Vol. 8, No. 2
March – April 2022
Professor Todd
Zywicki on
Winning His
Battle against
Covid Mandates
Keep US
Out of War
The New
Antieconomics
by Llewellyn H.
Rockwell, Jr.
by Jeff Deist
3	 Jeff Deist – From the Publisher
4 	 Keep US Out of War
8 	 The New Antieconomics
10	 Why So Much Hate for the Free
Market? – David Gordon Reviews
The Power of Capitalism: A Journey
through Recent History across Five
Continents by Rainer Zitelmann
14	 Professor Todd Zywicki on Winning
His Battle against Covid Mandates
22 Remembering Murray	
23 	Non Omnis Moriar
by David Gordon
24 Economics in One Lesson 	
25	 40th Anniversary
Supporters Summit
26 	Mises Meetup Tampa
27	 Mises Institute at CPAC
27	 Coming Events
Published 2022 (six times per year) by
the Mises Institute under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Non Commercial
4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Publisher: Jeff Deist
Managing Editor: Judith F. Thommesen
Design/Layout: Jonathon Stone
Contributing Editors:
Tho Bishop
David Gordon
Ryan McMaken
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March ­– April 2022 | 3
From the Publisher
Jeff Deist
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, correctly viewed
as an escalation of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war of 2014,
provided Western media and politicians with a remarkable
opportunity to pivot away from covid. All of a sudden, schools
are open, vaccine mandates are dropped, and masks are off.
The same governors and mayors who so radically abused their
tenuous legal authority over the past two years now tell us it is
time to treat the virus as endemic and live with it.
It was a remarkable display of changing the narrative.
Putin, who wants to seize Ukrainian gas and oil, is the
kleptocratic ruler we should expect in a post-Communist
society. He is, after all, a former KGB enforcer. Absolute state
power in the USSR explains his zero-sum worldview and an
authoritarian mindset. But what explains the same in Hillary
Clinton and Bill Kristol? And our own intelligence and foreignpolicy
apparatus is a big part of the problem in Ukraine, most
recently thanks to CIA meddling during the 2014 Maidan
Revolution. Just as interventions in the marketplace lead to
unintended consequences, foreign intrigue rarely provides the
kind of lasting peace the US claims to pursue.
It’s hard to know, writing in the middle of March, what the
situation in Ukraine will look like when you read this. At present
there are signs of a possible deal with Putin, which could spare
further bloodshed and destruction in Kyiv and beyond. We all
hope the Russians will leave, and leave soon. But regardless
of events there, we know Ukraine is not a vital US interest.
We should not get bogged down in yet another conflict—
especially with nuclear-armed Russia—just as we finally have
begun to extricate ourselves from the Middle East.
Lew Rockwell’s piece reminds us of Richard Cobden’s
policy of neutrality, the policy of European classical liberals
War, civil wars, and revolutions are detrimental to man’s
success in the struggle for existence,
because they disintegrate the apparatus
of social cooperation.
—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute.
jeffdeist@mises.org @jeffdeist
in the nineteenth century and the American Old Right
in mid-twentieth century America. Collective security
arrangements like NATO necessarily violate neutrality
by bringing all the trouble in the world to our doorstep,
effectively internationalizing conflicts which should be
regionally contained. As a result, we imagine every conflict
to be our business.
States are not angels; they all violate the rights of their
citizens to some degree. Few governments or leaders have
the moral authority to judge world events. Americans,
largely illiterate on matters of history, are ill-equipped to
understand the long and unhappy relationship between
Russia and Ukraine. So we are highly susceptible to jingoism
and war cheerleading by politicians and media. As always,
the situation in Ukraine calls for us to consider and stick to
first principles.
Thankfully, there are still voices against war and economic
interventionism, like the brilliant German historian Rainer
Zitelmann. His book, reviewed by our own Dr. David
Gordon, shows the way forward through an examination of
the recent past. The Power of Capitalism: A Journey through
Recent History across Five Continents is a forceful defense of
property (capitalism) and peace (nonintervention) as clearly
demonstrated by economic development across continents
and countries in the twentieth century. Prosperity is not
an accident; it depends largely upon the balance between
private ownership and state control (i.e., central planning).
Even China, which as late as the 1970s experienced
horrific brutality and famine at the hands of Mao’s Cultural
Revolution, made remarkable economic progress once
the boot was just slightly taken off its neck. Very basic
market reforms, allowing a degree of private ownership and
entrepreneurship to emerge through the cracks of a hungry
economy, were enough to create remarkable improvements
in living conditions for millions of China’s citizens. But it
was not some mystical Chinese version of state capitalism
or a “third way” between communism and property that
made this happen. It was, as one Chinese professor put it,
not “because of, but in spite of” the ongoing power and
influence of the central state. China is today a vast economy
precisely because its vast population has enjoyed a degree
of freedom.
As always, we are grateful to you for your ongoing support
of our mission. The year 2022 promises to be another
tumultuous—i.e., political—year for all of us.We can all fight
for peace and prosperity, against the politicians promoting
war and planning. nn
4 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is founder and
chairman of the Mises Institute, editor of
LewRockwell.com, and author of numerous
books, including Speaking of Liberty,Against
the State, The Left, the Right, and the State, and
Fascism versus Capitalism.
E
vents in Ukraine are happening very fast, and if I tried
to predict what will happen there, my prediction
would soon be overtaken by events. But one thing is
certain. We need to understand the background of
the crisis, andwe also need to remember the basic principles
that should guide American policy.
To understand the background, the best guide is Stephen
Cohen, a world-renowned authority on both the Bolsheviks
and contemporary Russia. He pointed out in November
2019:
For centuries and still today, Russia and large parts of
Ukraine have had much in common—a long territorial
border; a shared history; ethnic, linguistic, and
other cultural affinities; intimate personal relations;
substantial economic trade; and more. Even after the
years of escalating conflict between Kiev and Moscow
since 2014, many Russians and Ukrainians still think
of themselves in familial ways. The United States has
almost none of these commonalities with Ukraine.
On the other hand, Ukraine is a vital Russian interest by
any geopolitical or simply human reckoning.
Why, then, is Washington so deeply involved in Ukraine?
(The proposed nearly $400 million in US military aid
to Kiev would mean, of course, even more intrusive
involvement.) And why is Ukraine so deeply involved
in Washington, in a different way, that it has become
a pretext for attempts to impeach President Donald
Trump?
The short but essential answer is Washington’s decision,
taken by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, to expand
NATO eastward from Germany and eventually to Ukraine
itself. Ever since, both Democrats and Republicans have
insisted that Ukraine is a “vital US national interest.”
Those of us who opposed that folly warned it would lead
to dangerous conflicts with Moscow, conceivably even
war. Imagine Washington’s reaction, we pointed out,
if Russian military bases began to appear on Canada’s
or Mexico’s borders with America. We were not wrong:
4 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
Keep US
Out of War
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
@lewrockwell
March ­– April 2022 | 5
An estimated 13,000 souls have already died in the
Ukrainian-Russian war in the Donbass and some 2 million
people have been displaced.
The propagandists for brain-dead Biden like to say that
Putin had Ukraine surrounded. But in fact, the US and its
NATO satellites had Russia surrounded. In the years before
the current crisis, we had ample opportunity to reach a
compromise settlement. Instead, we kept the option of
membership in NATO open to Ukraine and overthrew a
Ukrainian president who was pro-Russian.
At the Kremlin last week [in November 2021], Putin drew
his red line:
“The threat on our western borders is … rising, as we
have said multiple times…. In our dialogue with the
United States and its allies, we will insist on developing
concrete agreements prohibiting any further eastward
expansion of NATO and the placement there of weapons
systems in the immediate vicinity of Russian territory.”
