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for today's podcast I am reading the text of two essays I wrote recently. The first was published on May 18th and it discusses the current state of Jaffier Milei's economic experiment in Argentina. The second article is an essay in honor of Murray Rothbard, which is my contribution to the book Rothbard at 100 A Tribute and Assessment. This is a collection of essays in honor of Murray Rothbard on his centenary, edited by Professor Hans Hermann Hoppe and Stefan Kinsella, to be published in July from the Safe House and Papignon Press. Go to the safehouse.com that's the safe s aif house.com to order your cloth hardcover for worldwide delivery. Also, we will be holding a conference in honor of Rothbard in Porto in Portugal on June 27th. Tickets are free, but you must register, so go to Rothbard 100 pt. That's Rothbard 100 pt and book your spot now and I look forward to seeing you there. Javier Milei's Austrian Scam by the numbers May 18, 2026 As a libertarian, anarchist and Austrian school economist, I was interested in following the election of the first president in the world who professed to share my ideas. He said a lot of the right things on TV and his radical policies seemed similar to what I would want implemented. After 30 months of close observation, I can confidently say Javier mine's policy bear no resemblance to what an Austrian economist would do, and he has used Austrian economics as a cover to run one of the most inflationary presidencies in Argentina's highly inflationary history. Predictably, and in light of the most recent inflation and growth data, it is now safe to call Milei's presidency a failure on all the important Questions, ignoring inconsequential rhetoric. Milei has been just another Latin American inflationist demagogue, selling his citizens pipe dreams financed through inflation and debt that will burden and impoverish them for generations. In the 30th month of his presidency, when the seed of economic recovery planted early in the term should be bearing fruit, prices continue to rise, economic activity is declining and the unsustainable government debt Ponzi is larger than ever, suggesting much more pain to come. The never ending inflation the biggest promise broken by Milei was the promise of closing the central bank, which he claimed was non negotiable during his election campaign and is the Austrian position. He had a clear mandate from his voters to do this, but he chose not to and shifted to City Chicago. Keynesian nonsense about managing the money supply and reviving the peso. Milei had promised to dollarize the economy, which would have been a great move for Argentina because as bad as the dollar is, it is superior to any currency issued by an Argentine central bank. The promise of dollarization was also broken in favor of what Milei termed free competition in currency. A ridiculous idea when the central bank still maintains a monopoly on banking licenses and mandates that banks use the peso and hold government bonds. By keeping the central bank and maintaining its monopoly over currency issuance and banking licensing, Milei guaranteed a continuation of peso inflation, forcibly impoverishing Argentina. The proof is in the pudding. March consumer price index rose 3.4% in one month, an annualized rate of 49%. And that's using the government's obsolete basket. This was the 10th consecutive month in which the rate of price inflation has risen. And it makes Argentina the country with the fourth highest price inflation rate in the world, behind only Venezuela, South Sudan and Iran. After two and a half years in office. This is Milei's inflation and it is hollow to blame it on his predecessors. Prices are not a perpetual motion machine that cannot be stopped once unleashed. Price rises are the consequence of the increase in the money supply. And if the central bank stops increasing the money supply, rapidly sustained price rises become impossible. After Ecuador and El Salvador dollarized in 2000 and 2001 respectively, high consumer price inflation practically ended as a problem. Consumer price inflation is now in the same range as America's in the single digits, far from ideal, but far further from the usual Latin American rates, which Argentina continues to suffer. Had Milei gone through with dollarization or liberalization of the central bank, inflation would already be part of Argentina's history. By keeping the central bank monopoly and not dollarizing Milei has ensured it is in Argentina's future. The excuse that the currency and banking system were in bad shape and that dollarization would have been too painful rings especially hollow after two and a half years of continued inflation and economic deterioration that shows no signs of abating. While El Salvador's inflation was low before it dollarized and its transition was smooth, Ecuador's dollarization followed a currency and banking collapse. So it is more relevant to Argentina. After Ecuador's calamitous currency and banking collapses, and after a period of adjustment to dollarization and price controls, high, high price inflation was eliminated after two and a half years. Without a national currency, the