A Wealth of Great Quotes on Economics (Bastiat, Hayek, Menger, Rand etc)

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. Friedrich Hayek

The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists. Willi Schlamm

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance. Murray N. Rothbard

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. Ronald Reagan

Collectivism doesn’t work because it’s based on a faulty economic premise. There is no such thing as a person’s “fair share” of wealth. The gross national product is not a pizza that must be carefully divided because if I get too many slices, you have to eat the box. The economy is expandable and, in any practical sense, limitless. – P. J. O’Rourke

When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will. Fredric Bastiat

Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire. Ludwig von Mises

The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books. Milton Friedman

There are many farm handouts; but let’s call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, “Vote for me. I’ll use my office to take another American’s money and give it to you.” Walter Williams

To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors. John Stuart Mill

Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace. Milton Friedman

Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy. Ludwig von Mises

Most economic fallacies derive … from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. Milton Friedman

Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described itself as an “independent” agency operated by selfless public servants striving to “fine-tune” the economy through monetary policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental institution is as likely as a barking cat. Thomas J. DiLorenzo

The pattern is as old as human life. The new rulers use more and more force, more police, more soldiers, trying to enforce more efficient control, trying to make the planned economy work by piling regulations on regulations, decree on decree. The people are hungry and hungrier. And how does a man on this earth get butter? Doesn’t the government give butter? But government does not produce food from the earth; Government is guns. It is one common distinction of all civilized peoples, that they give their guns to the Government. Men in Government monopolize the necessary use of force; they are not using their energies productively; they are not milking cows. To get butter, they must use guns; they have nothing else to use. Rose Wilder Lane

The “private sector” of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and…the “public sector” is, in fact, the coercive sector. Henry Hazlitt

The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline. Milton Friedman

Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. Milton Friedman

The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other. William E. Simon

Central planning will eventually destroy individual liberty by concentrating all political power in one person or in a committee; furthermore, it will eventually end our prosperity by laying the dead hand of state control on the economy. Robert M. Thornton

The essential quality of a free economy is that it cannot be planned. It leaves the solution of problems to the inspiration of the individuals in the untrammeled population. When something approaching a free economy has existed, it has always worked better than the schemes of any planners. Thomas H. Barber

Economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics. Ludwig von Mises

When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame. Jack Kemp

The Ten “Cannots” of Political Economy:
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot help the wage-earner by tearing down the wage-payer.
You cannot further the brotherhood of mankind by encouraging class hatred.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative.
You cannot help man permanently by doing for them what they could do and should do for themselves. Unknown

Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action. Ayn Rand

Politicians say they’re beefing up our economy. Most don’t know beef from pork. Harold Lowman

Private enterprise creates; government destroys. That is the great economic lesson of our times and all times. Lew Rockwell

Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster. Thomas Sowell

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. Thomas Sowell

Hollywood actors tend to be Socialists because their entire industry is make-belief. When your world is make-belief then money takes on mystical qualities and does not need to adhere to the laws of mathematics. Heinz Schmitz

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder. John F. Kennedy

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear. Ayn Rand

Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others. Ayn Rand

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Thomas Sowell

Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature. Thomas Sowell

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Adam Smith

It is the aim of good government to stimulate production, of bad government to encourage consumption. Jean-Baptiste Say

Money is not an invention of the state. It is not the product of a legislative act. Even the sanction of political authority is not necessary for its existence. Certain commodities came to be money quite naturally, as the result of economic relationships that were independent of the power of the state. Carl Menger

If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialist. Friedrich Hayek

Situations emerge in the process of creative destruction in which many firms may have to perish that nevertheless would be able to live on vigorously and usefully if they could weather a particular storm. Joseph Schumpeter

Economics never was a dismal science. I should be a realistic science. Paul Samuelson

What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job? Paul Samuelson

The phenomenon of economic ignorance is so widespread, and its consequences so frightening, that the objective of reducing that ignorance becomes a goal invested with independent moral worth. But the economic education needed to reduce such ignorance must be based on austere, objective, scientific content—with no ideological or moral content of its own. Israel Kirzner

Market competition is the only form of organization which can afford a large measure of freedom to the individual. Frank Knight

There is nothing the state can do, and which society needs done, that cannot be done far better by the market. Lew Rockwell

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity. Henry Hazlitt

Protectionism is a misnomer. The only people protected by tariffs, quotas and trade restrictions are those engaged in uneconomic and wasteful activity. Free trade is the only philosophy compatible with international peace and prosperity. Walter Block

