I never thought Marc Andreessen would make me laugh, but his X post was a masterclass in head-smacking, jaw-dropping disbelief.
“Every day I see something I am convinced I hallucinated.”
He was quoting a local news story from Oakland, California. KTVU, a Fox affiliate, reported that car break-ins across the city had declined. A rare public safety win! Fewer victims. Fewer shattered windows. Fewer mornings ruined.
Below is the video and text of the speech by PFS member Fernando Chiocca of Instituto Rothbard (Brazil/Brasil) at 100 Years with Rothbard (Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026): “Rothbardianism at Rothbard’s Centenary.”1 See also Chiocca’s Prezi presentation. The speech and youtube video are in Brazilian Portuguese. This podcast episode features an AI narration of the English translation, prepared by Jorge Besada.
After nearly five months since the start of the U.S. initiated 2026 Straight of Hormuz Crisis it should be clear that bombing, blockades, and rhetorical bluster cannot compel the flow of commerce through the region. Since February 28, 2026, the movement of crude oil and other commodities remains at a standstill.
Former Navy SEAL, apocalyptic novelist, and social commentator, Matt Bracken highlights the impossibility U.S. forces controlling Iran’s coastal islands, Kharg and Qeshm. His X, Gab and Substack accounts are worth following. Aside from the World Trade Organization data on crude oil movement, all of the graphics in this post are Bracken’s creations. [continue reading…]
From the vault: Murray N. Rothbard, “My Break With Branden and the Rand Cult,” Liberty (September 1988): 27–32. This issue also contains Rothbard’s entries in the Reflections section:
“Her feet’s too big!”, p. 7: Rothbard mocks Eileen Ford (of the Ford Model Agency) for her lifelong personal hatred of Eleanor Roosevelt, which she attributes purely to Roosevelt’s appearance—calling her an “ugly old toad” with “awful size 50 feet”—rather than any political or ideological disagreement. He notes the absurdity of such superficial judgment and compares it to the Fats Waller lyric “Hate you cause your feet’s too big,” asking whether modern culture has become a living parody of that song. [continue reading…]
The Mises Institute used to have a very useful feature, the Mises Wiki (archive), but like many aspects of Mises.org since Jeff Tucker and Doug French left, it has fallen into desuetude.1
As noted in this Facebook post (and LinkedIn post), David Veksler has revived it at his site, freecapitalists.org, as The Austrian Economics Wiki: “A free encyclopedia of Austrian economics and the libertarian tradition.” Heroic!
Submitted to and actually published in Bryan’s school magazine
Artificial intelligence has become the latest object of fashionable anxiety. Politicians warn of disappearing jobs. Journalists speculate about permanent unemployment. Every week produces another prediction that algorithms will soon replace lawyers, accountants, teachers, computer programmers and anyone else whose work consists largely of processing information. The implication is that this must be a disaster. An economy in which fewer people are employed, we are invited to believe, is necessarily an economy in decline. [continue reading…]
One of the most imbecile topics that has occupied the public debate in recent years is transgenderism, or more precisely, gender ideology. Men who feel better acting and living like women, and vice versa, are nothing new. And this is all what transgenderism is, something that has always occurred to a tiny percentage of individuals in all human societies, as the writings of early civilizations and the studies of anthropologists show. When discussing the sexual division of labor of pre-Columbian peoples, Alexander Goldenweiser notes that: [continue reading…]
Why did Europe, and not China, become the dominant power of the modern world? It is a question that has kept historians arguing for decades, and for good reason. Around 1000 CE, China was arguably the more advanced civilization, with better engineering, a more sophisticated bureaucracy, and larger cities than anything Europe had to offer. And it was not just China. Japan and Korea also had relatively high human capital levels during the pre-industrial era and by several modern measures East Asians score higher on IQ tests than Europeans do. So if raw brain power explained who ends up on top, the map of scientific and industrial achievement today would look quite different. [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).
