Because capitalism is the system Rothbard—and the entire Austrian School—is trying to justify, and it is also the system that—contra his wealth of assumptions—circumscribes a lot of what people do. Individuals can act all they want. They won’t make the end of the world go away, any more than their freedom to quit work can make them free to not starve—especially when the system that surrounds their individual actions convulses and crashes to the ground. Individual action is a singularly bad explanation for why, ten years ago, global society itself teetered on the brink of collapse because some
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