That comes close to an ultimatum. And NATO secretary
general Jens Stoltenberg backhanded the president of Russia
for issuing it:
It’s only Ukraine and 30 NATO allies that decide when
Ukraine is ready to join NATO…. Russia has no veto,
Russia has no say, and Russia has no right to establish
a sphere of influence trying to control their neighbors.
Putin is nobody’s fool, and he has decided to act decisively to
free Russia from encirclement. Invasions kill people, and this
is sad, but this is the way European power politics operates
and has operated for hundreds of years. This is why George
Washington in his Farewell Address warned us to stay out of
it. “Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have
none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged
in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially
foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise
in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary
vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and
collisions of her friendships or enmities.”
Whether Russia controls Ukraine is none of our business.
In particular, economic sanctions are a bad idea. They are
immoral. As Mike Rozeff says:
Sanctions are wrong for the same reason that dropping a
hydrogen bomb on Moscowwould be wrong.They target
innocent people. They are wrong for the same reason
that attacking the Taliban government in Afghanistan
was wrong, when bin Laden was the accused. They
are wrong for the same reason that attacking Iraq was
wrong when Saddam Hussein was the accused target.
They are wrong for the same reason that bombing Libya
was wrong when Gaddafi was the accused target.
Not only are sanctions wrong; they don’t work, they disrupt
the world economy, and they reduce the chances of a
peaceful settlement. Rachel Lloyd, a policy analyst at the
Russian Public Affairs Committee, says,
Whether sanctions work—or not—is no great secret.
Time and time again, the US has clung to sanctions as
its de facto power of tough diplomacy. Yet Washington
is failing to recognize the obvious reality: they simply do
not work, other than perhaps as a tool to bully or with
which to play to the crowds.
In fact, tough-sounding economic policies have
been shown to almost never have the desired effect
In the years before the current crisis, we had ample
opportunity to reach a compromise settlement. Instead, we
kept the option of membership in NATO open to Ukraine
and overthrew a Ukrainian president who was pro-Russian.
6 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
against America’s adversaries. Instead, all too often,
sanctions bolster those in power, who use the threat of
Washington’s overreaching in their domestic affairs as
a way to influence national opinion and shore up their
support.
The US’s effort to throttle the economy of any country
or government that stands against Congress’ vision for
how the world should work has brought it into conflict
with a number of nations. This has been seen in Iran,
wherethesanctionsputinplaceafterthe1979revolution
fueled the Shia-majority country’s aggressive policies in
the Middle East. Likewise, in Cuba, where sanctions have
existed for over 60 years ... the nation is still dominated
by an authoritarian regime…. Businesspeople will point
to the fact that the effects of sanctions can go beyond
the targeted sector and the individual, hurtingAmericans
well outside the original sanctioned sphere. While the
United States may have aimed to restrict business and
trade with a particular company or individual, all too
often the effects of the sanction seep into other facets
of the economy and diplomacy as the targeted country
modifies its policies and approaches so as to keep itself
afloat.
For Americans, this means reduced revenues for US
companies and those who work for them, as well as
forfeited opportunities that statistics alone cannot
measure. It also puts unnecessary pressure onAmericans
living abroad, as well as tourists and exchange students,
who then have to jump through hoops to complete even
the most basic tasks related to banking, finance, and
visas.
And for Americans hoping to follow the American
dream, starting or expanding businesses, or working
abroad, sanctions become a barrier to that dream. The
moment a business account has a connection to Russia
or another sanctioned country, banks stop wanting
to have anything to do with it. When this pinnacle of
American entrepreneurism is put under strain due
to policies proven to be ineffective at best, there is a
glaring problem.
The history of failure, coupled with the factual and
potential harm of sanctions to American citizens makes
one thing clear: it is disingenuous to say that sanctions
are done in the best interest of US national security
and the international community. In truth, all they do
is set up further barriers to democracy and economic
prosperity. Even for Americans.
Some people, including many so-called libertarians reject
this message. Don’t we have a duty, they say, to protect
“democracy” and resist “aggression”? Murray Rothbard had
March ­– April 2022 | 7
The other big problem with the collective-security
analogy is that, in contrast to spotting thieves and
muggers, it is generally difficult or even impossible to
single out uniquely guilty parties in conflicts between
states. For although individuals have well-defined
property rights that make someone else’s invasion of
that property a culpable act of aggression, the boundary
lines of each state have scarcely been arrived at by just
and proper means. Every state is born in, and exists by,
coercion and aggression over its citizens and subjects,
and its boundaries invariably have been determined by
conquest and violence. But in automatically condemning
one state for crossing the borders of another, we are
implicitly recognizing the validity of existing boundaries.
Why should the boundaries of a state in 1982 be any
more or less just than they were in 1972, 1932, or 1872?
Why must they be automatically enshrined as sacred,
so much so that a mere boundary crossing should lead
every state in the world to force their citizens to kill or
die?
No, far better and wiser is the old classical liberal foreign
policy of neutrality and nonintervention, a foreign policy
set forth with great eloquence by Richard Cobden,
John Bright, the Manchester school and other “little
Englanders” of the nineteenth century, by the AntiImperialist
classical liberals of the turn of the twentieth
century in Britain and the United States, and by the
old right from the 1930s to the 1950s. Neutrality limits
conflicts instead of escalating them. Neutral states
cannot swell their power through war and militarism, or
murder and plunder the citizens of other states. nn
the best answer to this, and we should heed his wisdom
today. We need it.
The collective-security concept that so enchanted the
old (pre-1965) left sounded pretty good: Each nationstate
was viewed as if it were an individual, so that when
one state “aggressed against” another, it became the
duty of the governments of the world to step in and
punish the “aggressor.” In that way, the bitter and
lengthy war in Korea became, in President Truman’s
famous phrase, a “police action,” needing no declaration
of war but simply an executive decision by the world’s
chief cop—the president of the United States—to be
set into motion. All other “law-abiding” nations and
responsible organs of opinion were supposed to join in.
The “isolationist” right saw several grave flaws in this
notion of collective security and the analogy between
states and individuals. One, of course, is that there is
no world government or world cop, as there are national
governments and police. Each state has its own warmaking
machine, many of which are quite awesome.
When gangs of states wade into a conflict, they
inexorably widen it. Every tinpot controversy, the latest
and most blatant being the fracas in the Falkland Islands,
invites other nations to decide which of the states is
“the aggressor” and then leap in on the virtuous side.
Every local squabble thus threatens to escalate into a
global conflagration.
And since, according to collective security enthusiasts,
the United States has apparently been divinely appointed
to be the chief world policeman, it is thereby justified in
throwing its massive weight into every controversy on
the face of the globe.
Neutrality limits conflicts instead
of escalating them. Neutral states
cannot swell their power through
war and militarism, or murder and
plunder the citizens of other states.
8 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
Antieconomics is not new; even alchemy might be considered
a medieval version of the endless quest to achieve something
for nothing. It holds enduring appeal in modern politics and
academia, where communism, chartalism, Keynesianism,
and monetarism all represent twentieth century variations
on the central theme of commanding economic activity.
But today’s most visible version of antieconomics
takes the form of modern monetary theory.
MMT featured heavily in a recent flattering
profile of Professor Stephanie Kelton in the New
York Times titled “Is This What Winning Looks
Like?” “Winning” in this context refers to MMT’s
growing popular appeal, with Kelton as the public
face following her 2020 book The Deficit Myth.