Karl Marx was the foremost hater and most incessant whiner in the history of Western Civilization. He was a spoiled, overeducated brat who never grew up; he just grew more shrill as he grew older. His lifelong hatred and whining have led to the deaths (so far) of perhaps a hundred million people, depending on how many people perished under Mao's tyranny. We will probably never know. Gary North

Socialism is simply Communism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades. Gary North

While there have been all too many lies told in politics, most have some little, tiny fraction of truth in them, to make them seem plausible. But the “trickle-down” lie is 100 percent lie.
The “trickle-down” theory cannot be found in even the most voluminous scholarly studies of economic theories — including J. A. Schumpeter’s monumental History of Economic Analysis, more than a thousand pages long and printed in very small type. Thomas Sowell

In market terms, one is entitled to what others will offer in willing exchange. That is all! Leonard Read

Such terms as communism, socialism, Fabianism, the welfare state, Nazism, fascism, state interventionism, egalitarianism, the planned economy, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier are simply different labels for much the same thing. Leonard Read

Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else. Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Nothing increases the number of jobs so rapidly as labor-saving machinery, because it releases wants theretofore unknown, by permitting leisure. Isabel Paterson

The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery. Albert J. Nock

Capital formation is the greatest charity of all. F. A. Harper

When entrepreneurs are free to compete, they grow the pie so that everyone's share gets larger. John Stossel

"As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer." Sheldon Richman

I call crony capitalism, where you take money from successful small businesses, spend it in Washington on favored industries, on favored individuals, picking winners and losers in the economy, that's not pro-growth economics. That's not entrepreneurial economics. That's not helping small businesses. That's cronyism, that's corporate welfare. Paul Ryan

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The Herbert Hoover Do-Nothing Myth, by Heinz Schmitz

The Herbert Hoover Do-Nothing Myth, by Heinz Schmitz

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"That man (Herbert Hoover) has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad," Calvin Coolidge

The general narrative we hear about the Great Depression is that Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire president who did nothing to help American crawl out of the depression which made it even worse, and we must learn from this today and enact federal stimulus programs to boost life into the economy.

The problem with this all is that this is a lie. Hoover actually intervened in the economy more than any prior president. Keep this in mind when you consider that there was a Depression in 1920, the government did nothing, and the economy bounced back within 12 to 18 months. As Hoover himself proclaimed during his presidential campaign of 1932:

. . . we might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action. . . . No government in Washington has hitherto considered that it held so broad a responsibility for leadership in such times. . . . For the first time in the history of depressions, dividends, profits and the cost of living, have been reduced before wages have suffered. . . . They were maintained until the cost of living had decreased and the profits had practically vanished. They are now the highest real wages in the world.

Creating new jobs and giving to the whole system a new breath of life; nothing has ever been devised in our history which has done more for . . . “the common run of men and women.” Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until we had found bottom. . . . We determined that we would not follow the advice of the bitterend liquidationists and see the whole body of debtors of the United States brought to bankruptcy and the savings of our people brought to destruction.

Hoover doubled federal spending and one of his first acts as president was to prohibit business leaders from cutting wages. He also launched huge public works projects such as the San Francisco Bay Bridge, Los Angeles Aqueduct, and the Hoover Dam. Hoover signed into law the damaging Smoot-Hawley tariff into law in June 1930 which raised taxes on over 20,000 imported goods (to the highest levels in American history) which made it more difficult for other countries to export goods to US, so now their economies suffered, and they thus imported less American goods. Hoover ended up creating a worldwide trade war. Also, because there were less foreign imports, government revenues from tariffs actually declined, the opposite to what the government intended.

Hoover eventually raised the top income tax rate from 23 percent to 65 percent (the rich must pay their fair share after all) and the lowest income tax rate from 1.1 percent to 4 percent in 1932.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt eventually criticized Herbert Hoover of presiding over “the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history.” Roosevelt criticized Hoover for spending and taxing too much, boosting the national debt, choking off trade, and putting millions of people on the dole. Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner, charged that Hoover was "leading the country down the path of socialism."

Hoover definitely did not favor laissez-faire policies. In fact, Hoover even self-identified as a progressive and denounced laissez-faire himself:

"Individualism cannot be maintained as the foundation of a society if it looks to only legalistic justice based upon contracts, property, and political equality. Such legalistic safeguards are themselves not enough. In our individualism we have long since abandoned the laissez faire of the 18th Century-the notion that it is 'everyman for himself and the devil take the hindmost.'"