Ecuadorian central bank could not create hyperinflation even if it wanted to. In all likelihood, whatever pains dollarization would have entailed for Argentina would have been over by now and the benefits of eliminating inflation would be evident. But the path Milei chose has been delivering pain for two and a half years, and it promises to deliver a lot more. Ominously, when April's monthly CPI number came out at 2.6%, 31% annualized, Milei tweeted triumphantly that it is a return to normal. Given that a year ago he was celebrating the rate dropping below 2%, he seems to be conditioning people to view prices rising permanently by around 20% a year as the new normal. Given what he has been doing to the money supply, 20% seems optimistic. Quadrupling the money supply Price inflation is merely the manifestation of inflation that the economically ignorant can see. Those who understand economics know inflation is made in the central bank, not in the supermarket. Milei's money creation has been evident from his first few months in office, when which which saw a money supply growth that is too large to be believable even by Argentina's own lofty standards. After 30 months in office, here are the total increases in money supply aggregates, along with their compound monthly and annual growth rates, as well as the change in the consumer price index. Money supply aggregates have quadrupled or tripled in a mere 29 months at a compound monthly growth rate of around 5%, an astonishing achievement for any inflationist, let alone one pretending to be a Rothmardian. Consumer prices have also tripled over the same period, also increasing at a monthly compound rate of 5%. Whether looking at money supply metrics or price increases, the Milei presidency has so far been outstanding in its inflationism, even by Argentine standards. Milei has so far delivered a higher annual growth rate in the monetary base than his four predecessors and a higher annual growth rate in the Consumer Price Index than three of the four predecessors. Now for a quick word from our sponsors.
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The $71 billion new debt Milei had promised to fight Argentina's chronic indebtedness, but he has instead increased it and in the process made Argentina the IMF's primary borrower, accounting for around 35% of its total lending portfolio. When he took over, Argentina had a massive debt burden of $423 billion and that number has increased by $71 billion to $494 billion bond the end of last month. After 29 months, Milei has increased the total Argentine debt by 17% even though the currency has been devalued by around 70% since he took over. In other words, by merely devaluing the currency, Milei reduced the dollar value of the peso that he inherited by 70%, from around $159 billion to around $47 billion. And yet, by continuing to issue more high interest peso debt, the total dollar value of peso debt has reached $233 billion, meaning Milei has presided over a $185 billion increase in high interest peso debt in just two and a half years. This is the fuel for the Argentine carry trademark, the cancer killing Argentina. The biggest victory Milei's supporters continue to claim is that he has balanced the government's budget. But that seems to be the result of creative accounting as the national debt continues to increase. The most obvious way this paradox is resolved is by realizing that the exorbitant interest the government pays on the LICAP bonds is not counted as part of the government's expenditures. By ignoring the interest burden and the rollover risk of the peso debt complex, the fiscal surplus means little further. A free market approach to government spending is not just about balancing the budget for its own sake. It is also about freeing the economy from the shackles of government monopolies and freeing critical institutions from the stranglehold of state control which prevents them from operating productively and profitably to serve people. Milei's regime continues to enforce status monopolies in education, healthcare and infrastructure, but is now depriving them of financing, causing the destruction of essential institutions and the continuous degradation of the country. The correct libertarian and Austrian choice would be to liberalize these institutions and allow them to fend for themselves. Without government protection, the productive parts of these institutions would be rewarded on the market, whereas the unproductive parts would disappear by cutting spending on the critical infrastructure that cannot prove itself in the free competitive market, while continuing to pay tens of billions of dollars every year as interest to the bankers and hedge funds. Playing the Argentine Carry Trade Milei is teaching a generation of people worldwide that libertarianism is about degrading the critical infrastructure and institutions on which the vast majority of society depends on in favor of enriching the richest who can afford to play the government's Ponzi. The quarter trillion dollar carry trade Ponzi. As I explained in a previous piece, the carry trade is not merely an inconvenience or a minor problem enriching a few Argentines at the expense of the