Sublime

Charles Koch’s mentor, the quasi-anarchist Robert LeFevre, had taught the Kochs that “government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.”

What distinguished libertarians from mainstream pro-business Republicans—Mailer’s parade of delegates in Miami Beach—was their pure and uncompromising idea. What was it? Hayek: “Planning leads to dictatorship.” The purpose of government is to secure individual rights, little else.

either immediately or ultimately every dollar of government spending must be raised through a dollar of taxation.

One is the neoclassical rational-choice-equilibrium argument that markets automatically come to the Pareto optimal equilibrium for society. This was Ken Arrow and Debreu’s great work. The second is more out of the Hayekian tradition, that markets are efficient at processing distributed information to help coordinate activity in the economy. But

For Rothbardians—as opposed to their archenemies the neocons—the worst of all government activity is war: “It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.”

Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” 3

Buchanan’s fellow traveler Sam Francis once wrote an essay titled “Capitalism the Enemy.” For Rothbard, it was precisely capitalism that was the one and only savior of mankind.

Alors que du temps de l'économiste autrichien Menger les critères de détermination de la meilleure monnaie étaient sa vendabilité et son adoption par le marché, au XXe siècle, le contrôle étatique de la monnaie a ajouté un autre critère important pour qu'une monnaie soit considérée comme la meilleure : sa vendabilité selon le bon vouloir de son