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Mark Thornton returns to Rothbard's idea of major party realignment, arguing that ideology—not interest-group politics alone—drives long-term political change. He applies that framework to today's Republican Party, tracing its roots in crony capitalism, protectionism, prohibitionism, and single-issue coalitions, while arguing that the modern uniparty supports inflation, war, runaway spending, debt, and the erosion of the middle class.On Side B, Mark joins Little by Little to discuss war, business cycles, bond-market distrust, private credit, gold, AI, and the growing divide between official statistics and household reality. He warns that political barriers can delay realignment only so long before pressure builds toward revolution, but closes with optimism: young Americans are increasingly rejecting the parties, the media, and state propaganda—and are more open to Austrian economics than ever.Additional Resources"Major Party Realignment" by Mark Thornton (Minor Issues, Episode 186): https://mises.org/podcasts/minor-issues/major-party-realignment"The Transformation of the American Party System" by Murray N. Rothbard: https://mises.org/mises-daily/transformation-american-party-system"Taking Government Out of Politics: Murray Rothbard on Political and Local Reform during the Progressive Era" by Patrick Newman (Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics): https://mises.org/quarterly-journal-austrian-economics/taking-government-out-politics-murray-rothbard-political-and-local-reform-during-progressive-era"Murray Rothbard's Lessons for the Right" by David Brady Jr. (Modern Age Journal): https://modernagejournal.com/murray-rothbard-conservative-libertarian/2547542026 is the Year of Rothbard—Murray's 100th birthday—and we're celebrating by giving away free copies of The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar through August 31. Grab yours today at https://mises.org/issuesfree20% off listener offer on the insulated Minor Issues tumbler and three of Mark's books: https://mises.org/MinorIssuesTumbler. Use coupon code Thornton.Be sure to follow Minor Issues at https://Mises.org/MinorIssues

Fauci is back in the limelight after the release of his diary before a Senate hearing last week. And that's good, because the career of Anthony Fauci can teach us a lot about where power actually resides in America and how our system really works.Read the article here: https://mises.org/mises-wire/what-anthony-fauci-teaches-us-about-american-government2026 is the Year of Rothbard—Murray's 100th birthday—and we're celebrating by giving away free copies of The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar through August 31. Grab yours today at https://mises.org/gabfreebookBe sure to follow the Guns and Butter podcast at https://Mises.org/GB

Much of the discussion around American healthcare ignores the fact that most of the American healthcare system is already a government healthcare system.Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off

Dinesh D'Souza—a self-proclaimed opponent of “revisionist history”—reinterprets the Declaration of Independence through anachronism and equivocation, reading modern concepts of nationhood and equality back into 1776.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/declaration-and-dinesh-dsouzas-revisionist-history

On this episode of Power and Market, Ryan, Connor, and Tho discuss the social debate this week focused on Gen Z economic anxiety. How did a discussion over the price of burritos become a mask-off moment over generational contempt, foreign policy, and neoliberal economics?

Mutual aid societies once were an important part of the US social landscape. Africans can benefit from the same movements—provided their governments get out of the way.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/when-death-cheaper-care-mutual-aid-developing-world

In spite of the GOP's feigned dismay over Morocco's weaponization of migrants against Spanish exclaves in North Africa, US policy supports Moroccan expansionism in the region. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/us-supports-mass-migration-moroccans-spanish-territory

Bob returns to the fractional reserve banking debate to clarify a point the critics keep missing: in the Mises-Hayek-Rothbard framework, it's fractional reserve banking itself that sets the boom-bust cycle in motion, not merely central banks.Related:Lawrence White, Free Banking in Britain: Mises.org/HAP561aBob's Previous Episode on Rothbard vs Free Bankers: Mises.org/HAP561bBob's Paper on the History of Fractional Reserve Free Banking: Mises.org/HAP561cRoger Garrison's Presentations on Capital-Based Macroeconomics: Mises.org/HAP561d

The transition problem. Rothbard weighs forcing deflation down to the existing gold stock against raising the gold price to match the dollar supply, defends deflation against its reputation, and sets out a six-point program. He parts with Mises and Hazlitt on sequencing, and closes by insisting that scholars must argue for what is true rather than for what is currently expedient.

