

“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”
― The Law
― The Law

“Hence, contrary to the conclusion arrived at by the public goods theorists, logic forces one to accept the result that only a pure market system can safeguard the rationality, from the point of view of the consumers, of a decision to produce a public good. And only under a pure capitalist order could it be ensured that the decision about how much of a public good to produce (provided it should be produced at all) would be rational as well. 17 No less than a semantic revolution of truly Orwellian dimensions would be required to come up with a different result. Only if one were willing to interpret someone’s ”no” as really meaning “yes,” the “nonbuying of something” as meaning that it is really “preferred over that which the nonbuying person does instead of nonbuying,” of “force” really meaning “freedom,” of “noncontracting” really meaning “making a contract” and so on, could the public goods theorists’ point be “proven.”
― The Economics and Ethics of Private Property
― The Economics and Ethics of Private Property

“Since money or other resources must be withdrawn from possible alternative uses to finance the supposedly desirable public goods, the only relevant and appropriate question is whether or not these alternative uses to which the money could be put (that is, the private goods which could have been acquired but now cannot be bought because the money is being spent on public goods instead) are more valuable—more urgent—than the public goods. And the answer to this question is perfectly clear. In terms of consumer evaluations, however high its absolute level might be, the value of the public goods is relatively lower than that of the competing private goods because if one had left the choice to the consumers (and had not forced one alternative upon them), they evidently would have preferred spending their money differently (otherwise no force would have been necessary).”
― The Economics and Ethics of Private Property
― The Economics and Ethics of Private Property

Sharpening the mind, softening the heart, opposing the state.
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