republished inMises Daily, Aug. 14, 2009; archived comments (the original PDF of The Free Market now nowhere to be found lost because the Mises Institute has sabotaged its website archives, either via incompetence or malice, and the old comments are now inexplicably lost as well. —SK)1
It’s true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls. [continue reading…]
Re: Louise Perry, “How Did We Come to Bash the Dead?“, Wall Street Journal (July 15, 2026): “In a polarized society, speaking ill is an act of symbolic banishment, casting the decedent out.”
WF Buckley’s obituaries were notoriously vicious. I’ve wondered if he rejected this supposed tradition on grounds that it is not actually a Christian one. My own feelings on this point are mixed. https://t.co/eP0IE6WrvB
Most of us principled, anti-state libertarians are deed admirers of Rothbard. Hoppe has written glowingly of Rothbard’s singular genius, assessment I share. As Hoppe has written,
And there was a certain amount of, I would say, jealousy, because, I mean, Rothbard was enormously bright. I’ve met bright people in my life, but the only person I’ve met whom I would consider to be a genius was Rothbard. He could tell you the the content of every book in his library. And that wasan enormous library. Whenever you would ask him about any strange subject, he could give you some suggestions on what to read. You felt like a little, urn, uneducated person if you talked to him. So jealousy played a big role in explaining why it was that he was not treated like a genius, as he should have been treated. [continue reading…]
Rothbard Porto: Hoppe: Beegarc AI watercolor rendering
Below is the video of the speech by Professor Hoppe at 100 Years with Rothbard (Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026). See Cataláxia Editora Rothbard 100 Youtube playlist. Transcript and summary below.
From the Vault: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Where the Right Goes Wrong,” Rothbard-Rockwell Report(April 1997): 7–14. This piece critiques traditionalist conservatives (e.g., Pat Buchanan-style) for wanting to preserve the welfare state (Social Security, Medicare, protectionism, etc.) while complaining about cultural/moral decay. Hoppe argues this is impossible—you cannot have the welfare state and traditional families/norms, because the welfare state itself subsidizes and accelerates family breakdown, illegitimacy, irresponsibility, etc. Related issues also discussed in Hoppe, A Four-Step Health Care Solution and From Welfare to Health Care: Commentary on von Studnitz (forthcoming).
The American right is generally divided into three camps: the global hawks,the traditionalists, and the libertarians. Let’s set aside the global hawks as hopeless allies of the imperial world state who look fondly upon international war and military government. It’s not clear why they should be considered on the right at all. That leaves us the traditionalists or traditional conservatives, and the libertarians, who like free markets but most often want to toss out tradition in favor of a social and cultural free-for-all. [continue reading…]
From @Fhoer_here, “The Death of Physical Media,” Fhoer’s Substack (July 16, 2026): “The Digital Panopticon and the Attack on Property.” According to the author: The end of physical media can be blamed on IP laws…
The planned obsolescence of physical media and the forced migration to cloud storage are often celebrated as the pinnacle of modern logistical convenience. The illusion of a frictionless world is sold, where entire libraries and collections fit in the palm of your hand. However, behind this supposed logistical utopia, a profound reconfiguration of property rights is at work. The disappearance of the physical format is not merely a technological advancement, but a structural maneuver designed to make it difficult for individuals to maintain their own collections, separate from the network and beyond the reach of state-corporate scrutiny and control.
To understand the gravity of this movement, it is imperative to observe the problem through the lens of intellectual property criticism. In a natural order, the concept of property applies exclusively to scarce goods, that is, physical resources over which conflicts may arise, such as a piece of land, a printed book, or a hard drive. Information, in turn, is not scarce; thus, the act of copying a file does not deprive the original author of its ownership.[continue reading…]
From the Vault: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Why Socialism Must Fail,” The Free Market (date unknown), in The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty, Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 1988). (Date is unknown because the Mises Institute has sabotaged its website archives, either via incompetence or malice. —SK)1
Related
Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. “The Case Against Socialism.” Lecture presented at Mises University, Stanford University, June 21–27, 1987.
