Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market Quotes

“Professor Mises has keenly pointed out the paradox of interventionists who insist that consumers are too ignorant or incompetent to buy products intelligently, while at the same time proclaiming the virtues of democracy, where the same people vote for or against politicians whom they do not know and on policies which they scarcely understand. To put it another way, the partisans of intervention assume that individuals are not competent to run their own affairs or to hire experts to advise them, but also assume that these same individuals are competent to vote for these experts at the ballot box. They are further assuming that the mass of supposedly incompetent consumers are competent to choose not only those who will rule over themselves, but also over the competent individuals in society. Yet such absurd and contradictory assumptions lie at the root of every program for “democratic” intervention in the affairs of the people.12”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy

“One instance of this failure is the case of smoke, as well as air pollution generally. In so far as the outpouring of smoke by factories pollutes the air and damages the persons and property of others, it is an invasive act. It is equivalent to an act of vandalism and in a truly free society would have been punished after court action brought by the victims. Air pollution, then, is not an example of a defect in a system of absolute property rights, but of failure on the part of the government to preserve property rights. Note that the remedy, in a free society, is not the creation of an administrative State bureau to prescribe regulations for smoke control. The remedy is judicial action to punish and proscribe pollution damage to the person and property of others.48 In”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy

“We have seen in detail above that the ultimate earnings of factors go to the owners of labor and of ground land and, as interest, to capitalists. If land can be capitalized, does this not mean that land and capital goods are “really the same thing” after all? The answer to the latter question is No.25It is still emphatically true that the earnings of basic land factors are ultimate and irreducible, as are labor earnings, while capital goods have to be constantly produced and reproduced, and therefore their earnings are always reducible to the earnings of ground land, labor, and time.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy

“All action is an attempt to exchange a less satisfactory state of affairs for a more satisfactory one.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy

“In short, there can be no monopoly or monopoly price on the free market.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy

“Corporate Income Taxation Taxation of corporate net income imposes a “double” tax on the owners of corporations: once on the official “corporate” income and once on the remaining distributed net income of the owners themselves. The extra tax cannot be shifted forward onto the consumer. Since it is levied on net income itself, it can hardly be shifted backward. It has the effect of penalizing corporate income as opposed to income from other market forms (single ownership, partnerships, etc.), thereby penalizing efficient forms of enterprise and encouraging the inefficient. Resources shift from the former to the latter until the expected rate of net return is equalized throughout the economy—at a lower level than originally. Since interest return is forcibly lower than before, the tax penalizes savings and investment as well as an efficient market form.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market

“An income tax cannot be shifted to anyone else. The taxpayer himself bears the burden. He earns profits from entrepreneurial activity, interest from time preference, and other income from marginal productivity, and none can be increased to cover the tax. Income taxation reduces every taxpayer’s money income and real income, and hence his standard of living. His income from working is more expensive, and leisure cheaper, so that he will tend to work less. Everyone’s standard of living in the form of exchangeable goods will decline. In rebuttal, much has been made of the fact that every man’s marginal utility of money rises as his money assets fall and, therefore, that there may be a rise in the marginal utility of the reduced income obtainable from his current expenditure of labor. It is true, in other words, that the same labor now earns every man less money, but this very reduction in money income may also raise the marginal utility of a unit of money to the extent that the marginal utility of his total income will be raised, and he will be induced to work harder as a result of the income tax. This may very well be true in some cases, and there is nothing mysterious or contrary to economic analysis in such an event. However, it is hardly a blessing for the man or for society. For, if more work is expended, leisure is lost, and people’s standards of living are lower because of this coerced loss.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market

“The purpose of a man’s act is his end; the desire to achieve this end is the man’s motive for instituting the action.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy

“conclusion. Every capitalist will attempt to employ a factor (or rather, the service of a factor) at the price that will be at least less than its discounted marginal value product. The marginal value product is the monetary revenue that may be attributed, or “imputed,” to one service unit of the factor. It is the “marginal” value product, because the supply of the factor is in discrete units. This MVP (marginal value product) is discounted by the social rate of time preference, i.e., by the going rate of interest. Suppose, for example, that a unit of a factor (say a day's worth of a certain acre of land or a day's worth of the effort of a certain laborer) will, imputably, produce for the firm a product one year from now that will be sold for 20 gold ounces. The MVP of this factor is 20 ounces. But this is a future good. The present value of the future good, and it is this present value that is now being purchased, will be equal to the MVP discounted by the going rate of interest. If the rate of interest is 5 percent, then the discounted MVP will be equal to 19 ounces. To the employer—the capitalist—then, the maximum amount that the factor unit is now worth is 19 ounces. The capitalist will be willing to buy this factor at any price up to 19 ounces.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy

“abuse, in economics, of a term (“sovereignty”) appropriate only to the political realm and is thus an illustration of the dangers of the application of metaphors taken from other disciplines. “Sovereignty” is the quality of ultimate political power; it is the power resting on the use of violence. In a purely free society, each individual is sovereign over his own person and property, and it is therefore this self-sovereignty which obtains on the free market. No one is “sovereign” over anyone else's actions or exchanges. Since the consumers do not have the power to coerce producers into various occupations and work, the former are not “sovereign” over the latter. B. PROFESSOR HUTT AND CONSUMERS”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy

“One of the frequent attacks on the behavior of the free market is based on the Georgist bugbear of natural resources held off the market for speculative purposes. We have dealt with this alleged problem above. Another, and diametrically opposite, attack is the common one that the free market wastes resources, especially depletable resources. Future generations are allegedly robbed by the greed of the present. Such reasoning would lead to the paradoxical conclusion that noneof the resource be consumed at all. For whenever, at any time, a man consumes a depletable resource (here we use “consumes” in a broader sense to include “uses up” in production), he is leaving less of a stock for himself or his descendants to draw upon. It is a fact of life that wheneverany amount of a depletable resource is used up, less is left for the future, and therefore anysuch consumption could just as well be called “robbery of the future,” if one chooses to define robbery in such unusual terms. Once we grant any amount of use to the depletable resource, we have to discard the robbery-of-the-future argument and accept the individual preferences of the market. There is then no more reason to assume that the market will use the resources too fast than to assume the opposite. The market will tend to use resources at precisely the rate that the consumers desire.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy

“There can be a reserve demand for a depletable resource, just as there is speculative reserve demand for any other stock of goods on the market. This speculation is not simple wickedness, however; it has a definite function, namely, that of allocating the scarce depletable resource to those uses at those times when consumer demand for them will be greatest. The speculator, waiting to use the resources until a future date, benefits consumers by shifting their use to a time when they will be more in demand than at present.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy