Rothbard vs. Mises

My argument stands: Rothbard's model requires force yet it eloquently speaks of ethics / compassion; whereas, the pure Economics of Mises uses no such prose - yet the mathematics of consumer-sovereignty produce a poetically peaceful society. This brings me back to my "left-anarchist" comment -- in that the "left" speak of peace and harmony but to fulfill their plans "force" of "war" is always necessary. Even if its mostly intellectual. All wars begin in the mind (by force).

For me the most important and very FIRST function of any economic treatise is to define "who the individual is?"

For Rothbard the individual is the property owner (by sheer volume and focus on property rights).

For Mises the individual is the consumer.

For me it is a simple argument: The individual is determined by a function of time spent in common activity – for maximal protection.

Rothbard saying Individual-Sovereignty vs. Mises saying Consumer-Sovereignty is not a proper argument. Mises is defined Rothbard is vague.

For Marxists the "individual" (the one to be protected) is the Worker (or proletariat) and the collective of workers outweighs the needs of the individual -- thus everyone is expendable by the "determining party."

Consumption meaning: To use and/or To Waste (diminish).

We consume: time, knowledge, water, air, tools, base inputs (as workers and producers), nutrients, products, services, resources, during rest, leisure / hobbies, fuel, and energy – etc.

The Producer, Worker, Student, and Retiree consume 24/7

The Producer is not always a Worker -- Marxism needs Rothbardianis to create Perpetual War (Voting - Lobbying - Protesting - and in Union Formation) to sustain Perpetual Revolution.

The very name Rothbard chose "Anarcho-Capitalism" is the bases of perpetual argumentation. Marx coined the phrase Capitalism as being Economic-Feudalism where the “owners” (then referring to gov’t backed monopolist) form “unions” to remain profitable while un-innovative.

Murray’s model leads to perpetual war by protecting the owner and not the worker.

Whereas Mises model leads to ALL being protected.

This is also clear using a very simple meditation on what the profit-drivers are in a free-society.

In a free-society the wealthy hustle and poor to middle class save -- in fact the latter becomes the owner of everything in the medium to long-run. The wealthy cannot tie profit up in slow moving revenue streams (if growth is important to them) -- there would be soundness in money in a free-society (less oscillations - thus less profit in holding it) and thus little wealth potential in hard-property ownership (tying up to assets). To protect is to profit – if the consumer profits most innovation is maximized.

The wealthy seek entrepreneurs (mostly middle income thinkers) -- thus the 1st Marxian Demand "distribution of wealth.” The wealthy would not hold onto businesses to long after start-up unless there was consistent innovation to gain additional market share. The Rich would "hustle" to seek the profit bursts of entrepreneurialism over intrapreneurialism though the latter would not be overlooked. Thus, in the medium to long-run the middle income workers (free-lance sub-contractors) would wind up owning the means to production -- The 2nd Marxian Demand.

Middle class seeks Low-to-Middle Profit Intrapreneurial Opportunities (to buy up businesses with potential for intrapreneurial innovation) and The Wealthy seek out Middle-to-High Profit Intrapreneurial Opportunities (to hold on to start-ups or existing business that promise smart innovation or intrapreneurialism).

The overlap in intrapreneurialism and entrepreneurial exchange cannot be over looked.

Meeting the Two Marxian Demands cannot be had in a Rothbardian world where protectionism (asset tied wealth generation) of property is fundamental and enforced – thus perpetual revolution and a smiling Trotsky.

Thanks for the food for thought,

Octobox (on Daily Paul and Youtube)
 

Bob,

I have no idea whether there is attempted manipulation of the gold market or not. But for technical (psychological?) reasons, important round numbers are very hard to pentrate in markets. It is common to see pullbacks off of such round numbers (Re-read Ewards and Magee).

Secondly, if the buyers are sophisticated like hedge funds or, say, the Chinese central bank, they are going to pullback their buying for fear of starting a stampede upward in the price.

In other words, there are many variables outside of gold price manipulation by Bernanke to account for what is going on.
 

Even if it was, say, Bernanke trying to keep the price of gold under $1000, why would that be manipulation? I mean, if his means of accomplishing that goal were by selling gold, it seems that the price is still an accurate reflection of gold's supply and demand.

Or is there some other mechanism you were thinking of?
 

@Stewart

That is a good observation, if selling and buying were only in the physical gold. We live in financially, maybe even economically, innovative times. The suppression of the gold price is accomplished through contracts (paper) representing leased gold.

If Bank A has a bunch of gold collecting dust (and no profit) it leases the metal to Bank B at around 1-2 percent. Bank B then "loans" that gold through futures (paper).


There is more paper than there is gold.