The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.
My expertise was in public finance, particularly corporate taxation, since I had worked at the US Treasury.
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My expertise was in public finance, particularly corporate taxation, since I had worked at the US Treasury.
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There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.
Conflict is not unavoidable. However, it is nonsensical to consider the institution of a state as a solution to the problem of possible conflict, because it is precisely the institution of a state which first makes conflict unavoidable and permanent.
Private property and free trade stand on exactly the same footing, both being essential and indivisible parts of liberty, both depending upon rights, which no body of men, whether called governments or anything else, can justly take from the individual.
People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.