"Who would build the roads?" is the question that belongs at the top of every libertarian drinking game. If we didn't have state coercion, the argument runs, there would be no roads. There'd be a Sears store over there, and your house over here, and everyone involved would just be standing there scratching their heads.
One of the market's virtues, and the reason it enables so much peaceful interaction and cooperation among such a great variety of peoples, is that it demands of its participants only that they observe a relatively few basic principles, among them honesty, the sanctity of contracts, and respect for private property.
Source: Plunder or Enterprise: The World's Choice (2007)
[link] #175Libertarianism is "cultish," say the sophisticates. Of course, there's nothing cultish at all about allegiance to the state, with its flags, its songs, its mass murders, its little children saluting and paying homage to pictures of their dear leaders on the wall, etc.
In a formulation familiar to libertarians, Franz Oppenheimer described two ways of acquiring wealth: the economic means and the political means. The economic means involves the production of a good or service that is then sold to willing buyers seeking to improve their own well-being. Both parties benefit. The political means, on the other hand, involves the use of force to enrich one party or group at the expense of another--either to acquire someone else’s wealth directly or to give oneself an unfair advantage over his competitors through the use or threat of coercion. That is a much easier way of enriching oneself; and since people tend to prefer an easier over a more difficult path to wealth, a society that hopes to foster both justice and prosperity needs to discourage wealth acquisition via the political means and encourage it through the economic means.
Source: Plunder or Enterprise: The World's Choice (2007)
[link] #564About Tom Woods
Thomas Ernest Woods Jr. (born August 1, 1972) is an American author and libertarian commentator who is currently a senior fellow at the Mises Institute. Woods is a proponent of the Austrian School of economics.He hosts a daily podcast, The Tom Woods Show, and formerly co-hosted the weekly podcast Contra Krugman.
Woods completed his doctorate in history from Columbia University in 2000. He first received media attention for writing The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History in 2004, which promoted a libertarian interpretation of American history and was a New York Times bestseller. His subsequent writing has focused on promoting libertarianism and libertarian leaning political figures such as former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul. His 2009 book Meltdown on the financial crisis of 2007-2008 also became a New York Times bestseller.
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