majority. This monetary Russian roulette has practically become the main industry in Argentina and its continued survival. Hoovers up ever more Argentine capital and away from productive activities. In a country whose total stock market capitalization is around $90 billion, the carry trade constitutes around $233 billion of investment, all placed into buying government Ponzi bonds at exorbitant interest rates, which the government can only pay back through printing obscene amounts of pesos. In less than two and a half years in office, Meli has added more than two entire Argentine stock markets worth of capital and into the government's bonds Ponzi scheme, which if it survives a few more months, admittedly a big if, should hit the quarter trillion dollar milestone. This carry trade will of course end in a painful collapse for many latecomers and long term bondholders. But just because it will generate a bad long term outcome does not mean there is any short term upside. In the short term, the carry trade has hollowed out the Argentine economy of productive capital, causing an overwhelming number of businesses to shut down and jobs to be destroyed. While the Argentine stock market is one of the worst performing in the region and the world. Why invest in actual productive businesses when you can just gamble on the carry Trade and make 2 to 3% return per month? In two years, industrial production in Argentina is down 7.9% and the industrial sector is running at 53.6% of capacity. Which makes sense when you consider that very few industries can compete with the returns of investing in the carry trade bond Ponzi. In February alone, the Argentine economy shrank an incredible 2.6%. Unemployment is up to 7.5%, a 1.1% increase on when Milei took office. Had he implemented real reforms, the short term pain would have subsided by now, inflation would be over and growth would be booming. Instead, it seems there's no end to the pain as the carry trade eats everything. The longer this goes on, the more Argentina loses its productive businesses, dedeveloping from a modern industrialized economy into an impoverished primitive economy where only connected financial speculators can live well while everyone else struggles for scraps. The sooner the carry trade collapses and the better. If the problem with socialism is that eventually it runs out of other people's money, the problem with Milayism is that it doesn't, as it always finds more lenders to indulge and magnify it. The carry trade has been bolstered by dozens of billions of dollars so far from the imf, idb, World bank and most recently the US treasury, which straight up bought pesos to prop up the exchange rate and rescue Argentines from from breaking out of the carry trade debt slavery, costing them tens of billions of dollars a year. By keeping the peso artificially high, the bailouts ensure the continuation of the carry trade, directing more capital to the government, depriving the productive private sector of capital and destroying jobs. It will also necessitate more money creation to pay the bonds, inevitably leading to more price inflation. The bailout did, however, save the parasite hedge funds, making absurd returns from Argentine debt slavery. When justifying Milei's unhinged support for Israel and its mass murder and theft of the goyim it rules and views as subhuman, some of Milei's fans concede the criminality but invoke the necessity. By currying favor with the Zionist genocidal regime and its American puppets, Milei can get favorable deals from the US and international financial institutions to help Argentina's recovery. This is a catastrophe as bad financially as it is morally. As long as foreigners bail out Milei's Ponzi, Argentine capital will continue to flow to government bonds and actual capital will leave or be destroyed as the country is de industrialized and decapitalized. The 1000 times Libra milei also ran on a platform of fighting the corrupt ruling caste in Argentina and ending their corruption and pilfering of funds. Instead, he has presided over a long series of scandals implicating him, his sister and their close associates and allies in a wide variety of corruption schemes, most notably the Libra scam coin case, which serves as a perfect microcosm of the scam that is Milei's presidency. Milei promoted Libra on Twitter, saying it would support the growth of the Argentine economy and entrepreneurs and small businesses. As Milei's fans bought it up, the scammers behind Libra created a massive number of them, dumped them on the market, destroying the currency's value, rugging the suckers who bought it, making off with tens of millions of dollars and allegedly paying Milei a hefty commission. Similarly, Milei promoted his presidency as a way to grow Argentina and save it from inflation and socialism. As Milei fans bought into his scheme, the scammers behind the peso created a massive number of them, dumped them on the market to fund their carry trade scam, destroying the Argentine economy, rugging the Argentine people and making off with tens of billions of dollars. It remains to be seen whether Milei will get a hefty commission or if he's just doing all this for the love of being called