Author’s note: This year marks the 100th anniversary of Murray Rothbard’s birth, and much has deservedly been written to mark the occasion. But any understanding of Rothbard at UNLV in the early 1990s would be incomplete without a corresponding discussion of the impact of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. It was a magical, if abbreviated, time for Austrian Economics.
Hoppe walked into the seminar room, set his notes on the table without sitting down, and started talking before most of us had our pens out. No preamble, no small talk about the reading—just straight into the labor theory of value, mid-thought, as if we’d been in the middle of a conversation he was simply resuming. That was how every one of his lectures began, and by the third week I’d stopped being surprised by it and started scrambling to keep up instead.
He was tall and gaunt, with glasses in that unmistakably ‘eighties style—sleek, contemporary, of-the-moment, not the thick, heavy frames people tend to picture on a European academic—and a Germanic inflection so thick it seemed less like an accent and more like a warning. He looked like a man built specifically to deliver bad news to bad ideas, and that, it turned out, was exactly his function in the seminar room. [continue reading…]
From @conza and conza.au: libertarian and other works distilled into slide decks, from Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, Peter Janich, Kinsella, and others. See snapshot below, and conza.au-a-curated-library-of-liberty (pdf).
In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged there is a famous scene when a series of irrational mistakes lead to the Taggart Comet disaster. It is caused when railroad officials, under political pressure from a powerful passenger and unwilling to take responsibility, ordered the Comet into an eight-mile mountain tunnel with an unsafe coal-burning locomotive instead of a diesel. The train stalled from the fumes, passengers and crew asphyxiated, and an oncoming Army munitions train crashed into it, triggering an explosion that permanently sealed the tunnel. The catastrophe resulted from the broader collapse of competence and judgment under collectivist policies that had driven capable people out of the system.
Rand’s description in effect blames the victim-passengers for sharing the irrational views that led to it. She starts out:
It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Time Preference, Government, and the Process of De-Civilization—From Monarchy to Democracy,” in Democracy: The God That Failed (Transaction, 2001)
Vespasianus, Titus and Domitian in a work by painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema
An Australian study dismantles the idea that imperial succession was improvised and shows deliberate strategies to ensure family power for generations
Were Roman emperors simply improvisers who waited to see what would happen after their death? Or did they carefully plan for the future of their dynasties, thinking not only about their immediate successor but also about several generations to come? A new study published in the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies answers: most emperors did think strategically about the long term.
Caillan Davenport, a researcher at the Australian National University, has analyzed succession plans from Augustus to Commodus (from 27 B.C. to A.D. 192) and concludes that, despite the absence of fixed inheritance laws, emperors deployed multiple strategies to keep the throne in their family.
The work introduces the concept of “dynastic scenario thinking”—taken from studies of early modern Europe—to explain how emperors anticipated threats and complications in the transmission of power.
As I noted in “My Years with the Mises Institute,” Property and Freedom Journal (May 2, 2026), in the section “Mises Academy and the High-Water Mark,” in its digital heyday under the ambitious leadership of Jeffrey Tucker and President Doug French, Tucker and French spearheaded the formation of the Mises Academy, taking advantage of (live) remote courses delivered over the Internet. As I noted in that article, since the ouster of Tucker and French, Mises.org has declined in many ways. The website indicates Mises Academy is still alive, but it’s hard to tell if this is so—though they are still begging for financing for it (Help Us Expand the Mises Academy!) despite sitting on an $80M warchest. Whatever. All I can say is, good thing I insisted on downloading copies my stuff at the time.
In any case, PFS readers may find of interest some of the following Mises Academy courses I conducted, back in 2010–2011. These included multi-course lectures, “Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics” (taught in both 2010 and 2011); “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society,” “Libertarian Controversies,” and “The Social Theory of Hoppe,” and one webinar, “Obama’s Patent Reform: Improvement or Continuing Calamity?” All are available at the Kinsella on Liberty Podcast as well as Youtube. [continue reading…]
Murray Rothbard was a prolific author, an Austrian economist, and a promoter of free market anarchism, which he called “anarcho-capitalism.”
In this video, Rothbard gives a tribute to his mentor in Austrian economics, Ludwig von Mises, at a Libertarian Party convention in Pennsylvania in 1984. Rothbard discusses Mises’s work and life, and the growing popularization of his ideas in the United States.
A prolific author and Austrian economist, Murray Rothbard promoted a form of free market anarchism he called “anarcho-capitalism.”
Economist Murray N. Rothbard mounted the most comprehensive intellectual challenge ever attempted against the legitimacy of government. During a career that spanned more than 40 years, he explained why private individuals, private companies and other voluntary associations can do whatever needs to be done. [continue reading…]
Murray Rothbard shares how he became a libertarian and his subsequent intellectual journey.