Rothbard places the 100 percent program in the classical economists and the currency school, and in the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian political tradition—figures he argues historians have miscast as economically ignorant agrarians. He credits Condy Raguet with seeing before the British that deposits are money substitutes too, and recovers the neglected Charles H. Carroll and Isaiah W. Sylvester.

Leland Yeager, an advocate of freely fluctuating fiat money, concedes that a 100 percent gold standard would end reserve drains, forced contraction, and balance-of-payments anxiety—problems he attributes to fractional reserves rather than to gold. Rothbard quotes him at length, asks why he rejects what he has just praised, and pushes the reductio further: where exactly is the geographical boundary of a money?

The standard objections, taken in turn. If banks could not profit under 100 percent reserves, they may charge for their services as every other useful business does. And the fear of an inadequate money supply misses the classical lesson that any change in the quantity of money adjusts itself in purchasing power—leaving population, trade volume, and a stable price level as arbitrary criteria.

The cardinal difference between Rothbard and most other gold advocates. He rejects the Chicago School's view of 100 percent reserves as a convenient tool for managing the money supply, grounding his case instead in property rights: notes and deposits are warehouse receipts, and issuing more than the goods on hand is legalized counterfeiting. He answers Spahr's bridge analogy and weighs the attractions of free banking.

Why governments prefer money creation to taxation: the benefits are plain to whoever receives the new money first, while the losses stay hidden from everyone else. Rothbard traces how the two natural checks on a bank—redemption by outsiders and a run by its own clients—were widened by central banking, by suspensions of specie payment, and by campaigns to shame the public out of using gold day to day.

Statistics can be interesting and informative, but only if one can properly understand them through sound economic theory.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/inflation-and-statistics-economics-explains-them-not-other-way-around

Rothbard argues that 1931–33 was the last step in a long process rather than a sudden break. Government's compulsory monopoly of coinage came first, defended by fears of private fraud that the long record of official debasement makes hollow. He answers the Gresham's Law objection, then traces how the royal stamp shifted emphasis from a coin's weight to its name.

The conceptual core of the essay. Rothbard answers the charge that gold advocates want government to fix a price by rejecting its premise—“dollar” was never an independent entity but a name for a weight of gold. He shows how money is properly obtained only through production, and argues that a bare name could never have arisen as money on a free market.

Rothbard declines both the fashionable dismissal of gold and the restorationist call to return to the pre-1933 standard, which he judges too far decayed to have lasted. He then states his ethical premise plainly: the free market, extended to money itself. Against the claim that money is whatever government says it is, he warns that command of the unit of account is command of the whole society.

Writing in 1991, Rothbard sets the essay in its original context: Bretton Woods as an international dollar standard masquerading as a gold standard. He contrasts it with the classical pre-1914 system, in which every currency was a defined weight of gold redeemable on demand, then recounts how the breakdowns of 1968 and 1971 tested Misesian predictions against an Establishment certain that gold would fall to $6 an ounce.

Last week, more than 50,000 people illegally entered the Spanish exclave city of Ceuta, which normally has a population of only 80,000. Why not just open the border permanently? Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/what-would-happen-if-spain-had-open-border-morocco