Kelton’s MMT is a political and fiscal program, not a
macroeconomic theory. It argues deficits don’t matter
because money issued by a sovereign government is never
constrained (unlike resources, as Kelton admits). Thus
governments don’t “pay” for things the way individuals or
businesses do, and furthermore, public debt is actually a
private benefit to someone. The problem is not paying for
government programs, but rather identifying them—robust
public works, job guarantees, universal basic income, food
and housing, Green New Deal programs, Medicare for All,
E
conomics is about human action and choice
within the context of scarcity. The problem facing
economists is how to understand and explain
human betterment, which is another way of
saying production. The critical question, posed correctly
by economist Per Bylund, starts with scarcity as the default
point for understanding purposive human behavior.
Antieconomics,bycontrast,startswithabundanceandworks
backward. It emphasizes redistribution, not production,
as its central focus. At the heart of any antieconomics is
a positivist worldview, the assumption that individuals and
economies can be commanded by legislative fiat. Markets,
which happen without centralized organization, give way
to planning in the same way common law gives way to
statutory law. This view is especially prevalent among left
intellectuals, who view economics not as a science at all,
but rather a pseudointellectual exercise to justify capital
and wealthy business interests.
The New
Antieconomics
by Jeff Deist
Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute, where
he serves as a writer, public speaker, and advocate for
property, markets, and civil society. He previously worked
as a longtime advisor and chief of staff to Congressman
Ron Paul, for whom he wrote hundreds of articles
and speeches. In his years with Dr. Paul, he worked
with countless grassroots activists and organizations
dedicated to reducing the size and scope of government.
Jeff also spent many years as a tax attorney advising
private equity clients on mergers and acquisitions.
@jeffdeist
March ­– April 2022 | 9
etc.—and, more importantly, creating the public will to support
them politically.
In Kelton’s words, MMT “teaches us to ask not ‘How will you
pay for it?’ but ‘How will you resource it?’ It shows us that
if we have the technological know-how and the available
resources—to put a man on the moon or embark on a Green
New Deal to tackle climate change, then funding to carry
out those missions can always be made available. Coming up
with the money is the easy part.” The Deficit Myth, in sum,
is what one commenter called “a plea to use permanent
wartime mobilization for civilian ends.” Endless stimulation,
not better and cheaper production, is the goal of fiscal (or
monetary) policy.
This is antieconomics in its fullest expression. Resources
exist (from whence?); are commanded by or at least
available to the state, if not outright owned by the state
(taxes? seizure? forfeiture?); and then are put in service of
an undefined political mandate (what “we” want). Funding
is an afterthought, as the fiscal authority creates money as
needed. But in fairness to Kelton, the US federal government
in 2020 spent roughly $6.5 trillion, twice what it raised in
taxes ($3.4 trillion). In a very narrow sense, MMT “works” in
the short term for the benefit of politically favored groups.1
This is the seen. But proper economics, as Henry Hazlitt
and Frédéric Bastiat explained, requires looking at the longterm
effects of a policy on everyone. This is the unseen. For
MMTers, thevast opportunitycosts of government spending,
even when the economy is nowhere near “full employment,”
go unseen.
Perversely, media critics attacked criticisms of Kelton’s
Times feature on the grounds of sexism. She is lauded, not
surprisingly, as a rare standout in the male-dominated field of
academic economics. The attacks on her work, we are told,
come from jealous older white men (e.g., former Treasury
secretary Larry Summers) who don’t appreciate the “new”
economics she proposes and who envy the attention she has
brought not only to herself and MMT, but to the broader
push for egalitarian economic justice. Kelton, after all, served
as an economic advisor to democratic socialist presidential
candidate Bernie Sanders and supported Elizabeth Warren.
Old neoliberals like Summers, by contrast, still support the
outdated idea of fiscal constraints.
But beyond the absurd allegations of sexism—surely Kelton
knows how merciless Twitter and other platforms are to
everyone—is the more alarming suggestion that the practice
of economics is too male and needs a female version.
Economics is too adversarial, too concerned with being
right, and in need of a more collaborative (read: female)
approach. The implications of this for all social sciences, not
just economics, are staggering: we would upend the search
for knowledge to reflect a different logic between men and
women—what Mises called “polylogism.” Would this not
require an entirely new epistemology across all scientific
disciplines?
None of these diversions will allow us to escape reality.
Economics starts and ends with scarcity, an inescapable
feature of human reality. Any conception of freedom from
material and human constraints requires a posteconomics
world, either an earthly utopia or a heavenly abundance. In
our world, however rich relative to the past, scarcity is the
starting point of economic analysis. In our world, individual
human actors make “rational” choices onlywithin the context
of constraints: time, capital, intelligence, ability, health, and
location. And every choice has an opportunity cost.
Professional economics is in big trouble, and only an
aggressive new generation of Austrian-trained praxeologists
can undo the damage done by the prescriptive and political
antieconomists. nn
Endless stimulation, not better and cheaper
production, is the goal of fiscal (or monetary) policy.
This is antieconomics in its fullest expression.
1. The US government is one such favored group, given the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency coming out of the Bretton Woods
agreement, a powerful military, plentiful land and natural resources, and other economic advantages. Is MMT only a viable system for wealthy,
powerful countries?
10 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
Dr. Rainer Zitelmann is best known to the scholarly
world for his outstanding study of Adolf Hitler’s
economic ideology, now available in English
translation as Hitler’s National Socialism. Originally
written as a doctoral dissertation in 1986, it still
retains its position as the definitive work on its
subject and a remarkable academic achievement.
In his study, Zitelmann shows that Hitler believed
in a centrally planned economy, and by doing so,
Zitelmann confirms the insight of Ludwig von Mises
and Friedrich Hayek that National Socialism is a type
of socialism; though the form of private property
was to a large extent retained, control lay in the
hands of the central planners. The fundamental
antithesis between the market economy and
central planning has remained a constant theme
in Zitelmann’s work since writing his dissertation.
Zitelmann maintains that the market economy is
by far the superior of the two systems, and in The
Power of Capitalism, he applies this insight to a study
of the economic policies of a number of countries:
China, various nations of Africa, West and East
Germany, North and South Korea, Britain and the
United States, Venezuela and Chile, and Sweden.
He tells us: “The biggest error that unites socialists
of various stripes with the men and women running
the central banks is the belief that a few designated
master planners are better able to determine what
the people need than the millions of entrepreneurs,
investors and consumers whose individual decisions,
when added together, are in fact far superior to
those of any governmental planning agency, central
bank or other organ of state control.”
One of the most striking illustrations of the
superiority of capitalism is the progress of China’s
economy following the adoption of market reforms
The Power of Capitalism: A Journey through Recent
History Across Five Continents
By Rainer Zitelmann
LID Publishing, 2018
Xiv + 233 pages.
WHY SO MUCH HATE FOR THE
FREE MARKET?
DAVIDGORDON
REVIEWS
March ­– April 2022 | 11
in the 1980s. Conditions in China before then were
horrendous. Under the dictatorship of Mao Zedong,
foremost among history’s mass murderers, “the most
ambitious socialist experiment in history started with
tens of millions of farmers being forced into working
on massive irrigation projects without sufficient
food or rest.... The experiment resulted in what was
probably the worst famine—and definitely the worst
man-made famine—in human history ... [According to
one estimate] around 45 million people across China
... died prematurely between 1958 and 1962. The
majority died of starvation, while another 2.5 million
were tortured or beaten to death.” The disastrous
failure of the Great Leap Forward did not dissuade
Mao from another foray into torture and murder, the
Cultural Revolution of 1966 and the ensuing decade.
These disasters make all the more remarkable China’s
economic progress since that time. China is now
a vast and thriving market economy, albeit with
considerable government involvement. “While terms
such as ‘socialism,’ ‘economic planning,’ ‘Marxism’
and ‘Mao Zedong thought’ remain in use, they are
either rendered meaningless by contemporary
misinterpretations or assigned a new meaning in
diametric opposition to their original content. This
probably contributed greatly to the smooth transition
from a socialist planned economy to free-market
capitalism.”
