wage an all out attack on liberty and property. "Meanwhile, US foreign policy pursued in the aftermath became more aggressively interventionist, violent, and threatening (the US refused even to rule out the employment of nuclear weapons against enemy regimes) than it had been before, thereby increasing the number of recruits into the ranks of people who are willing to use extreme violence as a means of retribution. "In the same way that government intervention in times of peace can generate perverse consequences in markets that do not tend toward clearing, in times of war, military intervention can thus have the effect of harming the prospects for peace and security and bringing about a permanent state of violence and political control. Truly, the political affairs of our time cry out for a complete rethinking of the issues of defense and security and the respective roles of government, the market, and society in providing them."

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Richard Ritter von Strigl (1891-1942) was one of the most brilliant Austrian economists of the interwar period. As a professor at the University of Vienna he had a decisive influence on Hayek, Machlup, Haberler, Morgenstern, and other fourth-generation Austrian economists. Very few classic works on capital and business cycles in the Austrian tradition have been translated from the original German. Strigl's important contribution to Austrian capital theory is brought to the English-speaking world for the first time. The book links Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk's production theory and Mises's business-cycle theory, and gives a pathbreaking account of the role of consumers' goods within the structure of production. Translated by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, with an extended introduction by Jorg Guido Hulsmann, "Capital and Production" is the essential foundation - both in theory and in the history of thought - to Austrian macroeconomics. As positive theory, this book is unusually lucid. He patiently lays out the entire theory of capital and production, long before getting to applications in the area of business-cycle theory. He establishes without question that time and production plans play the critical role in the formation of the capital sector. We find in here the foundation of what later came to be called Hayekian triangles. We even find a thorough discussion of the impossibility of central monetary planning by the Federal Reserve - it has no way to meet changes in demand with rational plans. In general, Strigl's theory and explication offer a level of clarity and plainness of expression that some find missing in later works by, for example, F.A. Hayek.

In recent years, libertarian impulses have increasingly influenced national and economic debates, from welfare reform to efforts to curtail affirmative action. Murray N. Rothbard's classic The Ethics of Liberty stands as one of the most rigorous and philosophically sophisticated expositions of the libertarian political position.

What distinguishes Rothbard's book is the manner in which it roots the case for freedom in the concept of natural rights and applies it to a host of practical problems. An economist by profession, Rothbard here proves himself equally at home with philosophy. And while his conclusions are radical--that a social order that strictly adheres to the rights of private property must exclude the institutionalized violence inherent in the state--his applications of libertarian principles prove surprisingly practical for a host of social dilemmas, solutions to which have eluded alternative traditions.

The Ethics of Liberty authoritatively established the anarcho-capitalist economic system as the most viable and the only principled option for a social order based on freedom. This edition is newly indexed and includes a new introduction that takes special note of the Robert Nozick-Rothbard controversies.