Socialism and capitalism offer radically different solutions to the problem posed by scarcity: everybody can’t have everything they want when they want it, so how can we effectively decide who will own and control the resources we have? The chosen solution has profound implications. It can mean the difference between prosperity and impoverishment, voluntary exchange and political coercion, even totalitarianism and liberty. [continue reading…]
From the vault: Murray N. Rothbard, “Taking Libertarianism Seriously,” Liberty (September 1988): 34–36. As far as I can determine, this piece has never been published separately or in any collection. Note: this piece appeared in the same issue as Hans Hoppe’s significant article “The Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property,” which inspired a symposium in the next issue and much scholarly commentary and controversy over the following 28 years, which continues to this day.1
It’s a commentary on the institutional and scholarly respect (or lack thereof) given to libertarian and Austrian ideas in the late 1980s. Rothbard contrasts the relatively serious treatment these ideas receive in Britain—especially at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) under Arthur Seldon, which engaged Austrian economics, anarcho-capitalism, and radical free-market thought without embarrassment—with the more dismissive or superficial attitude common in American academia and establishment think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. [continue reading…]
He is a retired Major General of the Bundeswehr and has published several editions of this book, with the most recent being an expanded 12th edition published in 2026.
The book argues that responsibility for the outbreak of the Second World War should not be attributed solely to Germany and Adolf Hitler. Schultze-Rhonhof contends that the diplomatic and political actions of several states—including Poland, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, Italy, and the United States—contributed to the circumstances leading to war in 1939. He bases his argument on diplomatic documents, memoirs, and government records from multiple countries.
Jeremy R. Hammond, “How to Respond to the Zionist Hoax of a Peopleless Palestine,” jeremyrhammond.com (Jul 14, 2026). Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent journalist exposing mainstream propaganda that serves to manufacture consent for criminal government policies. Sign up for his newsletters at JeremyRHammond.com. Originally published at JeremyRHammond.com (Jul 14, 2026). Reprinted with permission.
How to Respond to the Zionist Hoax of a Peopleless Palestine
To this day, defenders of Israel’s crimes recycle the tired myth that Palestinians aren’t native to Palestine. Here are the facts to confront them with.
Palestinian refugees fleeing Palestine for Lebanon, October 1948 (Source: PalestineRemembered.com)
The world has a huge problem. Since before the creation of the self-described “Jewish state” in 1948, a violent conflict has been ongoing between Zionist Jews and Palestinians, the destabilizing influence of which extends throughout the Middle East and beyond.
The word libertarian appears to have been first used around 1800 or so in the political/liberalism sense (as opposed the philosophical sense having to do with free will). I initially thought the first use was from 1802. In a short piece critiquing a poem by “the author of Gebir,” in The British Critic (1802), p. 432, the author (I cannot easily make out his name) writes:
The author’s Latin verſes, which are rather more intelligible than his Engliſh, mark him for a furious Libertarian (if we may coin ſuch a term) and a zealous admirer of France, and her liberty, under Bonaparte; ſuch liberty!—For inſtance: …
The author’s Latin verses, which are rather more intelligible than his English, mark him for a furious Libertarian (if we may coin such a term), and a zealous admirer of France, and her liberty, under Bonaparte; such liberty!–For instance …1
I have sometimes said yeah, I’m a furious libertarian! Great name for a magazine!
But has also been claimed that libertarian was first used in the political sense around 1796: [continue reading…]
From the vault: Murray N. Rothbard, “Iran and Korea: The Ominous Parallels” (p. 9), in the Reflections section, Liberty (September 1988): —. This issue also contains Rothbard, “Taking Libertarianism Seriously” and also includes Hans Hoppe’s significant article “The Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property,” which inspired a symposium in the next issue and much scholarly commentary and controversy over the following 28 years, which continues to this day.1
Guest post by Lipton Matthews. First published July 13, 2026. Reprinted with permission of the author. See related links at the end.
