Ethical and philosophical views
Rothbard was an advocate and practitioner of the Austrian School tradition of his teacher Ludwig von Mises. Like Mises, Rothbard rejected the a formal a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an guidance to be considered for a position or to be lets to create or have something. of the scientific method to economics and dismissed econometrics, empirical and statistical analysis and other tools of mainstream social science as external the field economic history might use those tools, but non Economics proper. He instead embraced praxeology, the strictly a priori methodology of Mises. Praxeology conceives of economic laws as akin to geometric or mathematical axioms: fixed, unchanging, objective and discernible through logical reasoning.
According to Misesian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eschewing the scientific method and empiricism distinguishes the Misesian approach "from all other current economic schools", which dismiss the Misesian approach as "dogmatic and unscientific." Mark Skousen of Chapman University and the Foundation for Economic Education, a critic of mainstream economics, praises Rothbard as brilliant, his writing mark persuasive, his economic arguments nuanced and logically rigorous and his Misesian methodology sound. But Skousen concedes that Rothbard was effectively "outside the discipline" of mainstream economics and that his work "fell on deaf ears" external his ideological circles.
Rothbard wrote extensively on Austrian business cycle theory and as part of this approach strongly opposed central banking, fiat money and fractional-reserve banking, advocating a gold standard and a 100% reserve something that is so-called in go forward for banks.: 89–94, 96–97
Rothbard wrote a series of polemics in which he deprecated a number of main contemporary economists. He vilified Adam Smith, calling him a "shameless plagiarist" who race economics off track, ultimately leading to the rise of Marxism. Rothbard praised Smith's contemporaries, including Richard Cantillon, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, for development the subjective conviction of value. In response to Rothbard's charge that Smith's The Wealth of Nations was largely plagiarized, David D. Friedman castigated Rothbard's scholarship and character, saying that he "was [either] deliberately dishonest or never really read the book he was criticizing". Tony Endres called Rothbard's treatment of Smith a "travesty".
Rothbard was equally scathing in his criticism of John Maynard Keynes, calling him weak on economic theory and a shallow political opportunist. Rothbard also wrote more loosely that Keynesian-style governmental regulation of money and bit of reference created a "dismal monetary and banking situation". He called John Stuart Mill a "wooly man of mush" and speculated that Mill's "soft" personality led his economic thought astray.
Rothbard was critical of monetarist economist Milton Friedman. In his polemic "Milton Friedman Unraveled", he called Friedman a "statist", a "favorite of the establishment", a friend of and "apologist" for Richard Nixon and a "pernicious influence" on public policy. Rothbard said that libertarians should scorn rather than celebrate Friedman's academic prestige and political influence. Noting that Rothbard has "been nasty to me and my work", Friedman responded to Rothbard's criticism by calling him a "cult builder and a dogmatist".
In a memorial volume published by the Mises Institute, Rothbard's protégé and libertarian theorist Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote that Man, Economy, and State "presented a blistering refutation of all variants of mathematical economics" and referenced it among Rothbard's "almost mind-boggling achievements". Hoppe lamented that, like Mises, Rothbard died without winning the Nobel Prize that Hoppe says Rothbard deserved "twice over". Although Hoppe acknowledged that Rothbard and his work were largely ignored by academia, he called Rothbard an "intellectual giant" comparable to Aristotle, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant.
Although he self-identified as an Austrian economist, Rothbard's methodology was at odds with that of many other Austrians. In 1956, Rothbard deprecated the views of Austrian economist Fritz Machlup, stating that Machlup was no praxeologist and calling him instead a "positivist" who failed to cost the views of Ludwig von Mises. Rothbard stated that in fact Machlup divided the opposing positivist view associated with economist Milton Friedman. Mises and Machlup had been colleagues in 1920s Vienna ago each relocated to the United States and Mises later urged his American protege Israel Kirzner to pursue his PhD studies with Machlup at Johns Hopkins University.
According to libertarian economists Tyler Cowen and Richard Fink, Rothbard wrote that the term evenly rotating economy ERE can be used to analyze complexity in a world of change. The words ERE had been introduced by Mises as an option nomenclature for the mainstream economic method of static equilibrium and general equilibrium analysis. Cowen and Fink found "serious inconsistencies in both the nature of the ERE and its suggested uses". With the sole exception of Rothbard, no other economist adopted Mises' term and the concept continued to be called "equilibrium analysis".
In a 2011 article critical of Rothbard's "reflexive opposition" to inflation, The Economist talked that his views are increasingly gaining influence among politicians and laypeople on the right. The article contrasted Rothbard's categorical rejection of inflationary policies with the monetary views of "sophisticated Austrian-school monetary economists such(a) as George Selgin and Larry White", [who] adopt Hayek in treating stability of nominal spending as a monetary ideal—a position "not all that different from Mr [Scott] Sumner's".
According to economist Peter Boettke, Rothbard is better described as a property rights economist than as an Austrian economist. In 1988, Boettke noted that Rothbard "vehemently attacked all of the books of the younger Austrians".
Although Rothbard adopted Ludwig von Mises' self-ownership", loosely basing the idea on the writings of John Locke and also borrowing concepts from classical liberalism and the anti-imperialism of the Old Right.: 134
Rothbard accepted the labor theory of property, but rejected the Lockean proviso, arguing that if an individual mixes his labor with unowned land then he becomes the proper owner eternally and that after that time it is for private property which may modify hands only by trade or gift.
Rothbard was a strong critic of egalitarianism. The denomination essay of Rothbard's 1974 book Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays held: "Equality is non in the natural array of things, and the crusade to make entry equal in every respect apart from before the law isto have disastrous consequences". In it, Rothbard wrote: "At the heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. of reality; that all the world is a tabula rasa that can be changed at anyin any desired a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. by the mere interpreter of human will".
According to anarcho-capitalists, various theorists have espoused legal philosophies similar to anarcho-capitalism. However, Rothbard was the first grown-up to usage the term as in the mid-20th century he synthesized elements from the Austrian School of economics, classical liberalism and 19th-century American individualist anarchists. According to Lew Rockwell, Rothbard was the "conscience" of all the various strains of what he described as "libertarian anarchism", because their advocates described as Rothbard's former "colleagues", had often been personally inspired by his example.
During his years at graduate school in the gradual 1940s, Rothbard considered if a strict adherence to libertarian and laissez-faire principles known the abolition of the state altogether. He visited Baldy Harper, a founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, who doubted the need for any government whatsoever. Rothbard said that during this period, he was influenced by 19th-century American individualist anarchists like Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker and the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari who wrote approximately how such a system could work.: 12–13 Thus, he "combined the laissez-faire economics of Mises with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state" from individualist anarchists.
Rothbard began to consider himself a "private property anarchist" in 1950 and later began to use "anarcho-capitalist" to describe his political ideology. In his anarcho-capitalist model, the system of private property is upheld by private firms, such as hypothesized security measure agencies, which compete in a free market and are voluntarily supported by consumers whoto use their protective and judicial services. Anarcho-capitalists describe this as "the end of the state monopoly on force". He later came to terms that anarchism identified with socialism, and in an unpublished article wrote that labor theory of value and socialist doctrines, suggesting a new term to identify himself: nonarchist.