president. Austrian economics and libertarianism are to the peso what decentralization and small Businesses are to library the marketing used to lure unsuspecting rubes into the affinity scam. The peso scam is around 1,000 times larger than the Libra scam and its victims are the poorest 95% of Argentines, not just random meme coin trader degens. As the peso continues to be destroyed to keep the bankrupt government afloat, the entire Argentine economy is being destroyed. If international bailouts allow this larceny to continue for a few more years, government bonds and foreign aid will be the only two surviving industries in Argentina. The Austrian Scam Milei's presidency will leave Argentines with a catastrophic legacy of inflation and a massive debt burden to bear for generations. It will leave us Austrian school economists and libertarians with a devastating reputational debt for generations to come. What makes matters worse is how many of the leading names in Austrian economic circles have completely suspended their critical faculties, ignored the blatant economic reality, believed in the demagogic mania and cheered it on. The Mises Institute has ended its association with Professor Hans Hermann Hoppe, the greatest living Austrian economist in the intellectual heir of Mari Rothbard, in what seems to be related to his outspoken criticisms of the Milei scam. Meanwhile, the Mises Institute has published a continuous stream of pro mile propaganda ignoring the critical questions of inflation and debt and lauding speeches and rhetoric as if they were actual accomplishments. Tying their masts to the ship of Milei will destroy the great Institute's otherwise stellar anti war and anti state record, turning it into another center right think tank using freedom buzzwords to elect neocons to fight more wars for Israel. A slightly less stupid Fox News. Instead of writing more tributes to Milei and attending yet another tear jerking awards ceremony, I would humbly suggest that the Mises Institute and the Austrian Mileists provide the rigorous Austrian assessment of the case for and impacts of quadrupling the money supply, borrowing $70 billion and running a quarter trillion dollar carry trade in two and a half years. Might these factors be related to the persistently high price rises and low growth in Argentina? Is the government saddling its citizens with more debt justified because supporting the Zionist genocidal regime can mean slightly less extortionate interest rates from the imf. Austrians must realize now that the fame and recognition Milei's rise brings to Austrian economics is part of a Faustian bargain whose cost is the destruction of the school's reputation. When his presidency's failure can no longer be denied, Austrian economics and libertarianism will be seen as the ideology of inflation, mass indebtedness to bankers and destroying essential institutions and infrastructure in goyim countries while bolstering the Zionist genocidal regime's institutions for race based mass murder and land theft.
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Murray An Ode to an Intellectual Hero published in Rothbard at 100 a tribute and Assessment edited by Stefan Kinsella and Hans Hermann Hopper, published by Papignan Press and the Safe House Looking back at my intellectual development over my 45 years of life There stands a major landmark and inflection point around October 2008, when for the first time I read Murray Rothbard, I vividly recall being astonished by the clarity and the depth of his ideas. So much so that I concluded I learned more from reading a page by him than from reading an entire book from the many drab texts I was assigned in my graduate studies. Looking back 18 years later, I can confidently say the clarity and breadth of Rothbard's work have been the guiding star and intellectual inspiration of my own work. I only made sense of the world after reading him. I only became an economist after understanding him. I only became a writer after being inspired by his unwavering courage, searing clarity, and ruthless honesty. To this great man I never met, I owe my entire intellectual output. In October 2008, I was entering the last year of my graduate studies at Columbia University in New York City, where I was Studying for a PhD in sustainable development, a program based heavily on the dominant mainstream economics of the fiat era until 2007, the extent of my familiarity with Austrian economists consistent mainly of hearing of them lumped in with Chicago and neoliberal economists as free market fundamentalists personally responsible for the vast majority of the problems of the human race from the 1970s onwards through their nefarious influence on Reagan, Thatcher and Pinochet. I had read Friedrich Hayek's the Use of Knowledge in Society when I was doing my master's degree at the London School of Economics, and I remember finding it mildly interesting, though it failed to make much of an impact on my way of thinking at the time. My sustainable development program was a perfect example of what Hayek would call scientism, the fatal conceit that human affairs can be managed coercively through the enlightened methods of science using the tools