Besides an aggressive expansion of all state public works programs, Hoover also instituted farm subsidies and price supports and enacted rules to discourage commodity speculators. He then set out to weaken bankruptcy laws so as to prevent them, resulting in many companies being propped up artificially. He imposed limits on immigration and deported illegal aliens and fought tirelessly to keep wage rates propped up.

So the image of Hoover as an Adam Smith Physiocrat is competely inaccurate. As William Leuchtenburg, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal states: "Almost every historian now recognizes that the image of Hoover as a 'do-nothing' president is inaccurate."

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Looking Backward & Socialist Science Fiction - 25 Books to Download

25 Books to Download, Books scanned from the Originals into PDF format

Less than 300MB, only $1.99



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Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian Socialist science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, that was first published in 1888. According to Erich Fromm, Looking Backward is "one of the most remarkable books ever published in America".

In 1897 Bellamy wrote a sequel, _Equality_, dealing with women's rights, education and many other issues. Bellamy wrote the sequel to elaborate and clarify many of the ideas merely touched upon in _Looking Backward_.

The success of Looking Backward provoked a spate of sequels, parodies, satires, and skeptical dystopian responses. The result was a "battle of the books" that lasted through the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th. The back-and-forth nature of the debate is illustrated by the subtitle of Geissler's 1891 Looking Beyond, which is "A Sequel to 'Looking Backward' by Edward Bellamy and an Answer to 'Looking Forward' by Richard Michaelis".
William Morris's 1890 utopia News from Nowhere was partly written in reaction to Bellamy's utopia, which Morris did not find congenial.

Contents of download:

Equality by Edward Bellamy 1908 [Equality is a utopian sequel to Looking Backward. The book contains a minimal amount of plot; Bellamy primarily used Equality to expand on the theories he first explored in Looking Backward.]

Looking further Forward - An Answer to "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy (1890), by Richard C. Michaelis [Julian West discovers that utopia is on the verge of collapse. A series of dialogues with a janitor (who used to be a professor but was fired when he criticized the state) discuss how controlled capitalism is superior to socialism. A bloody massacre erupts when a jilted lover of Edith Leete (West's beloved in Looking Backward) leads a violent revolution.]

Looking Beyond (1891), by Ludwig A. Geissler [In this tale, the violent revolution presented at the end of Richard Michaelis's book becomes Julian West's nightmare, and so never happened. West learns that the janitor he has been talking to is wrong on all points, and a debate between a supporter and a skeptic of the future society ends with Bellamy's utopia triumphant. Also, Earth establishes communication with Mars.]

Looking Further Backward (1890), by Arthur Dudley Vinton [China invades Bellamy's utopian America. As the utopian United States has abolished the military, only Julian West understands war and what is at stake — however, no one will listen to him as they are unable to think for themselves because the future system has abolished individuality.]

Speaking of Ellen (1889), by Linn Boyd Porter (Albert Ross) [Excerpt: But where is our great mother, the State she cried, throwing back her head with a superb motion. "The State, which claims our allegiance, which seizes our substance for its revenues, which drafts our brothers into its armies, which punishes our treason even with death! Every child that is born adds to its strength and glory! We who make the State, how long shall we appeal to it in vain!"]

Mr. East's Experiences in Mr. Bellamy's World: Records of the Years 2001 and 2002 by Conrad Wilbrandt 1891 [Mr. Ost, a German, reads Looking Backward and decides to try being mesmerised. He awakens in the future society of Looking Backward, only to discover it is full of shoddy goods, poor wages, and sexual favoritism.]

Looking Within: The Misleading Tendencies of "Looking Backward" Made Manifest (1893), by J. W. Roberts [The narrator, James North, acquires a potion that allows him and his beloved to sleep in suspended animation for several years. They first awaken in 1927 to discover the United States in open class warfare. They sleep again and awaken in 2000 and meet Julian West, Dr. Leete and other denizens of Bellamy's utopia. They discover rampant favoritism and a society on the brink of collapse. Sleeping again, they awaken in 2025 to find that society has returned to capitalism to survive.]

Young West: A Sequel to Edward Bellamy's Celebrated Novel "Looking Backward" (1894), by Solomon Schindler [describes the adventures of Julian West's son, who (after discovering a way to make sewage useful) becomes president of the future utopia.]

Looking Forward (1906), by Harry W. Hillman [describes a revolution in electricity that will help bring about Bellamy's world.]

News From Nowhere by William Morris 1890 [William Guest, falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems. This agrarian society functions simply because the people find pleasure in nature, and therefore they find pleasure in their work.]