One of Zitelmann’s most important contributions
in the book is his response to an argument that one
frequently hears. China today by no means adheres
strictly to the free market, a fact of which Zitelmann
is not only well aware but on which he insists, and the
same holds true of countries such as South Korea.
Why, then, should we say that the Chinese reforms
demonstrate the benefits of the free market rather
than those of a mixed system with considerable state
involvement? Branko Milanovic raises precisely this
question in Capitalism Alone, which I reviewed in the
May/June 2020 issue of The Austrian.
Zitelmann’s apt answer is that you cannot view the
economy statically but must instead probe to see
what changes when the economy progresses. If
you do so, it will be evident that the economy has
done better to the extent that the free market has
prevailed. The leading authority on the Chinese
reforms, Professor Zhang Weiying, “told [Zitelmann]
that the biggest misconception in China today is that
some politicians and economists believe that the
country’s impressive growth is the result of a special
‘Chinese way’ with a high degree of state influence.
12 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
Professor Zhang stressed to me that it is important
to understand that the Chinese economic miracle did
not happen ‘because of, but in spite of’ the sustained
influence of the state.”
American “progressives” in the style of Bernie Sanders
often point to Sweden as an example of the sort of
socialism they favor; do we not find there, Sanders
and his ilk aver, a model economy in which the poor
and middle class do far better than the bulk of the
American people? Zitelmann’s answer is forthright.
Sweden isn’t a socialist country at all; by many
measures, though not all, it has a freer economy than
America. Further, to the extent socialist measures
have been instituted, as under the leadership of the
unlamented Olaf Palme, the economy has faltered.
“Sweden stopped being a socialist country several
decades ago—if it ever was one. According to the
Heritage Foundation’s 2018 Index of Economic
Freedom ranking, Sweden is among the most marketoriented
economies worldwide.... The foundations
for Sweden’s burgeoning economic strength were
laid prior to the social democratic era, between 1870
and 1936. During this period, when Sweden still had
a free-market economy and low taxes, its economic
growth significantly exceeded that of other European
countries such as Germany, Italy or France, with
annual growth rates that were twice as high as in the
UK.”
Given the manifest superiority of the free market,
why do so many intellectuals reject it? In an insightful
chapter devoted to this question, Zitelmann mentions
Robert Nozick’s theory that intellectuals do well in
school because of their exceptional verbal abilities
but then in adult life lag behind businessmen who as
students finished below them. Entrepreneurial ability
far exceeds verbal facility in economic value, and,
Nozick argues, intellectuals resent this. Zitelmann
isn’t convinced and, like Hayek, instead stresses the
affinity of intellectuals for planning: “The failure
of many intellectuals to understand the nature of
capitalism as an economic order that emerges and
grows spontaneously is one key factor [in accounting
for their dislike of capitalism]. Unlike socialism,
capitalism isn’t a school of thought imposed on
Given the manifest superiority
of the free market, why do so
many intellectuals reject it?
March ­– April 2022 | 13
reality.... As the example of China ... shows, freemarket
capitalism largely evolves spontaneously,
growing from the bottom up rather than decreed from
above. Capitalism has grown historically in much the
same way as languages have developed over time as
the result of spontaneous and uncontrolled processes
... Socialism shares some of the characteristics of a
planned language, a system devised by intellectuals.
Having devised the system, the proponents of
socialism then attempt to gain the political power
required to put their ideas into action.
The operation of the free market results in vast
disparities of income and wealth, and this is not at
all to the liking of many leftist intellectuals, who
prefer a regime of equality. One of their number,
Thomas Piketty, takes the battle between equality and
inequality to be the key theme of history. Zitelmann,
who has made a special study of billionaires, dissents.
What is wrong with these immense fortunes? “A look
at the wealthiest people in the world shows that none
of them became rich by taking something away from
others. Rather, their entrepreneurial activities created
value for the whole of society.” He replies to Piketty
that “whether capitalism tends to raise or lower
the overall standard of living strikes me as far more
important than any putative increase in the inequality
of wealth.”
It is unlikely that the intellectuals will be swayed
by Zitelmann’s cogent arguments. One further
indictment they bring against the free market is that
it leads to economic crises. Zitelmann, examining the
financial crisis in the United States in 2007–08, puts
the blame not on the free market but on the Fed,
which artificially lowered interest rates in a way that
led to reckless lending. “Artificially low interest rates
always have undesirable side effects. Prices—including
interest rates which represent the price of money
lent—usually provide valuable information for market
participants and encourage capital to flow where it
is needed. If interest rates are kept artificially low or
even abolished (i.e, ... set to zero), this mechanism
can no longer take effect.”
Zitelmann’s incisive presentation of the case for the
free market is exemplary, and I hope that readers of
The Austrian will devote to it the attention it
merits.nn
14 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
Professor Todd Zywicki
on Winning His Battle against
Covid Mandates
Jeff Deist: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. This
is Newstalk 1040. I’m your host, Jeff Deist, and as I
mentioned, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is
doubling down on protests up in Canada, instituting a
form of martial law which allows him to suspend certain
civil liberties indefinitely to deal with these covid vaccine
protests and other things happening in Canada. So stay
tuned to that story. The CBC is reporting it today, and
isn’t it interesting how these soft, touchy-feely, kumbaya
types, these yoga types like Justin Trudeau turn out to
be the biggest authoritarians of all? So, all that said, I’ve
been looking forward to talking to our guest, law professor
from George Mason University Todd Zywicki. Professor,
welcome.
Todd Zywicki: It’s a pleasure to be with you.
JD: I really want to get into your story and everything
that’s been happening with you at George Mason over
the past year or so, but before that, can I pick your law
professor brain with some big-picture questions?
TZ: Absolutely, please.
JD: Do you feel like perhaps we’ve reached a bit of a
tipping point in the United States? We just saw the Super
Bowl, you know. Eighty thousand, no masks. Some of the
mayors and governors are backing off on their school mask
requirements. There are vaccine passport requirements for
restaurants in public places. Maybe this is political, maybe
Todd Zywicki is an American lawyer, legal scholar, and
educator. He has authored more than fifty articles
in law reviews and economics journals. He is George
Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the
Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University,
teaching in the areas of bankruptcy and contracts. He
has been an outspoken opponent of vaccine mandates
and successfully sued George Mason University over the
university’s covid mask and vaccine mandates.
14 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
@Todd Zywicki
March ­– April 2022 | 15
it’s the science that’s changed, but nonetheless, please tell
me that maybe things have tilted to our side.
TZ: It sure seems like that, Jeff. I think one of the good
things about all this is that everything they’ve done now
has failed so spectacularly that it’s like if they had admitted
defeat a little while back, when they should have, maybe
they would have lived to fight again. But basically now
everything that they’ve done just stands in such disrepute
and is discredited. It may not be that we just are winning now,
but maybe this will provide a memory for people about the
catastrophic failure of all these things—and not just packing
it in and giving up but that everything is now falling apart for
them.
JD: I’m not sure that our listeners fully appreciate the extent
to which tax-funded universities across this country, which
are full of healthy young people, by the way, still have booster
requirements in place for students. What’s the situation out
there?
TZ: It’s really appalling, Jeff. Here in Virginia, at George
Mason, where I teach, the president of the university
announced a booster requirement at 7:00 p.m. on New Year’s
Eve. The University of Virginia, where I went to law school,
the president there actually was going to give until January
20 to get a booster, but then when he found out the new
governor, Glenn Youngkin, was going to get inaugurated on
January 15, he actually moved the booster deadline up to
January 14, specifically because Youngkin had promised to
get rid of vaccine mandates here in Virginia. And fortunately,
we have this firecracker great young attorney general, Jason
Miyares, who issued about two weeks ago an opinion letter
that declared that all of the state’s booster mandates and
vaccine mandates were unconstitutional as applied to college
students.