and methods of modern economics. My background in engineering, and armed with some vintage 20th century Social science propaganda, I was expected to produce a multidisciplinary study that provides actionable policy insights for policymakers on the topic of alternative energy. In 2007, as I was supposed to get into writing in earnest, I was beginning to come to terms with the absurdity of this quest for central planning. My models were supposed to include the actions of billions of consumers and producers of fuels around the world and decide for them what was best for them. There was no recognition of the dynamic importance of prices and how individual economic calculation drives human action. As I began to grapple with the methodological problems involved, I found some helpful insight from reading Karl Popper which led me to Friedrich Hayek and his work on scientism and the limitations of central planning. Reading Hayek would soon guide me to the Ludwig von Mises Institute website mises.org and its endless free PDFs of the works of the great Austrian economists. And down the rabbit hole I fell. I would soon find Rothbard's PDFs among them, and they would become my indispensable guide and framework for navigating the world. I spent months devouring these PDFs in my tiny Morningside Heights apartment at the expense of writing my PhD dissertation. I felt a personal connection with Rothbard, who, like me, had also gotten his PhD from Columbia and had grown up and lived a few blocks down Broadway from where I was living. In his last year in Columbia, Rothbard heard of Ludwig von Mises New York University seminar and began to attend it. Similarly, I discovered in my last year that the Mises seminar was still taking place in New York University under Professor Mario Rizzo. And as it continues to this day, I emailed Professor Rizzo, and he graciously accepted my request to attend. Attending the seminar over the next few months, I had the pleasure of meeting, learning from, and interacting with Professors Joseph Salerno, Ralph Reiko, and Israel Kerzner, among many old and young Austrian scholars. I vividly remember the distinct feeling of relief I experienced when surrounded by serious academics who shared some of my heretic views. It was a relief for my sanity. Meanwhile, a few blocks further down Broadway, the epicenter of global finance was imploding, providing me with a very useful learning aid on my journey into Austrian economics and more incentive to dig into Rothbard's endless PDFs as one bank after another went bankrupt. Bankrupt, the US treasury and federal Reserve bailed out the financial industry with trillions of dollars, arguably the first time the term trillion came into popular usage, a testament to the ease with which fiat currencies are created. As my Columbia University professors were hauled before TV cameras to explain to people why it is in their interest to continue destroying the value of the dollar to save the richest banks in the world, their rationales raised more questions than they answered. Then, in October 2008, I read Mari Rothbard for the first time, and I began to make sense of the world around me. Whereas the mainstream of economics distorted reality to justify the actions of those on power whereas the mainstream of economics distorted reality to justify the actions of those in power, Rothbard clarified reality reality plainly indicting them people's natural, instinctive suspicions about the dangers of an increase in the Money supply and moral hazard are actually correct, and in no way can the mathematical sophistry of regime economists overrule them. Most startling to me was how plainly Rothbard employed a logical approach to analyzing economics, grounded in the realistic understanding that human beings, actions and valuations shape economic reality. Here was a man who just looked at the actions of human beings to understand reality, and it made a lot more sense than my standard intellectual diet of ascribing cognizance to aggregates and abstract nouns and appealing to authority and sophistry. Rothbard's genius was to expose that what passes for policy debate is mostly incantations of propaganda and spell casting by a priesthood loyal to power. He taught me how to translate the heartwarming incantations of stabilization, liquidity, shortage, systemic risk and public interest into their plain English translation and accounting terms. Destabilization, bankruptcy, politically favored and politically favored private interests, respectively. He taught me to ignore the incantations and just look at who is paying whom. Once you apply that translation, the 2008 crisis stops being a mysterious accident and becomes the predictable outcome of a monetary and political structure rigged to favor a monopoly that privatizes its profits and socializes its losses. Contra propaganda, central banking is as essential to a society as tapeworms are to an individual. It is difficult to enumerate or summarize the important economic ideas I learned from Rothbard in such a short space, but I will highlight a few of the most important points. Perhaps the most influential piece of Rothbard's writing for me was his brief chapter the Austrian Theory