The Forgotten Sin: America’s Treatment of Germans
Lipton Matthews
Memorial stone for the Prisoner-of-War Camp Rheinberg 1945. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Americans are routinely called upon to reckon with the darkest chapters of their history. The institution of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two: these are subjects of documentaries, school curricula, museum exhibitions, and public apology. That reckoning, however uncomfortable, is broadly accepted as necessary. Yet there is one group whose treatment at American hands is almost never inserted into this conversation: the Germans. Their suffering and the systematic violation of their property rights by the United States government has been quietly buried beneath a triumphalist narrative of American liberation, and it is long past time that burial was disturbed. [continue reading…]
From the vault: from PFS member JayantBhandari, “Twenty Observations on Liberty and Society,” Liberty (March 2007): 33–37, 53: “Jayant Bhandari warns that totalitarian government is only a symptom of the real enemy: totalitarian culture.” As he notes here:
In this article, I argue that totalitarian government is usually a symptom of something deeper: a totalitarian culture. Political institutions emerge from the moral assumptions, habits, and expectations of the people, and removing a dictator or importing democratic institutions cannot create liberty where respect for the individual is absent.
Drawing on my experiences in India and the West, I examine how coercion reproduces itself through families, schools, bureaucracy, social hierarchies, and political life. I also warn that the West is weakening the cultural foundations that once sustained its freedom.
19 years ago I wrote this article for Stephen Cox. The Liberty later ceased to exist. Thanks to @NSKinsella for salvaging the old issues. At least one univ. prof. in the US used this article for class discussions. I had lost the link but now it is live. https://t.co/IFXD6IBjwW
When I was active in the Libertarian Party, I was a notorious advocate of pure and consistent principles and candidates, and I was the scourge of all deviationists. And yet, now that I am moving toward the Republican Party, I seem not to be mentioning, much less insisting upon, pure libertarian candidates. Isn’t that a contradiction, or have I “mellowed” with maturity?
The answer: of course, I haven’t mellowed. The very thought is an insult. Neither is it a contradiction, if one thinks for a moment about the purpose of political action. The main point of having a Libertarian Party was to promote libertarian ideas in the political sphere. Purity and consistency were extremely important, because if you’re flying the libertarian flag, and begin to abandon or waffle on principle, you are counter-productive, and you viciously undercut libertarian doctrine, the very point of having a Libertarian Party in the first place. After all, what’s the point of having a crazy third party, if you’re simply going to offer modified Republican or Democratic or conservative or whatever doctrine? [continue reading…]
From Grok: This is an early formulation of Hoppe’s critique of democracy (one-man-one-vote + free entry into government as a machinery of redistribution, tragedy of the commons in politics, time-preference effects, family destruction via welfare, etc.).
These ideas were greatly expanded into his major book, Democracy: The God That Failed (Transaction Publishers, 2001). Hoppe has explicitly noted that the book grew out of his 1990s RRR-era writings and conference speeches. Many chapters trace back to that period’s output. The book systematically develops the arguments previewed in the 1996 RRR piece (and related talks). Related later collections (The Great Fiction, Economy, Society, and History) also contain overlapping or expanded essays on democracy, redistribution, and the state.
German businessman and author Rainer Zitelmann has published his first novel (after more than 30 nonfiction pro-capitalism books) entitled 2075: When Beauty Became a Crime. The early reviews I’ve read make it sound quite prescient — I believe the Left will inevitably criminalize this gross affront to human equality! Here’s one review. Any Rothbardian who hears of this book will probably think of Murray’s “Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature.” I don’t know if this is where Mr. Zitelmann got the idea for the book, but it should be read or re-read along with it.
This piece is similar to Hoppe, “The Future of Liberalism. A Plea for a New Radicalism, Polis, 3,1 (1998). The core argument—classical liberalism’s fatal error was accepting the state as a territorial monopolist of law/protection/taxation, making limited government impossible and leading to its own destruction via democracy and social democracy—was substantially revised and included as ch. 11 of Democracy: The God That Failed (Transaction, 2001).
After some problems, not to speak of the whole Mark Skousen debacle, the venerable Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) seems to be on the right track.
But an interesting PC episode has been on my mind recently. The November 1996 issue of The Freeman contained a Book Review (2; 3) by Hans-Hermann Hoppe of The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars (edited by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger).
From the vault: Murray N. Rothbard, various entries in the Reflections section, Liberty (July 1988): 9–13.