Youngkin the day he was inaugurated repealed all booster
mandates for all state employees, including state university
employees. All college students here in private universities
and faculty are still affected by it. The people of Virginia
made it very clear that they were tired of vaccine mandates.
That’s one reason why Youngkin and Miyares and Winsome
Sears won, and to their credit, they have followed through for
faculty and students and staff here at George Mason.
JD: So, what is a young person who hasn’t been boosted
supposed to do? Are they supposed to sit alone in their dorm
and watch Zoom?
TZ: They get kicked out. Disenrolled is, I believe, how they
refer to it. The president of UVA graciously said that those
students and faculty who missed the deadline for January
14 would be permitted to remain in school now that it was
declared illegal. That’s what they did, and I’m very grateful.
I’m very proud of one of my students here at George Mason
who led the charge for the students. He made the point that
this is a bait and switch they get on these booster mandates:
they made them get vaccinated at the beginning of the year,
but then in the middle of the year they make everybody
get boosted, when it’s way too late for them to transfer to
another school. They’re basically stuck. He helped create a
lot of heat, and he was willing to sue the university, just as I
did, and the governor and the attorney general. That’s what
they were going to do, basically kick kids out of school. They
were going to kick them out of school in the middle of the
year, when they couldn’t even transfer to another school.
Really deplorable, despicable behavior from the university
administrators.
JD: Did these administrators not understand that even
before covid, the generation behind the millennials was much
smaller and they were already facing enrollment issues down
the road? Do they not get this?
TZ: Right.
JD: It’s money.
The people of Virginia made it very clear that they
were tired of vaccine mandates. That’s one reason
why Youngkin and Miyares and Winsome Sears won,
and to their credit, they have followed through
16 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
TZ: It’s money, yes. Apparently this was a thing: you pull a
bait and switch like that, you figure they’re stuck. And so,
they wait till the last second, for New Year’s Eve, and trick
the kids into coming back when they don’t have any other
choice. I guess they figured that in the short run they would
get these kids to come back, and a lot of them ended up
relenting before they got bailed out.
JD: Well, when it comes to masks, when it comes to school
lockdowns, when it comes to distancing, when it comes
to vaccine mandates, we know that Congress was not
involved in any of this. We know that state legislatures were
not involved in this. We know that there’s no public health
exception in a federal constitution. I mean, ostensibly, where
are governors and mayors and school administrators getting
their public health or police powers to do any of this?
TZ: A lot of judges were missing in action during this period.
Except for a handful of judges, mainly judges appointed by
President Trump and President Reagan, judges showed no
backbone with this. If you read the 1905 case Jacobson v.
Massachusetts there are two things that are clear. Number
one, the police power resides in the legislature of the state,
not in the governor, not in the mayor, sure as heck not in
some university president who wakes up one day and says,
“I’m going to create a vaccine mandate that is not included
as one of the vaccines under state law.” And the judges didn’t
stand up. The second thing that’s very important that people
forget, Jeff, is the famous case of Lochner v. NewYork, the
ringing defense of individual liberty in 1905. That case was
literally argued three days after Jacobson v. Massachusetts.
When the Supreme Court said in Jacobson, “You’ve got to
have a very good reason to require a vaccine and it must be
consistent with the Constitution,” that meant something
back then. After that, the Supreme Court stopped enforcing
individual liberties the same way that they did back in the
beginning of the early twentieth century. They ended up with
this horrific overreach and governors, mayors, just people
making stuff up without any respect for individual liberty.
JD: Do you think there’s a legal end game to any of this?
Are average people, like business owners who suffered, for
example, going to be able to sue anybody after all this is said
and done?
TZ: I doubt it. It’s a very good question, Jeff. We know how
they kind of rigged the system here, and what I hope is
they’ll get something and there’ll be a way of getting some
recompense for these arbitrary and horrible things that have
been done. If nothing else, it really taught us a lesson.
The Supreme Court went wobbly after Jacobson and Lochner
and stopped enforcing individual liberties. In 1927, there
was this terrible case called Buck v. Bell, which upheld a
Virginia law that allowed forced sterilization of people who
were declared to be feebleminded. Oliver Wendell Holmes
in that case famously said, “Three generations of imbeciles
are enough,” and today the Constitution allows vaccines,
certainly allows you to tie someone’s fallopian tubes.
Eventually, that led to Korematsu v. United States during
World War II. Beginning in the sixties and seventies, the
Supreme Court started putting individual liberties back in the
Constitution. Before that, you could mandate pharmaceutical
products. Then came a whole series of cases that recognized
a right to bodily autonomy, and that was what we were
raising in my lawsuit, that Jacobson isn’t the law. Jacobson
leavened by a robust protection for individual liberty
that requires the state to prove its case—that’s what the
Constitution requires. And judges who are reading Jacobson
without the appropriate protection for individual liberty were
making a mistake. And the Supreme Court kind of evaded
this whole thing, but I’m hoping the courts will step up at
some point and put these things away.
JD: It wasn’t that long ago in this country’s history that
we were incarcerating people against their will, performing
lobotomies on them, using electroshock therapy, and all
kinds of things. When we come back from the break, we’re
We know that there’s no public health exception
in a federal constitution. Where are governors and
mayors and school administrators getting their public
health or police powers to do any of this?
March ­– April 2022 | 17
going to hear more about Professor Zywicki’s lawsuit against
his employer over vaccine mandates. It’s really a hell of a
story, and it’s an important one because we need people
sticking their necks out, folks, because if it’s not covid, it’s
going to be the next thing, the next rationale, the next excuse
for government to overreach. That’s what governments do.
[BREAK]
JD: Going back to 2021, Professor, you decided to sue your
university when they imposed a vaccine requirement on
faculty such as yourself. So, take us through that. Why did
you choose to do so?
TZ: Yes, well, the story goes back even further than that. I
was an early adopter of covid. I actually had covid the first
week of March 2020. I was in New York City the last weekend
of February, and a few days after that, I had these very weird
symptoms. At the time I couldn’t get a test (if you recall,
there were no tests), but I was pretty sure that I had it.
I volunteered to teach in person in the fall of 2020, even
though I’m a little bit older, because I figured this is my job.
My job is to be a professor and be in the classroom with my
students, and I told myself, I think I had covid anyway. I got
an antibodies test, it came back positive, and so I volunteered
to teach in person, taught in person the whole year—most of
the other faculty at the university wouldn’t teach in person.
They went to their vacation homes and other such places. I
taught the entire year, got done at the end of the year, and
then they said, “Well, you have to get vaccinated.” I found
an immunologist, went and got my antibodies test, and it
confirmed my antibodies level at the time was comparable
to somebody who had just been vaccinated. And the
immunologist said, “You don’t need to get vaccinated and
it would be dangerous for you to get vaccinated because
there’s heightened risk to somebody who has already had
covid and has antibodies levels that are very high like yours.”
I asked the university not to make me get vaccinated, to
recognize natural immunity, and they basically told me to
pound sand. So the next time I contacted them was with
my lawyers in the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and we filed a
lawsuit saying that the mandate violated my constitutional
rights to make me get vaccinated when I had demonstrable
evidence of natural immunity. I ended up getting granted
a medical exemption that applied only to me, but that kind
of initiated the case. And to your point, one of the things I
wanted to do was to raise this issue by trying to get people
to focus on this question of what is legitimate with respect
to vaccine mandates and the like, although it’s pretty clear.
It was completely clear at that time already that natural
immunity was at least as protective as vaccines and even
more protective, more durable, more protective against
variants and the like.