Inequality and Progress by George Harris 1897 [Before social and political theories are constructed, primal truths concerning the constitution, inheritance, and differentiation of men should be recognized.]

My Afterdream: a sequel to the late Mr. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward by Julian West 1900 ["Those who have read the late Edward Bellamy's book Looking Backward will find the sequel to it, My Afterdream* singularly entertaining. Julian West is made to tell how practical Socialism proved ludicrously defective in some important details. In the simple process of eating one's dinner, or the necessary, if sombre, ordeal of being buried, we find Socialism a most cumbersome and, in fact, farcical institution. The story may be regarded as a reduetio ad absurdum of Bellamy's work. It ends appropriately in a lunatic asylum!" The Westminster Review 1900]

Freeland, a Social Anticipation by T Hertzka 1890 [460 people travel to Africa to create a Socialist utopia]

Dr. Leete’s Letter to Julian West 1890

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Plus You Get:

The White Stone by Anatole France 1910 (Originally published in 1905, The White Stone was, in part, a rebuttal to the racist "yellow peril" fever of the time - a book about "white peril" and the rise of socialism.)

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman 1894 (Gilman was a feminist and socialist)

Moving the Mountain by Charlotte Gilman 1911

The Angel of the Revolution by George Griffith 1895 (A lurid mix of Jules Verne's futuristic air warfare fantasies, the utopian visions of News from Nowhere and the future war invasion literature of Chesney and his imitators with a Socialist message)

Eugene Sue—The Wandering Jew, Volume 1, 1845

Eugene Sue—The Wandering Jew, Volume 2, 1845

Eugene Sue—The Wandering Jew, Volume 3, 1845
(the hero is a dispossessed laborer and the author is a radical socialist)

The Happy Prince and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde 1907 (Libertarian socialist writer Oscar Wilde employs Happy Prince character in order to challenge Victorian humanitarian enterprises in his children’s book The Happy Prince and Other Tales.)

Utopia by Thomas More 1902 (Perhaps the first utopian socialist was Thomas More (1478-1535), who wrote about an imaginary socialist society in his book Utopia)

The New Atlantis by Francis Bacon 1909 (Lord Bacon's social philosophy was embodied in this publication. It followed somewhat the lines of Utopia. It was built upon a humane philosophy, and constructed a state based upon kindness and compassion towards the distressed)

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Over 300 PDF/Acrobat Books on Socialism, Communism and Economics

A Critique of Edward Bellamy's LOOKING BACKWARD by C.A.F. Lindorme 1890

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Historic Failures of Applied Socialism by Daniel J Ryan 1920

Historic Failures of Applied Socialism in Ohio by Daniel J Ryan 1920

Download The Communistic Societies of the United States for a limited time by clicking here

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Of the Socialist communities none will interest us as much as those established in Ohio, and a brief review of their foundation cannot fail to be of interest and value. The Yellow Springs community was established through the influence and enthusiasm of Robert Owen about 1824, at Yellow Springs, now the site of Antioch college. Located in one of the most delightful regions of the state, it became a community of a people who honestly desired to effect a great social and moral reform. The community as finally organized consisted of about 100 families, the heads of which were professional men, teachers, merchants, mechanics, farmers and a few laborers. Everybody entered into the spirit of the mission with great sincerity, and it had an auspicious opening, and yet it lasted but three months. A writer who was familiar with the facts of its history says that it fell a victim to individuality. The doctrine of social equality could not obtain against the education and human nature of its members. It whispered to the lowly maiden who occupied an inferior position before entering the society: "You are as good as the formerly rich and fortunate; insist upon your equality." It reminded the former favorites of their lost social superiority. The industrious, the skillful, and the strong, saw the product of their labor enjoyed by the indolent, the unskilled, and the improvident; and self love arose against benevolence. A band of musicians insisted that their brass harmony was as necessary to the common happiness as bread and meat, and declined to enter the harvest fields or the work shops. A lecturer upon natural science insisted on talking only, while others worked. Mechanics whose day's labor brought two dollars into the common fund, insisted that they in justice work only half as long as the agriculturist whose day's work brought but one. A member of the community, speaking of his associates, says: "They admitted the favorable circumstances which surrounded its commencement; the intelligence, devotion and earnestness which were brought to the cause by its projectors, and its final total failure. And they rested-ever after in the belief that man, though disposed to philanthropy, is essentially selfish; and that a community of social equality and common property is impossible."

