Murray Rothbard (1926–1995)

The state is a parasite that uses a variety of psychological, economic and violent tools to force people to sustain its boundless expansion. It rings true to some extent but rather onesidedly. The author contrasts the state with "the people". One is bad, one is good. A thought immediately springs to mind: what about corporations? If corporations are not the state but rather "the people" and corporations are known to behave rather badly when unchecked - then both sides are bad. One is bad, the other is bad, everything is bad. But if corporations are small states and "the people" are good then what is the proposed way of organising labor and allocating resources among "the people"? Can "the people" survive without the state?
In the end the text felt like an angry pamphlet against immoral power abusers. Perhaps the author is right and we are all just subjects to a number of ever growing parasites that have encompassed the earth but what do i do about it?… (mere)

If this had been the only book on libertarianism I had ever read, I would probably have become an authoritarian. I'm aware that academics often use words differently than us normies do, but the idea that there is a school of "ethics" that includes allowing one's own baby to starve to death is unfathomable.

Clearly by the 1980s Rothbard was already well on his journey right-ward from the leftist activists had the pleasure of working with in the 1960s Peace & Liberty Party and the author of radical works like "Man economy & State." He spends the whole book looking at his basis for an economic and "legal" system in a libertarian society and expanding upon those for various parts of life and society. However, he just accepts his own basis as fact and doesn't even seem to attempt to argue why that should be a basis of any thought, let alone libertarianism. This is particularly true in the first section of property ownership. There is no explanation why mixing one's labor with unowned property automatically makes it the private property of the laborer. There is no question as to the idea that an individual can be private property, even to himself, while also claiming that slavery, even so-called voluntary slavery, is unethical. There is absolutely no explanation why inheritance is considered an ethical transfer of private property rights, but a promise to do so is not. (There are plenty of reasons he says why a promise is not, but I see that as little difference than inheritance). There was a whole chapter on the transfer of land titles and the problem of tracking such back to its rightful owner, yet there was 0 reference to the obvious cases of this such as European colonialization into Australia, Africa, & the Americas. An incredible western European centric viewpoint, particularly when you consider Rothbard was an American Jew.

One thing he did do right was right in the introduction he made it clear that nothing contained within would be able to challenge Marxists ideals, including the labor-theory-of-value, as the ideas are so far apart, they can't even be compared properly.

I've been a Libertarian for over 20 years, and no argument against liberty written by a statist has come nearly close to making me question my belief in libertarianism as this one of the American libertarian right.… (mere)

This is a very concise statement of the world's foremost anarcho-capitalist, Murray Rothbard's, view of the state. It's pretty dense and not particularly suited to the audiobook format, although the argument doesn't rely on weird redefinitions or anything else -- more, that the impact of relatively simple statements takes some reflection to consider. Probably better as a print book, although the narration was technically fine.

Rothbard's beliefs are certainly extreme, but even if you don't agree fully with them, they seem to be a logically consistent belief system and are worth learning about.… (mere)