JD: What were the constitutional claims you made in your
suit?
TZ: The main one was just simply a right to bodily autonomy;
the Supreme Court has recognized that in order to force
somebody to undergo a medical procedure, it must not only
be necessary—to prevent infection and transmission—but it
must also benefit the individual. And in this case, there was
nothing but harm that could come to me, and so, we argued
a right to bodily autonomy and also an unconstitutional
condition that they were placing on my ability to work as a
state employee, to continue to do this. But the main part was
the claim that I had an individual liberty, a right to be free
from unnecessary incursion on my bodily autonomy.
JD: Now, you were a sole plaintiff in this case, and when the
university granted you an exemption, presumably the case
was scuttled and you would lose any standing to continue it.
TZ: That’s exactly what happened; once they granted me the
medical exemption, my case went away, but one of the things
I was hoping to do with my case was to provide a template
for other people, and fortunately, the case was picked up by
a woman named Jeanna Norris, up in Michigan State. This
case is even crazier than mine. She was a state employee at
Michigan State University whose job was 100 percent remote,
and they wanted her to get vaccinated or get tested. The
18 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
only time she would have ever actually had to go to campus
was to get tested. And that case is still percolating through
the system. There was actually a summary judgment hearing
just last Friday; the judge was hearing her motion on this
claim for substantive due process for a violation of her bodily
autonomy with respect to Michigan State’s vaccine mandate.
So, she picked up the case and the New Civil Liberties
Alliance has done great work moving this issue forward.
JD: When you went out and retained the lawyers from the
New Civil Liberties Alliance, part of their job was to make hay
of the case, to get some press surrounding it. I’m sure your
university would have liked if it had been a quiet granting of
an exemption, but instead the New Civil Liberties Alliance
trumpets this in a press release, which is, I think, their due.
Talk about that. I mean you were trying to do something here
beyond simply get yourself an exemption.
TZ: Yes, I was, Jeff. I was trying to do more than just get it.
I could have just applied for an exemption and quietly gone
away, but it’s time to take a stand. The New Civil Liberties
Alliance, I found them because they challenged some of the
lockdowns in some of the states, and I saw this as a moment.
In fact, I was just listening to Dave Smith on Joe Rogan’s
podcast making an observation that you apparently made to
him: that in the middle of a revolution, you don’t know that
the revolution is ongoing. But I felt like we were in the middle
of a revolution. I felt this was a moment that somebody had
to stand in the breach, that somebody had to stand up, and
why not me, a tenured professor? I understand the law. I was
the right plaintiff because I understood the immunology and
antibodies levels and nobody else was willing to stand.
We would have loved to have other plaintiffs in the case, but
nobody else was willing to step forward at the time. I was
the only one at George Mason University who was willing to
raise my voice and call attention to the larger issue of vaccine
mandates. We picked the natural immunity issue because it
seemed like the crispest way to punch a hole in this wall of
judicial reticence to be willing to consider individual liberty
claims. And this was the right case, I think I was the right
plaintiff, and the university managed to get it to go away.
JD: Well, I think it’s so important that public interest law
outfits exist because, as you mentioned, you’re politically
sophisticated, a legally knowledgeable law prof, you have
tenure. But in a lot of these universities, there are people
affected who simply do maintenance at the university and
have a very low salary and feel like they wouldn’t have the
ability to prosecute a lawsuit against a big state school. I
I was just listening to Dave Smith on Joe Rogan’s
podcast making an observation that you apparently
made to him: that in the middle of a revolution,
you don’t know that the revolution is ongoing. But
I felt like we were in the middle of a revolution.
March ­– April 2022 | 19
know some universities, virtually all universities, deal with the
federal government in some manner. In other words, it may
be that their scientist gets some federal grants and, all of a
sudden, they become federal contractors and the guy who
cuts the grass has to get a vaccine.
TZ: Yes, and that’s one of the ways in which the universities
in red states have gotten around state orders to oppose
vaccines on their own. They say, “Well, now you have to do it
because we are federal contractors.” Of course, they don’t
try very hard to push back because what you get are these
politically correct, scared university administrators who
basically want to be able to do this, and they’re at odds with
the political environment of their own state even though
they’re state universities. So, they see this as a way of endrunning
what they’ve been told to do by the elected officials
in their state.
JD: Final question for you. Did the Biden administration or
any administrations, OSHA, have even colorable authority
to set up the employer mandate? Does the TSA have even a
colorable authority to insist on masks on airplanes?
TZ: I haven’t looked at the TSA issue. The OSHA mandate was
junk and it’s kind of shocking; it shows you how bad it is that
there were a couple of Supreme Court justices who actually
thought it could be valid, but there was no serious evidence,
no serious claim that this could be a workplace hazard. What
it turned into was a general assertion, a general police power
by the federal government. I mean, if the OSHA case had
gone the wrong way, then that would have been the end of
our government of enumerated powers on the federal level.
JD: Yes, it really goes to show you that the administrative
state is real and Garet Garrett was right when he was talking
about this, right after the Great Depression, right after all
the legislation of the 1930s, where farmers were bought off,
rugged individuals with farm subsidies, and we really began—
what I consider, anyway—the modern managerial state.
Professor, I want to thank you for sticking your neck out and
doing this because I think it’s really important.
TZ: Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate your time.
[BREAK]
JD: Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, law
professor Todd Zywicki giving his story about his university
trying to cancel him for not getting a vaccine, even though
he had already had a case of covid back in March of 2020
and through testing was able to demonstrate significant
antibodies to the virus and went back to teaching in
person. Nonetheless he was at risk of losing his job as a law
professor, which takes a hell of a lot of years of law school,
then practicing, then becoming a professor, and then making
your way to tenure and publishing all kinds of articles and
such. He was at risk of losing what he’d worked for all those
many years over a vaccine he didn’t want to get. So thank
goodness he prevailed. He was given an exemption by his
employer, a medical exemption, quietly and was allowed to
continue.
So many people don’t have the ability to reach out and find
a lawyer or find a law firm willing to take their case and push
back against this, so we really need people who are in a
position to do so to push back. We’ve seen medical doctors
20 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
canceled, kicked out of prestigious positions: Aaron Kheriaty
at UC Irvine, for example, was fired by that university for
his position on mandates. We have Jay Bhattacharya at
Stanford, who has basically been ostracized on campus
and by his colleagues. People stapled photos of him with a
little description of a covid denier on telephone poles. And
while I certainly wouldn’t relate any of what’s been going
on with covid to some of the authoritarianism we’ve seen
in the twentieth century from communism and fascism
and Nazism—in China, in the early part of the century in
the former Russia, then the Soviet Union, and places like
Cambodia and Vietnam—nonetheless I would say it comes
from the same impulse, the same authoritarian impulse, so
that it differs in degree more than it does in kind.
And so, what we’re seeing today in real time is Justin Trudeau
acting in an authoritarian manner, up in nice-guy Canada—
the nicest country on earth, Canada, showing its true colors.
And lots of people support Trudeau; lots of Canadians
voted for him. We see these trucker protests on TV and we
like to think—we can’t know, but we like to think that they
represent maybe a silent majority of people, or of Canadians,
anyway. Maybe that isn’t the case. Maybe a majority of
Canadians really believe in what Trudeau’s doing and think we
ought to shut down society over what is really a pretty easily
survivable virus for the vast majority of the population.