The Libertarian family and entrepreneurship—In the letter column of Liberty (May 1988), Dagny Sharon threatens (albeit somewhat ironically) to leave the libertarian movement. Now, certainly everyone has the moral right to leave the movement, and I’m sure that most of us, in moments of despair or disgust, have been tempted to do the same. But I am interested in her stated reasons, which I think are typical of many who have suffered from similar “burnout.” The trigger was a gently ironic review by Mike Holmes of her Free Market Yellow Pages (“Libertariana,” Liberty, Dec 1987), which actually pulled the punches of the criticisms he might have levelled at the publication. But apparently the very fact that criticism of Ms. Sharon was made was almost enough to send her reeling “out of the movement.” [continue reading…]
What we are seeing these last weeks in Indochina is, for libertarians, a particularly exhilirating experience: the death of a State. or rather two States: Cambodia and South Vietnam. The exhiliration stems from the fact that here is not just another coup d’etat, in which the State apparatus remains virtually intact and only a few oligarchs are shuffled at the top. Here is the total and sudden collapse – the smashing – of an entire State apparatus, its accelerating and rapid disintegration. Of course, the process does not now usher in any sort of libertarian Nirvana, since another bloody State is in the process of taking over. But the disintegration remains, and offers us many instructive lessons. [continue reading…]
From the vault: Murray N. Rothbard, “Freedom is for Everyone (Including the despised ‘Rightists’),” Liberty (March 1988): 43–44. This was a counterpoint to John Dentinger, “Strange Bedfellows: Libertarian/Conservative Misalliance,” Liberty (March 1988): 37–42.
The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue:
100 Years with Rothbard was held two weekends ago in beautiful Porto, Portugal, on Saturday, June 27, 2026, featuring and attended by a number of PFS members, including Professor Hoppe and Gülçin Imre Hoppe, Stephan Kinsella, Saifedean Ammous, Thomas Jacob, Greg and Joy Morin, and Alessandro and Domitia Fusillo. From the PFS side, Hoppe, Kinsella, and Ammous spoke at the conference, along with many other wonderful speakers (program). It was a wonderful event, attended by hundreds from Portugal and many other countries. Below is my report of the event, along with some photos of the event. [continue reading…]
As noted here, the 2026 Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society will be held from Thursday, September 17, 2026 to Tuesday, September 22, 2026.
Rothbard at 100 is in production! As you can see, the books are printed in premium hardcover with gold foil stamping, and then they will be covered with a dust jacket. Also available as an audiobook and eBook. Preorder your copy now: https://t.co/iaEh0bk5G0pic.twitter.com/bapPGmhFHb
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“Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.” — FrédéricBastiat
“Because the concept of property, for instance, is so basic that everyone seems to have some immediate understanding of it, most people never think about it carefully and can, as a consequence, produce at best a very vague definition. But starting from imprecisely stated or assumed definitions and building a complex network of thought upon them can lead only to intellectual disaster. For the original imprecisions and loopholes will then pervade and distort everything derived from them. To avoid this, the concept of property must first be clarified.” —Hans-Hermann Hoppe, TSC, ch. 2
The Property and Freedom Society (PFS; Facebook) stands for an uncompromising intellectual radicalism: for justly acquired private property, freedom of contract, freedom of association—which logically implies the right to not associate with, or to discriminate against—anyone in one's personal and business relations—and unconditional free trade. It condemns imperialism and militarism and their fomenters, and champions peace. It rejects positivism, relativism, and egalitarianism in any form, whether of "outcome" or "opportunity," and it has an outspoken distaste for politics and politicians. As such it seeks to avoid any association with the policies and proponents of interventionism, which Ludwig von Mises identified in 1946 as the fatal flaw in the plan of the many earlier and contemporary attempts by intellectuals alarmed by the rising tide of socialism and totalitarianism to found an anti-socialist ideological movement. Mises wrote: "What these frightened intellectuals did not comprehend was that all those measures of government interference with business which they advocated are abortive. ... There is no middle way. Either the consumers are supreme or the government."
(A more complete statement of our Principles can be found here.)
From the Vault, two pieces from Doctor Hoppe on healthcare, as timely as their publication (1993, 1997):
It’s true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls. [continue reading…]
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