Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 14
30 May 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, liberalism, libertarianism, Murray Rothbard, war and peace
SummarySome libertarians argue that the implications of libertarianism for foreign policy are unclear. In this chapter, Rothbard argues that libertarianism implies strict “isolationism”:Pending the dissolution of States, libertarians desire to limit, to whittle down, the area of government power in all directions and as much as possible… In foreign affairs, the goal is the same:…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 14
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 13
24 May 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, economics of regulation, environmental economics, environmentalism, history of economic thought, law and economics, Murray Rothbard, property rights, Public Choice
SummaryThis chapter, on “Conservation, Ecology, and Growth,” is an early statement of free-market environmentalism. It begins by ridiculing leftists’ decades of contradictory complaints about capitalism: “Stagnation; deficient growth; overaffluence; overpoverty; the intellectual fashions changed like ladies’ hemlines,” and quoting one of Schumpeter’s best lines:Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 13
Libertarians and Holocaust Denial
13 May 2026 Leave a comment
in history of economic thought, liberalism, libertarianism, Murray Rothbard Tags: The Holocaust
Libertarians were important actors in American Holocaust denial in the decades following World War II.
Libertarians and Holocaust Denial
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 11
10 May 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, history of economic thought, libertarianism, Murray Rothbard, transport economics, urban economics
SummaryIn this chapter, Rothbard advocates the abolition of publicly-owned streets and roads:Abolition of the public sector means, of course, that all pieces of land, all land areas, including streets and roads, would be owned privately, by individuals, corporations, cooperatives, or any other voluntary group ings of individuals and capital.He begins by explaining that in a…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 11
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 9
11 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in Austrian economics, business cycles, economic history, history of economic thought, macroeconomics, monetary economics, Murray Rothbard Tags: monetary policy
SummaryIn 1973, when the first edition of For a New Liberty was published, Keynesians were still sitting pretty. Five years later, the Keynesians had so much egg on their faces that Rothbard was inspired to add this entirely new chapter on “Inflation and the Business Cycle: The Collapse of the Keynesian Paradigm” to his revised…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 9
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 8
04 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, economic history, history of economic thought, labour economics, labour supply, Murray Rothbard, welfare reform
SummaryThis chapter, on “Welfare and the Welfare State,” argues that the welfare state gives the poor perverse incentives. A superficial reader might say, “However original this was in 1973 when it was first written, it’s now old hat. Clinton made the same arguments for welfare reform.” However, on closer examination, Rothbard’s analysis remains distinctive both…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 8
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 7
28 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, libertarianism, Murray Rothbard, Public Choice Tags: signaling
SummaryIn this chapter, Rothbard makes the case for the abolition of public schooling. While he somewhat surprisingly views Friedman’s voucher system as “a great improvement over the present system in permitting a wider range of parental choice and enabling the abolition of the public school system,” Rothbard will settle for nothing less than the separation…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 7
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 6
14 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in Austrian economics, liberalism, libertarianism, Murray Rothbard
[Update: I’m on vacation next Friday, so the next installment of this book club will be in two weeks.]SummaryIn this chapter on “Personal Liberty,” Rothbard puts run-of-the-mill “civil libertarians” to shame. He’s more radical than most of the left on traditional civil liberties like freedom of speech, drugs, and wiretapping. He stands up for the…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 6
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 4
02 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, economics of bureaucracy, industrial organisation, law and economics, liberalism, Murray Rothbard, privatisation, Public Choice
Update: I’m doing a Substack Live today on You Have No Right to Your Culture with the Boyd Institute’s Peter Banks. 4 PM ET.SummaryThis is the shortest chapter of the book, just six pages long. Rothbard makes a laundry list of what he calls “the major problem areas of our society” and argues that government…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 4
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 3
21 Feb 2026 Leave a comment
in libertarianism, Murray Rothbard
SummaryRothbard now applies the normative standards developed in chapter 2 to explain what libertarians have against government (or as Rothbard, inspired by Germanic capitalization, calls it, “the State”). The argument is simple: If a private individual did what governments do, almost everyone would call him a criminal. If I took your money without your consent, I’d…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 3
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 2
14 Feb 2026 Leave a comment
in libertarianism, Murray Rothbard
SummaryIn this chapter (“Property and Exchange”), Rothbard introduces the “non-aggression axiom,” also often known as the “non-initiation of force axiom.” The intuition is simple enough: No one has the right to start using physical violence or the threat thereof against another person or his property. This is one of the first moral rules we learn as…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 2
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 1
07 Feb 2026 Leave a comment
in libertarianism, Murray Rothbard
Here’s my plan: I’ll lead off each discussion of Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty with (a) a brief summary of the chapter of the week, and (b) some critical comments. But this is your book club, so in the comments feel free to not only to discuss my summary and critique, but any thoughts…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 1
Can Argentina Be Rescued, Part III
12 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic growth, economic history, economics of regulation, fiscal policy, growth disasters, income redistribution, international economics, labour economics, liberalism, libertarianism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, Milton Friedman, monetary economics, Murray Rothbard, Public Choice Tags: Argentina
My trip to Argentina last year motivated me to write Part I of this series, which focused on whether things might get better in that tragic country for the simple reason that they couldn’t possibly get any worse. In Part II of this series, I analyzed whether a libertarian candidate’s surprisingly strong performance in Argentina’s […]
Can Argentina Be Rescued, Part III
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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