The Kendal community, near Canton, Stark county, was the second attempt to carry out the socialistic views of Mr. Owen. It had about 200 members, settled upon 200 acres of land, and lasted two years. Inefficiency of management, which saddled them with a debt, brought discouragement and dissension, and after a duration of two years the project was abandoned.

Many years had passed, and the ideas of Robert Owen had come to naught in every community which was established to carry out his ideas of socialism, and then Fourierism fastened itself upon the State of Ohio in the early forties. The Clermont Phalanx was established at Cincinnati the 22nd pf February 1844, under the urgent recommendation of Horace Greeley, Albert Brisbane and Wm. E. Channing. Thirty miles above Cincinnati, in Clermont county, on the beautiful Ohio, 900 acres of land were selected, and on the 9th of May the believers in the new idea chartered a steamer from Cincinnati and took possession of their idyllic domain. The association numbered 120 persons. It lived two years. The demon Individuality was its destroyer, and he took women, litigation and debt as his instruments.

There is one of these Phalanxes known as the Columbian Phalanx concerning which I have not been able to secure any facts, except that it was located in Franklin county in 1845. There are no particulars of its existence.

The Marlboro Association was located in Clinton county, with a membership of 24. Inefficiency and debt caused its dissolution at the end of four years.

The Ohio Phalanx was located upon 2200 acres of land in Belmont county, on the Ohio river, seven or eight miles below Wheeling, in 1844. It had 100 members and lasted just ten months. The organ of the association stated the difficulty in the Ohio Phalanx to be as follows: "Want of experience; too much enthusiasm; unproductive members, and want of means." One of the members writing says, referring to the troubles of the association: "Much space might be occupied in endeavoring to show the right and the wrong of these parties and proceedings, which to the reader would be quite unprofitable. The broad results we have before us, namely, that certain supposed-to-be great and important principles were tried in practice, and through a variety of causes failed. The most important causes of failure were said to be deficiency of wealth, wisdom and goodness; or if not these the falsity of the principles."

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Prairie Home was located near West Liberty, in Logan county, Ohio. The property of this Phalanx consisted of over 500 acres, and the members numbered about 130. It lasted just one year, and its abandonment was caused by debt and dissension.

The Trumbull Phalanx was organized by the socialistic enthusiasts of Pittsburg, and commenced its operations in the spring of 1844. It was very orthodox from a Christian standpoint, its members being Presbyterians, Disciples, Baptists and Methodists. It lasted two and one-half years, and again individuality caused its destruction, this time religious individuality, which they refused to surrender to the general rule of socialism. Another phase of discontent is described by one who was a member, thus: "Some came with the idea that they could live in idleness at the expense of the projectors of the estate, and this idea they practically carried out; while others came with good hearts for the cause. There were one or two designing persons who came with no other intent than to push themselves into situations in which they could impose upon their fellow members; and this to a certain extent they succeeded in doing."

These Ohio socialistic associations, based upon the ideas of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, were entirely secular. They were based upon philosophic socialism, and had for their motives the happiness and progress of their members from a purely temporal standpoint. There were others established in this state from entirely different motives. These were the communities founded by religious sects. They all played an important part in the history of this state, and while they were the longest lived of all the socialistic centers, they too fell in time, from the same reason as those which we have just discussed, namely, the suppression of the individual motive. These organizations were the Shakers, the Separatists of Zoar, and the Mormons.

The Shaker community of Warren county was located near Lebanon, Ohio, by a sect established by Ann Lee, an English woman who came to this country in 1774. Their purity, individual life and industry, and their implicit faith in their mission, gave them life for nearly one hundred years. They believed in the non-marriage state, community of goods, non-resistance and peace. Their extinction is due to the operation of the laws of nature, having no source of increase except the addition of members, they fell into a condition of apathy and decrease as the years went by. They have been wound up in the courts, their property passed out of their hands, and from four thousand Shakers in the United States in 1823, there are now less than three hundred. Their failure was due to the lack of individual energy and to their abnormal ideas concerning marriage.