of Money. I remember reading this in 2008 and being completely blown away by his death distillation of the essence of Austrian monetary theory and the most important lessons of Mises monumental works Human Action and Theory of Money and Credit into a mere 24 pages. The most mind blowing lesson for me from that paper was Mises contention that money is a good acquired for its purchasing power which can increase without the supply increasing. Any quantity of money, provided it is divisible enough, is thus sufficient to secure the service of money. The entire rationale for increasing the money supply disappeared. Rothbard further went on to contend would be one similar to that of much of the 18th and 19th centuries, marked by the successful flowering of the industrial road revolution. With the increased capital investment increasing the supply of goods and with falling prices for those goods as well as falling costs of production. End quote. I will never forget the moment I read that sentence in my apartment in New York in late 2008, around the same time on the Internet Satoshi Nakamoto was putting the final touches on the software for Bitcoin, the first and still only example of a money with a credible claim for having a constant supply. It was this point, more than any other, that made me understand the value of Bitcoin. When I first heard of it. I thought it would make a neat idea because it would fit Rothbard's hypothetical fixed supply money, but I was dismissive of the possibility that it would work. Blissfully and pathetically confident in a way which only a PhD can be, said Dao, that my ignorance of its technical details could not possibly bear on the question of its success or failure. After a few years of Bitcoin's stubborn refusal to go away and its supply remaining fixed according to schedule, I began to study Bitcoin and finally understood how its decentralized, censorship resistant nature could ensure its supply remains fixed, producing the Rothbardian monetary holy grail. On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin and I was in San Francisco for the annual meeting of the American Economic association, the largest meeting of economists in the United States, which hosts the job interviews for prospective university professors. I remember spending the day outside of my interviews walking up to various celebrities fiat economists and asking them why they think the money supply should increase at all. I remember not getting a single coherent answer to that question and plenty of flustered and confused looks. Rothbard's work on money, banking and economic history were indispensable in developing my own ideas on Bitcoin which culminated with the publication of the bitcoin standard in 2018. The bitcoin standard was modified attempt to do with Bitcoin what Rothbard did with money, strip away the cant, understand the reality and deduce its implications. In the fiat standard. I applied what I learned from him about inflation to trace the long term impact of monetary debasement and credit expansion on economics and society broadly, including family, culture, politics, time preference and and civilization itself. My Principles of Economics was heavily based on Rothbard's Man, Economy and State and can be described as my attempt to distill its most important lessons into a shorter and more accessible alternative. The breadth of Rothbard's writings is arguably unmatched. He covered all the important topics and fields of economics comprehensively and was the best guide to understanding these topics topics as well as the debates around them and their historical evolution from economic theory, money and banking, the business cycle, capital and interest, monopoly and antitrust to policy controversies, taxation, regulation, welfare, education, immigration, war and civil liberties to economic history and the history of economic ideas. Rothbard wrote about it all and made you think every single time. It is difficult to pick a favorite among Rothbard's economic books, but after much consideration, I would choose America's Great Depression as my favorite. As it was Rothbard at the absolute pinnacle of his craft. He begins by explaining the Austrian theory of the business cycle in a very simple and intuitive way, which might actually be his best statement of the theory. He then completely dismantled the official story of the Great Depression, leaving nothing, nothing defensible. He summoned a mountain of historical evidence and research to combine with the Austrian economic framework and brilliantly illustrate the ugly truth. But what makes this work so singularly important are the many profound implications of understanding the true history of the Great Depression. How its roots go back to the destruction of the gold standard and the First World War. How British manipulation of American policymakers makers exported Britain's inflation to the US and fueled the unsustainable credit boom of the 1920s, which in turn led to the infamous market crash which mainstream economists treat as inexplicable. How Hoover's interventionist policies turned the market crash into a depression and how FDR exacerbated the policies of Hoover dooming the gold standard. His