A prolific author and Austrian economist, Murray Rothbard promoted a form of free market anarchism he called “anarcho-capitalism.”
In this talk, given at the 1981 National Libertarian Party Convention, Rothbard tells the story of how he came to learn about economics and libertarianism as he grew up in the Bronx and attended Columbia University in the 1930s and 40s. He reminisces about meeting Frank Chodorov, Baldy Harper, George Stigler, and Ludwig von Mises, and takes a number of audience questions.
In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting some of them here in this Bookstream.
A property-centered legal order encompasses a broad variety of enforceable crimes.As expected, all of them are oriented toward the integrity of private property.The basic principles of natural law, do all you have agreed to do and do not encroach upon other persons or their property, provide the basis for contract and criminal law.Both are rooted in the integrity of property and its conflict-free exchange. [continue reading…]
On Sept. 17–18, 2005, Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann presented a two-day 11-lecture series, “Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics,” in Klampenborg (just north of Copenhagen, Denmark), under the auspices of the Copenhagen Institute and Liberator. Program (local, and at right). See also Copenhagen Institute hosts Hoppe and Hülsmann, Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 1, 2005).
Imagine a scenario for dealing with the Epstein scandal under a private property legal order. Such a system does not preclude the existence of the United States as a compound republic, although it does require a radical reinterpretation of the political order operating through the Constitution. First, the United States is a federation of political entities, each one an independent republic, cooperating for mutual protection and commerce according to the stipulations of a written contract. The general government can only act on the limited authorities delegated to it via the contract, while the member states retain sovereignty within their geographic territories, except for those things prohibited to them by the federal operating charter.
On Sept. 17–18, 2005, Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann presented a two-day 11-lecture series, “Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics,” in Klampenborg (just north of Copenhagen, Denmark), under the auspices of the Copenhagen Institute and Liberator. Program (local, and at right). See also Copenhagen Institute hosts Hoppe and Hülsmann, Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 1, 2005).
In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting some of them here in this Bookstream.
David Friedman’s recent Made in Ancapia interview has this clip:
Me encanta
David Friedman sobre Javier Milei:
✒️| “Sería bueno para el libertarismo si resulta que tener un presidente libertario que empuja las ideas de la libertad hace a un país rico. (…) Le deseo suerte.” pic.twitter.com/h0CrzLmdlP
Paul Craig Roberts has written another of his gloomy essays about artificial intelligence and the digital age. There is much in it that deserves agreement. Wikipedia is politically biased. Governments and large corporations increasingly try to control what people read and think. Digital information can disappear more easily than printed books locked away in forgotten libraries. These are genuine concerns, and intelligent people ought to discuss them seriously.
What disappoints me is what Roberts builds on these observations. Instead of criticising the abuse of technology, he condemns the technology itself. This is a familiar mistake. Every great technological advance has produced a class of intelligent men who noticed its defects and confidently predicted disaster. Their predictions have almost always been wrong. [continue reading…]
On Sept. 17–18, 2005, Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann presented a two-day 11-lecture series, “Weekend Seminar in Austrian Economics,” in Klampenborg (just north of Copenhagen, Denmark), under the auspices of the Copenhagen Institute and Liberator. Program (local, and at right). See also Copenhagen Institute hosts Hoppe and Hülsmann, Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 1, 2005).
A Japanese translation of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026), entitled ロスバード生誕100周年: 追悼と回顧, trans. Tatsuya Iwakura (岩倉竜也), is now available, thanks to the PFS’s open publishing policy. Unlike certain other institutions we do not restrict translations or derivative works by using a CC-BY-NC-ND license, but instead use CC-BY, because we want pro-Austrian and pro-liberty writings to reach as many people as possible.1 Various Amazon links sent to us by the translator are listed below. See other translations at Translations of PFS Publications. [continue reading…]
Abstract: This chapter argues that democracy has both theoretical and practical implications that negatively affect the maintenance of language (and cultural) diversity. Attention is paid to the levelling effects of welfare policies, which tend to depress the speakers’ interest in language preservation and transmission and which typically negatively affect the quality of revitalisation programmes. The presentation discusses the practical and theoretical problems posed by possible ways out such as a voluntary, self-imposed “boundary maintenance” policy (Fishman 1991) and “the creation of linguistic fortresses or ghettoes” (Laponce 1984) in order to protect a minority language. Further, it argues that the democratic state – in itself just the last instalment of the nation-state – may have a special problem with multilingualism, and that language diversity possibly fared better in past forms of government.
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
To donate with BITCOIN please use the address below. If you would like us to credit your payment (for dues, conference fees, etc.) please email Stephan Kinsella ([email protected]) when you make the bitcoin payment.
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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.)
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