Rothbard sees the liberty of the individual (social power) as the fountainhead of all human glories in opposition to state power. History cannot be imagined without theory. Historians need to understand economics.

From the Rothbard Graduate Seminar, sponsored by Alice J. Lillie.

In Man, Economy, and State, Rothbard elaborated a unified and systematic treatment of the structure of production, the theory of capital and interest, factor pricing, rent theory, and the role of entrepreneurship in production.

From the Rothbard Graduate Seminar, sponsored by Alice J. Lillie.

Utilities are ordinal not cardinal rankings. A supply of a good is available in specific units each perfectly substitutable for every other. The law of (diminishing) marginal utility reflects that each unit that enters into concrete action is evaluated separately. For all human actions as the quantity of the supply (stock) of a good increases, the utility (value) of each additional unit decreases.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 1-78 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

All exchanges derive from appropriation or production. Social relations arise out of productive commercial exchanges. A goal  (Mises') is the complete unfolding of division of labor to include the entire world (social cooperation). It is inequality that brings about this division of labor and increase of productivity.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 79-185 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

The determinants  of price are only the subjective utilities of individuals in valuing given conditions and alternatives. There are no objective or real costs that determine price, despite what Marshall thought. Costs are nothing but payments to the factors of production.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 319-365 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

It is not true that capital is an independent productive factor. The capitalists' function is thus a time function. Many economists have made the great mistake of believing that the interest rate determines the time-preference schedule and rate of savings, rather than vice versa. Capitalists' savings and investing are necessary simply to keep the production structure intact. Consumption does not dominate business prosperity. Civilization advances by virtue of additional capital, which lengthens production processes.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 367-451 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

The paradox of saving is that saving is the necessary and sufficient condition for increased production, and yet that such investment seems to contain within itself the seeds of financial disaster for the investors. The impact of net saving on the economy is to lengthen and narrow the structure of production. In an economy with increases in gross savings and investment, money wages and ground rents may well fall, but real wages and rents will rise. Technology, while important, must always work through an investment of capital.

Refusal to maintain the value of capital is known as consuming capital. Profit and loss are the results of entrepreneurial uncertainty.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 509-555 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

There is no measuring or comparability in the field of values or ranks. Money permits only prices to be comparable, by establishing money prices for every good. Money is demanded and considered useful because of its already existing money prices. Regression is not infinite. The clue to its stopping point is the distinction between conditions in a money economy and conditions in a state of barter. Money must develop out of a commodity with a previously existing purchasing power, such as gold and silver had.

Money cannot be created out of thin air by any sudden social compact or edict of government.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 233-317 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

All human action uses scarce resources to attempt to arrive at the most highly valued of not-yet-attained ends.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 187-231 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

In the free-market process, there is no separation between production and distribution. In order for investment to take place in the higher stages, their MVP has to be far higher than the MVP in the shorter processes. It is consumption that dictates the prices of various products. However, consumption by itself provides nothing. Savings and investment are needed in order to permit any consumption at all. Wages are paid out of capital generally, rather than out of the product consumed.

Ultimately, only land [economic land. Agricultural land is a capital good.], labor, and time factors earn incomes. The value of the factors is imputed from the value of the final good they are used to produce. Men value goods in units, not as wholes.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 451-507 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

Progressive, proportional and regressive taxes. Rothbard is relentlessly not in favor of taxes. The state robs both rich and poor. Henry George is horrible on the single tax on ground rent. Immigration/ Georgist sidebar - privatize everything so that entrants are trespassers or invitees. Empty land could still attract immigrants.

Just taxation? The just price is the market price. There can't be a just tax. It is not voluntary.

Costs of collection, convenience, and certainty? Milton Friedman came up with the withholding tax, unfortunately making taxation seem painless.

Distribution of the tax burden. Equal treatment would mean equal slavery, because taxation is theft. Extend the exemptions to all. The loopholer is a good guy. Bureaucrats cannot pay taxes because they're part of the criminal gang.

