“We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual’s mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community, bound to obey the dictates of the majority. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the ways in which such powers could be abused by malevolent persons in authority. The wielding, of powers of this kind even by men imbued with the best of intentions must needs reduce the world to a graveyard of the spirit.”
Ludwig von Mises
"The unending contributions of entrepreneurs — forgoing consumption, exploring the marketplace, investing capital, creating products, building businesses, inventing jobs, accumulating inventories — all long before any return is received, all without any assurance of success, all in response to an imaginative sense of the needs of others, constitute a pattern of giving that dwarfs in extent and essential generosity any socialist scheme of redistribution."
George Gilder
“Whereas markets bring us ever closer together and incentivize us to treat all people with a basic level of respect and decency, political systems and states do the exact opposite. For all the progress that markets have allowed us to gain in terms of equality of natural rights, acceptance of others who are different, etc., the state continuously comes in and highlights people’s differences, stirs up largely imagined divisions—all to exploit for political gains. Things like affirmative action, social security, and welfare all serve to hurt some only by hurting others worse.”
Ryan Miller
“The teapartiers have an interesting genesis. Several years ago some libertarians culled a few disruptive beta members from the conservative and liberal herds and attempted to interbreed them in the hopes of producing a socially liberal / economic conservative brood. Unfortunately the rightwing DNA became dominate and once released into the wild they mated almost exclusively with republicans which produced today’s mongrelized hybrids.”
Garry Reed
“It is not the genius who moves us forward, but the gains from specialization and exchange via the division of labor. Progress is not about great leaps forward, but the consistent small advances that come from more people engaging in ever finer degrees of specialization and making more things available for trade; it’s about having the market institutions necessary to facilitate such trade and the private property it depends on.”
Steve Horwitz
“Laws that turn peaceful activities into victimless crimes don’t magically stop people from doing those activities. And legalizing them won’t magically make everyone start doing it. I’m gonna do what I wanna do regardless. Why? Because I’m an unapologetic freedom loving degenerate. And that’s okay."
T. J. Brown
"The problem at hand is not that too many Millennials are socialists; the problem is that too many Millennials don’t understand that in almost every aspect of their lives, they are capitalists. If Millennials truly want to dedicate themselves to the ideals of socialism, they will have to surrender their iPhones, their Amazon accounts, their Uber accounts, their craft beer, the hipster beard accessories, and pretty much every other aspect of their daily lives."
Brittany Hunter
"The state is not the same as society, but is its worst enemy, with opposing goals and methods. Instead of using the economic means, in which both parties win, the state employs the political means, in which one party wins at the expense of another.
Roadside peddlers use the economic means; muggers use the political means."
Kent McManigal
“The executive state is the state as we know it, all flowing from the White House down. The role of the courts is to enforce the will of the executive. The role of the legislature is to ratify the policy of the executive. This executive is not really about the person who seems to be in charge. The president is only the veneer, and the elections are only the tribal rituals we undergo to confer some legitimacy on the institution. In reality, the nation-state lives and thrives outside any ‘democratic mandate.’ Here we find the power to regulate all aspects of life and the wicked power to create the money necessary to fund this executive rule.”
Lew Rockwell
“My own basic perspective on the history of man...is to place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power... I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life.”
Murray Rothbard
“I used to joke that there was nothing wrong with Washington that 10 megatons on the capital couldn’t cure. But I don’t say that anymore. Partially because it’s too dangerous, but mainly because it’s now untrue. What’s now needed is 10 megatons on the capital, and four more bursts in a quadrant 10 miles out.”
Doug Casey
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