When it came to constitutional jurisprudence, it used to be
the Left that worried about people’s civil liberties. It used
to be liberal Supreme Court justices who said, “You know,
when the state is going to come in and require you to do
something intensely personal—let’s say, something having
to do with your bodily autonomy—when the state’s going to
come in and forbid you from having an abortion, for example,
if you’re a woman who happens to be pregnant, it needs
to show a really compelling state interest.” In other words,
there are levels of constitutional scrutiny depending on what
exactly the government is suggesting that you must do. Now
covid comes along and government starts suggesting all
kinds of things. Well, it suggests or, in many cases, locally
and at the state level, requires you to wear a mask. What’s
the harm from that? I don’t know that there’s all that much
harm if you just wear it for a little while, but it’s intensely
personal. There’s definitely a bodily element to that. So what
level of legal scrutiny ought an order like that be subjected
to, assuming that the issuer of that order even has the
authority, which I think in this case they did not, at the state
and local level? Let’s say that they come along and say that
your business or your school or your music venue or your
movie theater or your sporting event venue or your church
or synagogue or mosque has to be shut down and you have
to stay home. What level of constitutional scrutiny ought that
be considered against?
And then, finally, what if they come along and say you have
to get a vaccine? You need to inject something into your
body, a medical treatment, and if you don’t—well, at least
at this point—we’re not going to come along and physically
round you up and put you in jail, but we’re going to prevent
you from doing all kinds of things. And in many countries
across the West, or at least what we think of as Western,
Magna Carta countries, places like New Zealand, Australia,
and Austria, there literally have been police going around
in public settings and checking people’s phones because in
these more advanced countries, they don’t have a cardboard
card from the CDC. They have all this digitized, checking
your phones to make sure you have a vaccine passport, proof
March ­– April 2022 | 21
of vaccination, which allows you to be out and about, going
about your life. That’s really something. Presumably under
our constitution, that would require a pretty high degree of
scrutiny. In other words, that would require a compelling
state interest to justify that.
And I know a lot of folks would say, “Well, covid is just that,
Jeff. It’s a compelling state interest because gosh darn it, if
you’re all out there just walking around breathing, exhaling
is now aggression and you’re spreading covid. How dare
you? If you’re not vaccinated, you’re spreading covid, you’re
shedding covid. You’re responsible for the variants.” We
heard all these arguments, and we’re not hearing them so
much anymore because, of course, the rate of infection
and the rate of spread among vaccinated people turn out to
be pretty similar. But we didn’t always know that. So there
was a lot of rhetoric. There was a lot of demonization. It
took really strong form and shape, again, in some Western,
Magna Carta countries—like in Canada, like in New Zealand,
like in Australia—countries where we thought we basically
had the rule of law before you shut people down and kept
them to their homes. Before you could do this, you’d have
to have some level of due process, some showing by some
administrative agency of individualized harm if that person’s
business were open or if that school were open or if these
people were allowed to go to work as normal.
And of course, we know in big countries it would be virtually
impossible, as a logistical matter, for any administrative body
or any court of law to show individualized harm for millions
and millions of people who just wanted to go about their
daily lives. To consider each case individually on its merits
would be impossible. So, governors, mayors, presidents,
prime ministers, etc., issue these overreaching orders, and
people go along with them. And at the end of the day, what
people go along with, that’s really the law. There’s actually
a famous book by a man called Karl Llewellyn called The
Bramble Bush. It’s one of the first things many law students
read, and one of the great lines I carried away from that
is “Where there is no sanction, there is no law.” And what
that means, essentially, is that the law is what authorities do
about things. So, if you’re driving down the freeway and it’s
posted 65 miles per hour but everybody’s going about 75 and
the police start pulling people over around 76 miles an hour,
then the de facto, the real speed limit is 75 miles an hour.
And that applies in the other direction: when governments do
things and we just accept them, then that becomes the new
de facto law, up and until we begin to resist or push back.
That’s the limit of law, not what’s on the books, not what’s
in the Constitution, not what’s written down anywhere. And
certainly, as we’ve seen this time around, not what’s voted
on by Congress or any state legislature. Really very few city
councils voted on any of this, so the so-called legislative
branch of government, as usual, took a back seat to the
unitary executive branch of government and allowed school
supervisors, school principals, university presidents, smalltown
mayors, small-town city administrators, and, in many
cases, governors and, in a few cases, the president of the
United States, to issue executive edicts—I wouldn’t even call
them executive orders because an executive order has more
of a legal form to it which has been recognized by courts—
and they went unchallenged.
Most people just went along with them. They complied, and
they didn’t sue or do anything else. They certainly didn’t do
what these truckers up in Canada have been doing, which is
putting their own livelihoods, their own property, their own
time, their own comfort, and perhaps their own freedom,
if they’re jailed, on the line. So that’s the difference. Where
there is no sanction, there is no law, and this lawlessness,
folks, goes both ways. Citizens can be lawless, but
governments can be lawless too. And if covid teaches us
anything, it’s that the last couple of years we have seen what
lawless government really looks like. That’s anarchy, when
the organization in society which is given a monopoly on the
use of force, to lord it over all the rest of us—which has the
police and the jails and the fines at its disposal—exceeds the
law, ignores the law, evades the law. Then we’ve got a real
problem in society.
So, people like Todd Zywicki are blazing a path for other
people to sue and push back and be successful in regaining
some of their freedoms and rolling back some of this
government overreach that we’ve been suffering under the
last couple years, since covid—especially since covid, I should
say. nn
Citizens can be lawless, but
governments can be lawless too.
And if covid teaches us anything,
it’s that the last couple of years
we have seen what lawless
government really looks like.
22 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
Remembering Murray
This year marks twenty-seven years since we lost Murray, but we
continue to benefit from his genius. Not only do his great works
on economic theory, history, and political philosophy continue
to be consumed by aspiring young scholars around the world, but we
continue to add new Rothbardian material to our online library.
There may never be another Murray Rothbard, but
the Rothbardian tradition has never been stronger.
Help celebrate Murray’s birthday with a pocket
edition of Man, Economy, and State. Everyone who
makes a donation of $30 or more will receive one.
All donations will fund student scholarships.
Donate online at mises.org/murray or use the form
on the back cover of this issue.
March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995
March ­– April 2022 | 23
Non Omnis Moriar*
*“Not all of me shall die.”
It was a shock to learn last night that my dear
friend Paul Cantor had passed away. He was a great
Shakespeare scholar and in Shakespeare’s Rome
and Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy he showed that
Shakespeare had a profound knowledge of the
reasons for the rise and fall of the Roman Republic.
In the latter book, he compared Shakespeare’s
interpretation of Christianity to Nietzsche’s. I had
a long message from him on January 5 about this
book, discussing a review of it that I planned to
write. He was also a leading authority on popular
culture. He was for many years professor of English
at the University of Virginia, and he also taught at
Harvard.
Paul attended Ludwig von Mises’s seminar while
he was in high school, he had a life-long interest
in Austrian economics. In 2006, he gave a series
of lectures on Literature, Commerce, and Culture,
at the Mises Institute and often spoke at our
conferences. He lectured without notes, quoting
in several languages, with a flowing, eloquent
delivery. He pioneered in the application of Austrian
economics to literature.
He was also a fan of
pro wrestling, and now I
will never again be able
to go over with him his
recollections of matches
in Madison Square
Garden in the 1960s. “I
shall not look upon his
like again.”
I am sorry to have to report the death of another
old friend, Gary North, who passed away a few days
after his eightieth birthday. He was, by training, an
economic historian and had a strong commitment
to Austrian economics. He greatly admired Mises
and Rothbard. He once asked Mises how he had
been able to publish his famous article of 1920
on socialist calculation in a journal edited by Max
Weber. Mises answered, “Well, I knew him, and I
sent it in.” Gary wrote a notable study of Marx,
Marx’s Religion of Revolution and a long and learned
commentary on biblical economics. He was also a
founder of the Christian Reconstruction movement,
along with his father-in-law, R.J. Rushdoony.
He was on Ron Paul’s staff in 1976, and he and Dr.