The entire series runs for roughly 10–12 hours and are collected on a PFS Playlist1 and also embedded below, along with a bonus video collecting clips from the lectures on the nature of money. [continue reading…]
Why not feel sorry for Exxon? – To say that the oil spill has been blown up to hysterical dimensions is a grave understatement. Hysteria abounds everywhere, and everywhere the term “disaster” is freely used. Even Pat Buchanan, who of all the media commentators I thought would be most resistant to the wiles of environmentalism, used that term. The Idiotic Overstatement Award of the Year goes to Alaska Judge Kenneth Rohl, who opined about the oil spill, “We have a man-made destruction that has not been equalled, probably, since Hiroshima.” [continue reading…]
Miss Rand was going on about something or other at which point Mises told her to be quiet and that she was being very foolish. The lady who could account for all her emotions at that point burst out into tears and complained, “You are treating me like a poor, ignorant little Jewish girl!” Mr. Hazlitt, attempting to bring serenity to his table, leaned over and said: “There, there, Ayn, that isn’t at all what Ludwig was suggesting.” But this attempt at conciliation was ruined when Mises jumped up and said: “That iss eggsactly what you ahrr!” Since all three participants were Jewish, this was not a racist slur. This story was mortal to her reputation as the lady of total self-control.
From the vault: Murray N. Rothbard, “Eyeing the Top of the Pyramid: Mr. Friedman at the Apex” (pp. 33–34) and various entries in the Reflections section (pp. 7–8, 11, 12–13), Liberty (May 1989).
Rothbard’s article is a response to Jeffrey Friedman’s article “The End of Political Activism” from the previous issue (March 1989), critiquing aspects of Rothbard’s approach to libertarian strategy and ideology, and also includes R.W. Bradford’s response, “What’s Wrong with Friedman’s Pyramid” (p. 34–36). [continue reading…]
Classic and beautiful piece by the late, great Ralph Raico, one of the original supporters of the founding of the PFS:1Grow Up, Canada, LewRockwell.com (April 24, 2002)
Grow Up, Canada!
Ralph Raico
April 24, 2002
Canadian bleeding hearts are moaning and groaning because an American fighter pilot decided to drop a big bomb on Canadian troops engaged in combat exercises on the ground in Afghanistan. Four Canadian soldiers were killed and several wounded, including at least one with life-threatening injuries.
Up in the Great White North, politicians, the press, and the man in the street are all aghast. One outraged Canuck went so far as to write to a newspaper: “Pull our soldiers out now! Let those war-hungry Americans who are just trying to stimulate their own economy and satisfy the many special interests of the elite, fight their own damn war.” Can you imagine – daring to besmirch America’s holy, endless War Against Terrorism! [continue reading…]
Some very good news for those students who attend theMises Universitythis summer (and following): The student who emerges from the oral examinations (the Mündliche Prüfung) with the best record, as chosen by the examining committee, will be awarded the Douglas E. French Scholarship Prize of $2,500. The winner will be announced and the prize money given at the final barbecue.3
—but that didn’t stop him from being unceremoniously ousted by Lew Rockwell in 2012, after he was lured to Auburn to become president in 2009.4
Related
Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) and various links and resources collected there
See especially Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Stephan Kinsella, “Appendix: Rothbard’s UNLV Evaluation and Syllabus,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, including “Memo from Douglas E. French to Stephan Kinsella” as well as Rothbard’s annual faculty review at UNLV by Chairman Mark A. Thayer (1991), followed by Rothbard’s draft comment in reply, and two letters from Rothbard to Doug French (Dec. 3, 1992 and Dec. 11, 1992)
Re: “Bill Bradford entitled “Why Libertarians Love to Hate”: see Douglas E. French, “Rothbard as Teacher,” Liberty (May 1995), p. 14 & 69; Liberty (March, 1995), p. 13 (offering for sale video and audiotape of “Why Libertarians Hate,” by R.W. Bradford, from the Liberty Editors’ Conference in Tacoma, Washington, 1994)
French, “Reminiscences of Murray,” LewRockwell.com (April 8, 2005), republished as “Studying Under Murray,” in I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians, Walter Block, ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute 2010) (based on a talk was delivered on the occasion of receiving the Center for Libertarian Studies’ Murray N. Rothbard Award in recognition of his dedication to the ideals of liberty in the Rothbardian tradition);
French begins by honoring entrepreneurs who quietly transform lives, using Willis Haviland Carrier—the father of modern air conditioning—as a prime example. Carrier’s innovations, starting from a small engineering firm, enabled widespread comfort in homes, stores, theaters, and even entire cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas, dramatically improving quality of life without seeking much personal credit. He contrasts this with negative cultural stereotypes of businessmen as greedy exploiters, rooted in Marxist theory, and celebrates real-world figures like entrepreneur Ron Yanke. Yanke, a larger-than-life, relentlessly energetic man, built multiple successful businesses, was pivotal in founding Micron Technology, and created opportunities for thousands while remaining humble, generous, and cheerful. French notes that such entrepreneurs make the world richer and fuller through capital accumulation, job creation, and innovation.