account of how wage and price maintenance and cartelization policies policies prevented recovery and turned a stock market crash into a depression was the first time I saw the period explained with logical cause and effect rather than Keynesian folk mythology. Here was a fully detailed exposition of the civilization shattering consequences of monetary fraud and inflation exploding the official history as little more more than the propaganda of the beneficiaries of inflation. Austrian theory makes for the best approach to understanding the Great Depression, and the Great Depression makes for the best object lesson in Austrian economics. Rothbard's contributions were not confined to economics. He also wrote extensively in history and political philosophy, as well as US politics, foreign policy, international politics and beyond. If Rothbard's work in history and political philosophy philosophy were published by two different authors, these two would have arguably been the most important and original contributions to these fields in the 20th century. I do not think this is an exaggeration, because in both fields, as in economics, Rothbard's uncompromising refusal to tow the fiat cartel line and serve as a court intellectual allows him to communicate much more powerful ideas with a clarity no court intellectual could ever muster. Whereas American historiography centers on the glorious success and legitimacy of the American government, Rothbard shows the ugly real face of America's Leviathan in Conceived in Liberty, a book so encyclopedic you will not believe Rothbard had the time to write it, let alone research it. Whereas political philosophers are constantly bickering over their absurd attempts at legitimizing government, government aggression and violence. Only Rothbard stands apart like the child calling the emperor naked, consistently applying to the state the same moral and legal principles that apply to any other entity, and thus convincingly, clearly and coherently explaining the true nature of the state and the damage it brings to society. The vast majority of political philosophers are other than Rothbard will provide you with sophistry whose only purpose is to enhance your loyalty to the bank and government cartel that pays their salary. With this searing honesty, Rothbard's works of political philosophy exit the realm of academic bloviation and government propaganda and enter the realm of essential practical life skills. Only by understanding the true nature of the state can you begin to understand how to liberate liberate yourself from its yoke and extricate your life from its powerful claws. International politics, US Foreign policy and the warfare state are yet another group of topics on which Rothbard offered a substantial outcome with which any serious scholar must grapple. The modern American university has served as a faithful stenographer for US foreign policy, furnishing an ever growing list of pseudo intellectual, criminal and idiotic justifications for the conveyor belt of death and destruction that is US foreign policy. For decades, Rothbard has provided a comprehensive refutation of all these justifications, small and large, and has given his readers the searing truth about the realities of the conflicts whose flames DC was fanning. My particular favorite piece here is Rothbard's discussion of the Palestinian Israeli conflict. As a Palestinian who has spent my entire life living and learning about the tragedy that is Zionism, I could not find a better, more precise piece to understand the conflict. With his peerless clarity and sharp pen, Rothbard pinpointed the exact crux of the so called conflict, the Zionist war of aggression and theft and against the legitimate owners of the land of Palestine. He effortlessly cleared the large clouds of cliches, emotional blackmail and confusion surrounding the topic, replacing them with a very simple and inarguable concrete reality. By denying the property rights of the rightful owners of the land based on their race, Israeli aggression inevitably generates conflict and requires endless subsidies from emotional, violently and sexually blackmailed Western nations to survive. Underpinning all of Rothbard's ethics and economics is the solid, even and consistent intellectual foundation of property rights, which allowed him to build magnificent works arriving at solid conclusions, published fearlessly, there was no special exception for any government or favored group. That would destroy the consistency of Rothbard's work and force him to write incoherent drivel to justify it. Once one adopts this lens to understand the world, everything becomes much clearer. Yet my intellectual debt to Rothbard does not end with his scholarship. It extends to his writing style and the courage of his convictions. Although I had always enjoyed writing, I struggled to write in my graduate studies, as I could never must through the conviction to mimic the timid style of academia and the complex ways in which academics twist words in order to impressively communicate nothing of substance. Rothbard was the first economist I encountered that wrote clearly, decisively, precisely, and unapologetically. For the