Paul were close friends. For many years, he spoke
at Mises Institute conferences, and he was the best
debater I have ever heard. In his speaking style, he
was highly organized and relentless, but he was in
conversation kind and friendly. When I saw him at
conferences, we would exchange stories of the old
days. Now, alas, I cannot do that anymore.
Paul
Cantor
(1945–2022)
Gary
North
(1942–2022)
by David Gordon
24 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
Last Call for Free Copies
mises.org/onelesson
Thanks to our generous donors who sponsored our
special Mises Institute edition.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to get free copies for your schools,
book clubs, local libraries, employees, econ classes, grandchildren, etc.
This classic is a must-read for everyone who wants to properly think about
economics.
WE HAVE ALREADY GIVEN AWAY OVER
90,000 COPIES OF THIS GREAT WORK!
20 | The Austrian | Vol. 7, No. 1
Special Entrepreneurship Issue
Quarterly Journal of
austrian economics
Last year saw online interest in the Mises
Institute’s flagship scholarly journal, the
Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics,
spike to record highs with the special
double issue on entrepreneurship.
Guest edited by Professor Per Bylund,
this issue suggested directions for future
research and collaboration within Austrian
economics and in the scholarship
of entrepreneurship. The contributions
offered a multitude of perspectives on
a broad set of entrepreneurship-related
issues. Quoting from Bylund’s introduction,
“The articles…address directions
for further expansion beyond the present
boundaries of Austrian economics
and entrepreneurship theory. This…issue
includes articles that open new lines of
thinking for Austrian economists with an
interest in entrepreneurship as well as for
entrepreneurship scholars with an interest
in Austrian economics.”
Some of the topics discussed:
• Richard Cantillon’s impact on our understanding
of the term “entrepreneur”
• Extending Austrian economic theory into
the realm of the individual “economy”
• The role of original ideas and inspiration
in the entrepreneurial process
• Carl Menger’s observation that value is
subjective, a missing piece of the puzzle
in entrepreneurship theory
• The development of a typology to assist
organizational scholars in applying core
Austrian insights
• The importance of the Austrian emphasis
on time in entrepreneurship
• A praxeological definition of the Misesian
entrepreneur-promoter
• Extending the subjectivist approach to
team entrepreneurship
• The central role of institutions in both
new institutional economics and Austrian
economics
This special issue set records in QJAE metrics
on the Scholastica journal publishing
site, with a daily article download record
nearly twice as high as the next most popular
issue, and a record daily number of
unique site visitors as well.
You can read or download the special
double issue, and other past issues of the
QJAE, at: mises.org/QJAEarchives nn
23,000 COMPANIES
MATCH GIFTS...
DOES YOURS?
Let your company double or triple
your impact!
Many employers sponsor matching gift programs and
will match any charitable contributions made by their
employees. To find out if your company has a matching
gift policy, please visit matchinggifts.com/mises or
check with your HR department to find out if your gift
to the Mises Institute can be matched.
20 | The Austrian | Vol. 7, No. 1
January ­– February 2022 | 25March ­– April 2022 | 25
Lew Rockwell Jeff DeistDavid StockmanJames Grant
and
more!
40th Anniversary
Supporters
Summit
PHOENIX | OCTOBER 6–8, 2022
2022 marks 40 years since Lew Rockwell founded the
Mises Institute with the blessing of Margit von Mises, the
first chairman of the Institute’s board. An enthusiastic
Dr. Murray Rothbard was soon enlisted as the our first
academic vice president.
You don’t want to miss our 40th anniversary gala
celebration this October at the beautiful Arizona
Biltmore hotel—set against a spectacular fall
background in the Valley of the Sun. We will enjoy a
weekend of fellowship and fun, celebrating the growth
and popularity of the Austrian school while critically
assessing the future. Scholarship, conversation,
socializing, dining, outdoor activities, and world-class
accommodations will all be part of a weekend which is
sure to be a highlight of the year.
Jeff Deist and Lew Rockwell will host, along with very
special guests including James Grant, David Stockman,
and more to be announced. Several of the great
economists and thinkers affiliated with the Institute will
also join us.
The event opens with a special dinner Thursday evening,
October 6, and continues through the evening of
Friday, October 7. For those who wish to stay for social
activities on Saturday, we will have a delicious brunch
and tours.
We have a special group rate of $319/night at the lovely
Arizona Biltmore, a Waldorf Astoria Resort. To book call
(800) 950-0086 to speak directly with a reservations
agent. The cut off date for the special rate is September
6. You can register for this event online at misese.org/
events or call us at 334.321.2100.
Are you interested in being listed on the Host Committee
and invited to VIP receptions with Lew and all our
speakers?
If you can’t join us, you can
sponsor a student to attend
this special event. For more
information, please contact
Kristy Holmes at kristy@
mises.org or 334.321.2101.
26 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
Mises Meetup
Tampa
Is Florida Free(r)?
Florida’s fight against the biomedical security
state was the focus of our meetup at the
beautiful Tampa Club on February 19.
Jeff Deist noted in his introductory remarks that the
era of covid tyranny has highlighted the importance of
state and local control. At a time when there has been a
great migration of Americans from lockdown states to
freer ones, we are seeing the concept of “voting with
your feed” play out in a vivid way.
Speakers in Tampa spoke on the future of Florida and
its significance going forward. Tho Bishop looked
at the rise of Governor Ron DeSantis and the future
prospects for Florida politics. Mike Maharrey of the
Tenth Amendment Center outlined the ways in which
the last few years have magnified the continued
importance of federalism as a bulwark against federal
tyranny. Dr. Patrick Newman offered his analysis of
economic prospects and the impact of migration
on inflation pressures in the state. Journalist Jordan
Schachtel offered his perspective as a DC national
security reporter who fled the Beltway and has
reported extensively on the cronyism embedded within
Big Pharma and the Fauci regime.
This event was made possible thanks to the
generosity of the Shrader family and Liberty
Villages! nn
26 | The Austrian | Vol. 8, No. 2
APRIL 2
Mises Meetup
The Covid Endgame
Birmingham, AL
MAY 14
Mises Meetup
Everything About Money
with Dr. Robert Murphy
Orlando, FL
JUNE 5–10
Rothbard Graduate
Seminar 2022
Auburn, AL
JULY 24–30
Mises University 2022
Auburn, AL
SEPTEMBER 15–16
Libertarian Scholars
Conference 2022
OCTOBER 6–8
4oth Anniversary
Supporters Summit
Phoenix, AZ
NOVEMBER 5
Mises Meetup
Nashville, TN
March ­– April 2022 | 27
Mises Institute
at CPAC
Conservative Political Action
Conference for the Mises Institute
is not about political activism, but
an occasion to meet people who
engage with ideas from varied
backgrounds. Every year we have
a booth stocked with handouts of
free reading material to spread our views.
This year CPAC went to Orlando, Florida, and Wire editor
Tho Bishop, our man on the ground, met conservative
students and activists from around the country. Tho
was able to converse with sitting members of Congress,
congressional staffers, candidates, and even members
of the European Parliament about what policies can be
pursued to return to sound money.
The free handouts of most interest to the attendees were
Ron Paul’s The Dollar Dilemma and Murray Rothbard’s
Nations by Consent. Students, parents, and homeschooling
groups showed interest in our Economics for Beginners
video series and also took hundreds of copies of Economics
in One Lesson with them to distribute to inquiring minds.
The shadow of war in Eastern Europe and inflation were
some of the topics of most interest, leading to serious
conversations about gold, bitcoin, and the devastating
consequences of the Federal Reserve’s reckless policies
nn
Student scholarships available for all
events. See mises.org/events for details.
Tho Bishop
UPCOMING EVENTS
MARK YOUR CALENDAR!
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