In this issue…

Economist Murray Rothbard described the state as “a criminal band,” a parasitical enemy plotting always to exploit the people. But if that’s true, what’s supposed to take its place? Surely not markets…??

Actually, yes.

But how do we get from here—a status quo increasingly at odds with liberty—to there?

The Independent Review is proud to present this hard-hitting symposium on one of the greatest economists of the last century and his classic work For a New Liberty, which, fifty years on, is as timeless, energetic, and engrossing as ever. In these pages, readers will discover the insight, depth, radicalism—and even some surprising weak points of Rothbard’s philosophy. Central to the entire symposium is a call to action, a road map to a freer, fairer marketplace and less intrusive, less hostile government.

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Articles

A Vision of a Productive Free Society: Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty *

By Robert M. Whaples

For a New Liberty after Fifty Years

By David Gordon

Libertarianism, Oversimplified

By Matt Zwolinski

Seeing the State through For a New Liberty

By Jason Lee Byas

Privatize the Public Sector: Murray Rothbard’s Stateless Libertarian Society

By Randall G. Holcombe

Conservation, Ecology, and Growth in For a New Liberty

By Peter C. Earle, Ryan M. Yonk

Murray Rothbard on War and Foreign Policy

By Christopher J. Coyne, Yuliya Yatsyshina

The Political Economy of Rising Defense Costs

By Chandler S. Reilly

What Is in the Federal Reserve’s Doomsday Book?

By Emre Kuvvet

Yoram Barzel: Property Rights, Political Economy, and the Reorganization of Economic Analysis

By Rosolino A. Candela

Concepts before Measurement: A Rejoinder to Ryan Murphy on the Developmental State

By Bryan Cheang

Time on the Cross at Fifty

By Richard K. Vedder