While the alleged revelations of Mormonism occurred in New York, it was really founded at Kirtland, Ohio, in June 1831, where the first "Stake of Zion" was established. Here, under the leadership of Joe Smith, the Prophet, was first established in concrete form the Mormon church. Its cornerstone was socialism, the common ownership of all property, both real and personal, and the surrender of all individual action in religious, social and business life to the church, which was controlled by what was known and is known yet, as the Twelve Apostles. Thus the individual unit was eliminated, and there were no personal rights of any sort left to the individual Mormon. A large acreage of land was purchased and divided by the church; factories and store houses, and even a bank, were made a part of the Mormon regime. But all individualism was not suppressed; in the disposition of the real estate and in the transaction of the financial affairs of the church the Prophets, Joseph Smith and his family, and Brigham Young and his associates, took an unusual and large share of the profits, both of the business and of the bank. The bank was established contrary to the laws of the state of Ohio, and upon the issue of an illegal currency prosecutions were commenced by the state. Having no substantial basis of specie payment, the bank crumbled in bankruptcy, the entire community left the state, its leaders fleeing in the night to escape criminal prosecution. The socialistic management of the Mormon church was retained for many years, until a revolt among the strong-minded young men of the second generation, who desired to assert their personal right to their own earnings, resulted in its abolition. Nevertheless it caused revolts and dissensions in the church, and a division into two bodies.

The most impressive example of sectarian socialism in Ohio was that of the Separatist Society of Zoar. It was entirely an exotic institution, based upon a religious society that dissented from the Lutheran church in Germany. They came to this country in about 1816, and located at Zoar, in Tuscarawas county, this State, with about eight hundred believers. Their leader was Joseph Bimeler, a German and evidently a man of great personal force, mental and physical. His original associates were men of rather thick-headed disposition, and Bimeler had to do all the thinking, planning, preaching and pulling his associates along. Zoar, named after the little town in Palestine, succeeded amazingly so long as Bimeler had his strength and lived. In the original conception of this sect, they were opposed to the institution of marriage and decided to make celibacy obligatory. Bimeler enforced this decree for the first ten years of the Society, or until he was smitten with the charms of one of the comely maidens who was an inmate of his household, and whose duty it was to wait upon the spiritual and temporal head of the Society. Bimeler was married, and the celibate prohibition of the Society was removed. The Zoarites, as they were called, practiced real socialism, and during the first generation of management under the iron rule of Bimeler progressed in numbers and in wealth. When the young men and young women grew up, and looked over the garden wall that surrounded them, they viewed their own institutions with lukewarm fidelity and waning strength. In the third generation under the withering influence of individualism it died, and the courts received its wreckage for distribution according to law. In its last days, in-1896, the young revolutionists commenced to openly print their objections against Zoar, and one of them said: "Communism may be a good thing in the interior of Africa, but in the center of the highly civilized state of Ohio it is an outrage. Communism, as practicably demonstrated by the Zoar Society, abolishes all distinctions of rank and of fortune. Any casual visitor to Zoar will undoubtedly notice the lack of reverence of inferiors to their superior in age, attainments, or otherwise. This very lack of reverence is a certain means of downfall of all Communistic societies. The smallest child is put on a level with the adult, socially, the toper with the sober, the indolent with the diligent. What other can be expected from such a social order of things, but in the end contentions and ruin." And again: "Theorists may dream of a golden time when the Communism shall prevade this whole earth, but let them go to a Communistic Society and fill the place of a common laborer and they will awake to the fact that Purgatory is a blessing compared with their position. Communism is a curse to any and all communities where it is established. It deadens all push, energy and ambition. It puts a premium on idleness and unfits a person for the battle with the world for an existence when the time comes in which he will be thrown on his own resources, which will sooner or later, come to all members of Communist Societies." Speaking of children, this same writer says: "The secret of the stability of the Society lay in its Children's Institution. In the early history of Zoar, every child when it had attained to the age of three years was taken away from the parents into the Society Children's Institution and left to the tender mercies of its keepers."

If one desires to give a more interesting study and detail to the history and end of Zoar, he will find it in a book entitled Zoar, a Study in Sociological Communism, by the late E. O. Randall, Secretary of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society. In order to make an accurate human picture of this effort in socialism, he spent one of his vacations among its people, by whom he was received hospitably, and given more information than has ever been disclosed to an outsider. This was about twenty years ago. He has produced a work on Zoar that is an extremely reliable document of historical research concerning the domestic and civil life, the government of the church, its business operations, its living, literary and social affairs. It is one of the most effective answers to socialism ever offered. There is no argument, no disputation, but a moving picture of the hard fact of failure.

