Murray Rothbard

Posts About

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  The Morality of Marginalism: Risk Aversion versus Aspirational Norms

  It is a commonplace in New Institutional economics that norms matter for economic performance. There remains, however, no deep integration of norms into the rational choice framework beyond merely shunting them into the black box of “preferences”. This paper first establishes the importance for social cooperation of specific and directive . . .

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  Nozick and Fractional Reserve Banking

  Rothbardian critics of fractional reserve banking (FRB) tend to use natural-rights-esque arguments, even when not explicitly invoking natural rights. That is, they take for granted not only the perspicuity of some definition of property, but also the obviousness of its application to any situation. Hülsmann, for example, argues that, “on . . .

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  Hayek vs. Rothbard on Free-Market Money

  Among Austrian economists, there is a fundamental philosophical split between the “evolutionists” following Hayek, and the “moralists” following Rothbard. The former see the world in terms of dynamic, spontaneously ordering evolution of norms, where the latter see the world in terms of fixed and universally applicable ethical norms. This is . . .