In his new introduction to this current edition of this classic in the field originally published in 1982 (Humanities Press), Hoppe (economics, U. of Nevada, Las Vegas--as was the late author) extols Rothbard's marriage of the "value-free" science of economics with the normative enterprise of ethics and their offspring: libertarianism. Discussion areas are: natural law, a theory of liberty, the state vs. liberty, modern alternative theories of liberty, and toward a theory of strategy for liberty. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, (...) Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

LARRY J. SECHREST offers an economic analysis of the Objectivist case for minarchy with emphasis on how such a limited government would be funded. Ayn Rand's original proposal that citizens' contributions to the public treasury must be voluntary avoids the problem of redistributing income or wealth, but it is likely to prove infeasible due to the problems of declining contributions, rising costs, and inefficiency. Murray Franck's alternative suggestion that compulsory taxation is necessary and moral avoids the free-rider problem, but it (...) faces the problems of inefficiency and the redistributive phenomenon known as the non-neutrality of taxes. Neither approach presents a convincing rebuttal to the case for anarchy. (shrink)