Mark Thornton opens this triple-header episode with a live Radio Rothbard appearance from Mises University, joining Ryan McMaken to discuss inflation, the K-shaped economy, asset prices, debt, the dollar, and why Austrian theory explains what mainstream accounts leave out. Thornton argues that monetary inflation benefits asset owners and government-connected interests first, while working households face higher prices long before wages catch up.On Side B, Mark joins Freedom Works interview on democratic socialism, where he explains why young Americans are drawn to socialism, how government intervention created many of their grievances, and why free markets remain the real path forward. The episode closes with Wall Street Bullion to discuss gold, silver, energy, debt service, the weakening dollar, BRICS, the petrodollar, and the economic fallout from war in the Persian Gulf.2026 is the Year of Rothbard—Murray's 100th birthday—and we're celebrating by giving away free copies of The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar through August 31. Grab yours today at https://mises.org/issuesfree20% off listener offer on the insulated Minor Issues tumbler and three of Mark's books: https://mises.org/MinorIssuesTumbler. Use coupon code Thornton.Be sure to follow Minor Issues at https://Mises.org/MinorIssues

Reviewing Lawrence H. White's Free Banking in Britain, Murray Rothbard dismantles the claim that Scotland enjoyed a century of successful free banking before the Peel Act of 1845. Drawing on Sydney Checkland's history, he shows that the Scottish banks pyramided credit on the Bank of England rather than standing on their own specie, suspended payment alongside England from 1797 to 1821, and let reserves fall from 10–20 percent to as little as 1 percent, while depositors who asked for gold met argument, rebuff, and the threat of losing future credit. The rarity of bank failure that White counts as proof of success, Rothbard argues, is evidence of the opposite.

Murray Rothbard realized the present system of punishment for committing crimes is both inadequate and unjust. We need to move to a system of restitution.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/i-spent-28-years-arresting-criminals-rothbard-was-right-all-along

Bob reviews Murray Rothbard's 1988 essay "The Myth of Free Banking in Scotland," his sharp response to Larry White's influential account of Scottish free banking.Related:Rothbard's Article, "The Myth of Free Banking in Scotland": Mises.org/HAP560aBob's Debate with George Selgin on Fractional Reserve Banking: Mises.org/HAP560bGeorge Selgin's Article, "Scottish Banks and the Bank Restriction, 1797–1821": Mises.org/HAP560cJoe Salerno's Article on Mises as Currency School Free Banker: Mises.org/HAP560d

No matter how legitimate the reasons might seem for going to war, the results are always horrific, and wars rarely, if ever, accomplish their stated purposes.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/dupes-war

The completion of the first draft of Man, Economy, and State enabled Murray Rothbard to move on to other activities and projects. He earned his doctorate in 1956 and reviewed papers and books for the Volker Fund, evaluating contemporary research using the body of economic theorems he had deduced. Focusing on the Chicago School, Rothbard criticized Israel Kirzner's attempt to fuse Austrian insights with neo-Marshallian production theory as well as Milton Friedman and others' neo-Fisherian monetary economics. Rothbard not only criticized new publications; he also continued to edit his treatise, adding new references and making other changes. In 1962, despite professional and institutional obstacles, Man, Economy, and State was finally published. With it, Rothbard greatly advanced the Austrian tradition and firmly positioned himself as Mises's heir.

Murray Rothbard used his general-equilibrium approach with its emphasis on economic interrelations to erect a systematic framework of interventionism. He started by elaborating further on the concept of the purely free market and developing a comprehensive welfare theory. He then proceeded to create a typology of government policy, formulate a novel theory of monopoly that distinguishes between a monopoly price and a free-market price, develop an original theory of backward tax imputation, and analyze the calculational chaos caused by government expenditure. The capstone of Rothbard's analysis of interventionism was his integration of the Mises–Hayek theory of the business cycle into general economic theory. Rothbard was thus able to demonstrate how the boom could result only from credit expansion and not from an increase in the supply of commodity money such as gold. He also demonstrated how credit contraction during the bust promotes recovery. With these advances in the Austrian theory of the business cycle, Rothbard finally completed the monumental task of deducing the entire corpus of economic theory using the praxeological method.