Ability to pay?That's the sacrifice theory.

Head tax seemed rational, yet is still bad. Rejects the benefit principle. But, the market benefits the poor more than the rich. All taxes are for revenue.

The voluntary tax is not sufficient for free enterprise because the state still has the monopoly on taxation.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 1191-1251 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 1075-1147 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

Those resources will never be available to private producers. There are net tax payers and net tax consumers. No tax is neutral for the market. Any tax distorts allocation of resources by its level of taxes, not by its form of taxation. Additionally, a tax severs income distribution from production. Taxes cannot be shifted forward.

Monetary inflation and credit expansion lead to boom-bust. All government expenditures are consumption; none are investment.

General sales taxes and general income taxes lower the standard of living of the taxpayers and reduce saving and investment. If an employer is paying your health premium, he has lowered your income to do so. When employers pay some share of your social security payment, they have lowered your income to do so. There can be no tax on consumption alone; all consumption taxes are taxes on income. Inheritance taxes are the most devastating - a pure tax on capital.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 1149-1191 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 557-627 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

Are taxes simply club dues?  Can you have a market without defense services? Do you have a right to secede? If you believe in  government, you have to accept world government. Archy means rule. Anarchy is against arbitrary rule. A truly free market is incompatible with the existence of a state. Private courts could adjudicate.

Autistic (like assault), binary (like taxes) and triangular (like price control) types of intervention all produce conflict.

Rothbard sees classes as net tax payers or net tax producers.

Majority voting under democracy does not protect minorities. Democracy the God that Failed by Hoppe is the full story.

Monopolies, externalities and public goods are the three big objections to markets by progressives.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 1047-1073 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

Earning money is the name for buying money. The sole purpose of buying money is to exchange it in the future for other goods and services. Increases in the money supply yield no social benefits, unlike increases in other commodities. More money does no good if its purchasing power for goods is correspondingly diluted.

Keynesians confuse the notion of saving with hoarding.  They also fear deflation and its falling prices. There are four components of the natural rate of interest.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 755-798 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

Claims to money can be used as money, but fraudulent claims to money would be illegitimate because two owners cannot own the same thing at the same time and the pseudo receipts would add to the money stock. The issuance of pseudo receipts cannot be regulated by profits as it would be on the unhampered market. Thus, there must be 100% reserves in banking.

Money can never neutral. Money is valued on preference ranks. Increasing the stock of money changes all these rankings. If you increase the supply of money, the purchasing power of each money unit will decline.

Clusters of entrepreneurial error cannot lead to boom-busts. And there cannot have been any monetary credit expansion on a free market.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 798-874 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

Main objection to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory is rational expectations - they can't prevent entrepreneurs from making use of loose credit because they would be left behind if they didn't. 

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 1253-95 and 989-1025 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

Absolute equality is an impossible goal. Egalitarianism is a senseless social philosophy.

All rights can be analyzed in terms of property rights. Free speech? You can say anything on your own property. Yelling fire in a theater is fraud against the ticket holders.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 1297-1355 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

There is nothing wrong with a monopoly price. Whatever price the free market establishes will be the best price. There exists an unfortunate illusion about monopoly price. Labor unions, by exacting higher wage rates, do achieve identifiable restrictionist prices for their members, but only at the expense of lowering the wage rates of of all other workers in the economy.

Patents are grants of exclusive monopoly privilege by the State and are invasive of property rights on the market. A copyright is a logical attribute of property right on the free market.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 629-753 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

Free societies would have few economists - mainly educators. But, when government - or any other agency using violence - intervenes in the market, the usefulness of the economist expands. The problems become what the consequences of governmental acts will be.

Bad policies - like Welfare Economics and Social Economics -were often supported simply because there was so little understanding of economics, at all. There are no mathematical constants in Austrian economics. They are qualitative not quantitative. A table sums up the differences between The Market Principle and The Hegemonic Principle.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 1357-1369 in the Scholar's Edition of Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.