I cannot leave this subject of religious socialism without referring to probably what has been the most famous one of all. This was the Oneida Community, founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1847. It was socialistic to the fullest extent, anticipating Marx and Bebel forty years so far as the community of women was concerned. All the men of the community were considered to be the "husbands" of all the female members, and in turn all the women were considered to be the "wives" of the male members—a combination of polygamy and polyandry. This system was finally abandoned in 1879 under the fierce whiplash of indignant public opinion. Noyes wrote a very comprehensive work fifty years ago, entitled History of American Socialisms and in that he aggressively defends his system of free love. He was evidently a good business man, and he conducted his association with financial success, having the implicit obedience of the dupes who surrounded him. But the community soon lost its flavor as well as its favor, and upon his death it was converted into a bloated corporation, under the name of "The Oneida Community, Limited," and is now a prosperous manufacturing corporation, having a substantial standing among the business concerns of this country. It is the sarcasm of fate that the most successful socialistic venture in the history of America should after an existence of forty years be transformed, in order to save its life, into a corporation.

I have recited here, at the risk of some monotony, a catalogue of the institutions established not only in Ohio, but in this country, under the impulse of socialism. All of these experiments were based upon the common ownership of property, land and personal, as well as the common ownership of the implements of production. They involved in every instance the surrender of the rights and power of the individual to the community. This embodied the very essence of socialism which has been advocated from the philosopher Karl Marx to the agitator Eugene Debs. Thus eliminating individuality in their social life, the result was the same in every single instance; that is failure, and these failures resulted from one or more of the following conditions (1) lack of capital; (2) inefficiency of management; (3) dissensions among its members; (4) looseness of the marriage tie.

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Economist Jean-Baptiste Say, by George Gunton 1899

On Economist Jean-Baptiste Say by George Gunton 1899

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'Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832) really stands on the threshold of modern political economy in Europe. He is the conspicuous landmark between the physiocrats and the commodity school represented by the English economists from Adam Smith to Jevons. He was really a convert and disciple of Adam Smith, and published his first great work, "Treatise on Political Economy" twenty-seven years (1803) after the appearance of "The Wealth of Nations."

Say, however, was quite a different type of man from Adam Smith. The great Scotchman was a monument of good sense. He was an extraordinary observer but he was not a systematic, orderly thinker. He was philosophical, equal to large generalizations, but capable of disorderly presentation. This was characteristic of his great work "The Wealth of Nations," by which he will forever be known to the human race.

Say's work shows much less of the observer, but more of the logician and scientist. He struggled to separate economics from political action, and make it an abstract science. He divided his work into three parts, — production, distribution and consumption. While he did much to give order and precision to the subject, he made it more of a physical than a social science. He treated production, distribution and consumption practically as three physical bodies operating upon each other, regarding production of one class of things as necessarily demand for another class.

This error to some extent flavored English literature. It was repeated with considerable elaboration by Professor Cairnes as late as 1874. All production is really induced, not by other production, but by the social wants and desires of the people; and hence the real vitalizing force behind production, exchange and distribution of wealth is what has now come to be designated as the standard of living.

In the absence of this, and with his absolute acceptance of the Malthusian theory of population and utter repugnance to the paternal methods of mercantilism, especially as applied in France before the Revolution, Say was a bloodless advocate of laissez faire; not merely as a free trader, but as believing that government was good in proportion as it was negative and weak. To him, laborers were so much force in production, and could be considered in no other way. When there were too many, economic law did its proper work by starving a number of them out of the way. His countryman and great admirer, Blanqui, says that he even favored slavery on the ground that it was more economical to use slaves than free men; but, in a later work, "Complete Course in Political Economy," he modifies this.

However, Say's contribution to economic science was really to systematize it, separate it from politics and paternalism, and reduce it to a study of economic phenomena. In his hands, however, the science was reduced to an emaciated skeleton without flesh and blood and human sympathy and social psychology, a degree of nakedness in which it never appeared in England. But, with Adam Smith in England in 1776, and Say in France in 1803, mercantilism and the narrow agricultural physiocratic theories were essentially overthrown, never again to rise into prominence. In many senses it may be said that Say systematized Adam Smith, and, through the extensive use of the French language, popularized English economics in Europe.