first time, I found someone who wrote with the supreme purpose of being understood, not to obfuscate, prevaricate, impress, or flatter. Seeing that example convinced me to write clearly and honestly, and that was pivotal in my decision to pursue writing the Bitcoin Standard and my subsequent books. I found value in Hayek but found Rothbard and Mises on firmer and more consistent ground. I enjoyed and benefited from reading Mises, but Rothbard's writing style was far more engaging and relatable to me. Rothbard, after all, wrote in his native English language, and most of his work was more recent than Mises, whose work was translated from German or written in the author's third language, when it seemed like he thought in German and translated to English. Along with this clarity of thought came the clarity of conviction and the courage to communicate it plainly and honestly, regardless of the impact it might have on the delicate sensibilities of readers used to gentler and more flattering propaganda. Prevaricating massaging reality and flattering the reader's prejudices may land you fancy job titles at modern universities, but they will ensure that you rarely ever read outside of mandatory curricula. More than three decades after his untimely passing, Rothbard remains one of the most widely read economists of the 20th century. A cursory look at his books on Amazon shows a very large number of positive reviews, surpassing almost all the heavily promoted regime economists past and present. This feat is even more impressive when one remembers that his books are available for free download from mises.org and have been downloaded by countless people from around the world, toeing the line of the Federal Reserve cartel and the academic cartel. It finances would have likely secured him a better job than the one he had, but it would have ensured his name is as obscure as the many thousands of his contemporaries who are never read or mentioned in today's world. Recently, a friend shared with me a critical obituary of Roth Bard written by an opportunist CIA agent and fiat regime propagandist named William F. Buckley Jr. Who spent decades drumming up support for US and Israeli wars of aggression among conservatives. By writing Flowery Slop, Buckley's bitter obituary brings to mind the difference in the lives and legacies of the two men. Born in New York a century ago, Rothbard toiled in obscurity in an unprestigated university, frozen out of all major media outlets, writing to the libertarian and intellectual fringe, and constantly attacked by regime mouthpieces like Buckley as a simpleton and traitor. Buckley, on the other hand, marched from his CIA job to one important media appointment after another. Regularly featured on major TV, newspapers and radio stations. 31 years after Rothbard's death and 18 years after Buckley's, it is now possible to assess their legacies. Rothbard's books have around five times as many reviews as Buckley's inconsequential and ephemeral drivel. Rothbard's work. No, Rothbard's work has only become more important as inflation continues to accelerate societal decline. Countless people from all over the world doubt download Rothbard's books for free from mises.org but I know absolutely nobody who has any good reason to read Buckley today, and I can never recall hearing anyone reference an important idea of his relevant to today's world. To the extent anyone ever mentions him, it is usually just sentimental boomer slop longing for the better written propaganda of the past. For all of the media and promotion regime agents like Buckley are forgotten because there's always a new and improved Buckley tailor made to make war and despotism agree with the latest fads among conservative midwits. Rothbard was fully aware that actors like Buckley got the limelight during their lifetime, but he persistently continued on his path, churning out millions of words for posterity to read. Whereas Rothbard wrote with incredible breadth and depth, Buckley was essentially a slight, slightly less dumb Sean Hannity using flowery language to impress his readers with exhibitionist literacy. Buckley's regime has delivered war on inflation and untold destruction, and an increasingly larger number of Americans are waking up to the fiat regime scam Buckley promoted as their children struggle to afford homes while Netanyahu commandeers America's people and their resources like they were his private farm. Finding out the how the world's monetary and political system actually works by reading Rothbard can be unnerving. It is tempting to just ignore the Austrians, get back to the fiat plantation, make the right noises, seek a safe career and pay your bills until you die. But comparing Rothbard's legacy to that of regime propagandists made that impossible for me. There is, and always will be a massive conveyor belt producing imminently forgettable and interchangeable Buckley like automatons. There will only ever be one Mari Rothbard. Regime propaganda will fade into obscurity, but clear, principled writing will age well. The Buckleys can enjoy the fleeting adulation of idiots, but to Rothbard goes posterity. Life is too short and posterity too, too long to mince words.