French then draws a parallel between Yanke’s personality and that of Murray Rothbard, describing Rothbard as the other constantly cheerful, vibrant person he had known. As a UNLV graduate student in the early 1990s with no prior exposure to Austrian economics or libertarianism, French enrolled in Rothbard’s History of Economic Thought course despite warnings that the professor was a “kook.” Rothbard’s lectures were electrifying: fast-paced, narrative-driven explorations of history and ideas—good guys versus bad guys—delivered without syllabi or roll calls, packed with references, and far superior to the graphs and statistics of conventional economics classes. Students returned semester after semester because Rothbard varied the content each time. [continue reading…]
No, not that country, as U.S. Senator John Fetterman explains, but “love and devotion” for Israel. Fetterman is a leading figure of what some are calling the “genocide caucus” of the U.S. Congress.
This version of “love of country” is also apparently a litmus test for Trump administration appointees.
idem, “A Strategy for the Right,” Rothbard-Rockwell Report (March 1992), included in Rothbard, The Irrepressible Rothbard, though the book erroneously indicates Jan. 1992 (instead of March 1992) and omits the first three paragraphs of the original essay for no reason
Obvious truths are often the ones that need repetition, because we grow so accustomed to them, that we risk forgetting their importance. One such truth is this: Rothbardian cultural conservatism has nothing to do with political conservatism.
These are two very different things, hiding under the same name. This can lead, and indeed has led to, dangerous cases of idola theatri, where the usage of the same word hides the irreconcilable difference between two ideas. Hence, in order to avoid this idol, we must invest in definition.
In the “Rothbard at 100” event in Porto, Portugal, 2026, Fernando Chiocca gave a speech that can be called, without exaggeration, historic. In it, he distinguished between true and false Rothbardianism based on 6 systematically integrated points. These are the “dogmas” any Rothbardian should adhere to if they want to do more than empty talking. Of those 6 points, I want to focus on the fourth one, namely that For a Rothbardian, libertarianism is not enough for a free society, a stateless social order also requires cultural conservatism as a sociological presupposition.1 What is this “sociological presupposition”? Distilled into its essence, it is the reckoning that there is —and ever will be— a natural order of things, and that this order has been known and respected by the majority of human beings up to this point. In many ways, it is plain common sense: that men and women are different, human groups are different, and these differences are not just skin deep, excellence is a trait only a few possess, what is good and bad is not defined in a moment, but over centuries, and are ultimately eternal and absolute standards. It is to accept the rules of 99% over 1% of human history, the normal over the abnormal. [continue reading…]
Peter Schwartz, “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty,” in Ayn Rand, The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (Meridian, 1990) and the “Libertarians” entry in The Ayn Rand Lexicon (http://aynrandlexicon.com)
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 final entry:
In her wonderful book The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries, Marilyn Johnson pointed out “There are people vanishing, good people dying out there, and the obit writer’s job is to shepherd them out with dignity.”
In 1959,“Rothbard physically applauded Khrushchev in his limousine as it passed by on the street. He gave as his reason for this that, after all, Khrushchev had killed fewer people than General Eisenhower, his host,” snipped William F. Buckley in his 1995 Rothbard obituary.1[continue reading…]
From Projeto Liberin — @projetoliberin; https://www.youtube.com/@a-liberin; https://www.facebook.com/estudio92fm; Live on Rádio Estúdio 92.3 FM Cascavel (program Independência). An interview of António Xavier, one of the organizers of Rothbard 100 there, by: Emerson Bitencourt, Host, TERÇA LIBERTÁRIA on Liberin; Osmar Junior — interviewer; Priscila “Pria” Merisio (aka “Priscila do Liberin”), co-host/interviewer. The transcript below probably has some names wrong.
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.)
Classic and beautiful piece by the late, great Ralph Raico, one of the original supporters of the founding of the PFS:
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