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From The Encyclopaedia Britannica 1890:

Of Jean Baptiste Say (1767–1832) Ricardo says—“He Say was the first, or among the first, of Continental writers who justly appreciated and applied the principles of Smith, and has done more than all other Continental writers taken together to recommend that enlightened and beneficial system to the nations of Europe.” The Wealth of Nations in the original language was placed in Say's hands by Clavière, afterwards minister, then director of the assurance society of which Say was a clerk; and the book made a powerful impression on him. Long after, when Dupont de Nemours complained of his injustice to the physiocrats, and claimed him as, through Smith, a spiritual grandson of Quesnay and nephew of Turgot, he replied that he had learned to read in the writings of the mercantile school, had learned to think in those of Quesnay and his followers, but that it was in Smith that he had learned to seek the causes and the effects of social phenomena in the nature of things, and to arrive at this last by a scrupulous analysis. His Traité d'Economie Politique (1803) was essentially founded on Smith's work, but he aimed at arranging the materials in a more logical and instructive order. He has the French art of easy and lucid exposition, though his facility sometimes degenerates into superficiality; and hence his book became popular, both directly and through translations obtained a wide circulation, and diffused rapidly through the civilized world the doctrines of the master. Say's knowledge of common life, says Roscher, was equal to Smith's; but he falls far below him in living insight into larger political phenomena, and he carefully eschews historical and philosophical explanations. He is sometimes strangely shallow, as when he says that “the best tax is that smallest in amount.” [Ed. "Shallow"...really??] He appears not to have much claim to the position of an original thinker in political economy. Ricardo, indeed, speaks of him as having “enriched the science by several discussions, original, accurate, and profound.” What he had specially in view in using these words was what is, perhaps rather pretentiously, called Say's théorie des débouchés, with his connected disproof of the possibility of a universal glut.

The theory amounts simply to this, that buying is also selling, and that it is by producing that we are enabled to purchase the products of others. Several distinguished economists, especially Malthus and Sismondi, in consequence chiefly of a misinterpretation of the phenomena of commercial crises, maintained that there might be general over-supply or excess of all commodities above the demand. This Say rightly denied. A particular branch of production may, it must indeed be admitted, exceed the existing capabilities of the market; but, if we remember that supply is demand, that commodities are purchasing power, we cannot accept the doctrine of the possibility of a universal glut without holding that we can have too much of everything—that “all men can be so fully provided with the precise articles they desire as to afford no market for each other's superfluities.” But, whatever services he may have rendered by original ideas on those or other subjects, his great merit is certainly that of a propagandist and popularizer.

The imperial police would not permit a second edition of his work to be issued without the introduction of changes which, with noble independence, he refused to make; and that edition did not therefore appear till 1814. Three other editions were published during the life of the author—in 1817, 1819, and 1826. In 1828 Say published a second treatise, Cours complet d’Economie Politique Pratique, which contained the substance of his lectures at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers and at the Collège de France. Whilst in his earlier treatise he had kept within the narrow limits of strict economics, in his later work he enlarged the sphere of discussion, introducing in particular many considerations respecting the economic influence of social institutions.

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Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan Walk Into A Bar...

Joke: Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan Walk Into A Bar. The bartender serves them tainted alcohol because there are no regulations. They die.

"Nothing gets me going more than economic ignorance....Economic ignorance comes in different forms, and some types of economic ignorance are less excusable than others. But the most important implication of Rothbard’s point is that the worst sort of economic ignorance is ignorance about your economic ignorance. There are varying degrees of blameworthiness for not knowing certain things about economics, but what is always unacceptable is not to recognize that you may not know enough to be speaking with authority, nor to understand the limits of economic knowledge."
~Steven Horwitz

There is no such thing as an unregulated restaurant. When I go to a new town I don't check with the local government to see which restaurants I should go to, I check with Yelp, TripAdvisor and even Google, which provides reviews from thousands, if not millions of reviewers. I regulate the market constantly. I have certain places I frequent regularly, and others I avoid. If many people stop going to a certain establishment then this sends a signal to that establishment to change or stop doing business altogether.

Free, private market regulation is ongoing, it never stops. We are all regulatory officers. I trust reviews of millions of private market officers more than I trust a review from one government regulator than can be easily bought off.

But what if a new restaurant starts up and kills people before it can be reviewed? A new restaurant can have a private regulating agency, such as Underwriters Laboratories, Orthodox Union or even an insurance company come in and test and rate foods, and those new restaurants can then proudly post certification from these respected private agencies so that their new customers can see them.

Additionally, government regulation does not guarantee safe food anyways. We saw how Chipotle restaurants were plagued with closings in 2015 despite being regulated by the government, and anyone needing water for food or drinks in Flint Michigan or from the Animas River in Colorado were sorely disappointed in the Government's management of our water resources.

Interestingly, when I think of poison in alcohol, I am reminded that the United States government intentionally poisoned alcohol during prohibition in order to scare people away from drinking. This heinous step led to, by some estimates, up to 10,000 deaths. It should also lead to a healthy distrust of our political overlords.

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Socialism's Legacy by Alan Kors

What a powerful and well-written talk.

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