Murray Rothbard's project drastically changed in mid-1953. Unable to rely on Mises's sparse treatment of production theory, Rothbard adopted his old Marshallian approach, focusing on an individual firm that faced fixed prices and restricted investment decisions. But he soon recognized the pitfalls of Marshallian partial equilibrium and discarded it for Austrian general equilibrium, emphasizing the Böhm-Bawerkian capitalist-entrepreneur's ability to invest in multiple firms across the structure of production and influence market prices. In doing so, Rothbard finished the Böhm-Baverkian system by integrating the pure time preference theory of interest of Frank A. Fetter and Ludwig von Mises into the production structure analysis of Knut Wicksell and F. A. Hayek. This interrelatedness approach led Rothbard to differentiate between factor incomes, apply Mises's theory of the impossibility of socialist economic calculation to a vertically integrated firm, and expose the flaws of neoclassical monopoly and competition theory. With these theoretical breakthroughs, by 1955 Rothbard moved beyond his initial goal of “bringing to the surface and clarifying” his mentor's “edifice” to deducing the architectonic edifice of praxeological economic theory along the lines of Mises's “great book” suggestion.

Murray Rothbard's economic perspective changed significantly in 1949 when he met Ludwig von Mises and read his magnum opus, Human Action. With the financial support of the Volker Fund, Rothbard accepted Mises's offer to write a textbook rendition of his treatise. Early on, Rothbard evinced a thorough understanding of Mises's monetary transmission mechanism and praxeological method. This allowed him to further develop the theories of value and price formation the emerging neoclassical synthesis had neglected. In particular, Rothbard used the means-ends relationship to deduce the law of ordinal marginal utility rankings and contrasted it with modern theories of utility. He then showed how this law logically resulted in demand schedules that always sloped downward, which in turn led to a theory of pricing that explained the process of equilibration to the market clearing price. Finally, he extended his analysis to price formation in a monetary economy. In addition to exhibiting his own intellectual progress, Rothbard's developments significantly advanced economic science because Mises assumed these logical deductions but never actually derived them.

Murray Rothbard started his career with a foundational training in neoclassical economics. At Columbia University, he learned from highly regarded professors and demonstrated a thorough understanding of the positivist method, Keynesian and Marshallian economic theory, and institutional empirical analysis. Crucially, Rothbard perceived the fact that critical errors existed in these disparate strands of knowledge, although he could not yet articulate them. But the recognition itself motivated him to take the highly important step of contacting the free-market Foundation for Economic Education and the William Volker Fund, thereby discovering Austrian economics.

Murray N . Rothbard: The Making of an Austrian Economist is written for everyone interested in Rothbard's economic theory and Austrian economics in general. We hope it will serve as a useful complementary volume to Man, Economy, and State by elucidating Rothbard's many contributions and the process by which he developed an integrated structure of economic theory using the praxeological method.

After defeating the British in the American Revolution, Americans had the opportunity to set the country on a long path of freedom. They chose to empower government, instead.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/paradise-lost-government-gained

This book has been several years in the making. Originally we envisioned it as a collection of letters and unpublished monographs from the Rothbard Papers at the Mises Institute. It was only in 2020 that we realized that a coherent narrative was needed to organize and bring to life the mass of correspondence and other writings. Over the next several years we wrote the manuscript and revised it as suggestions were made and new archival material was discovered.

In attempts to rectify what are seen as historical wrongs against certain groups of people, western governments have embarked on programs to engage in wrongs against other groups of people. The universal principles of liberalism are supplanted by policies sure to make matters worse.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/universal-principles-liberalism-and-politics-race

The democratization of urban planning, the politicization of the environmental movement, and the no-growth movement came together to erect enormous barriers to housing construction in California.Original article: https://mises.org/misesian/how-democratic-socialism-created-californias-housing-crisis

The up and down experience with free markets in Eastern Europe following the fall of the Iron Curtain shows that free markets, while undermining the state, do not operate apart from state interference.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/domestic-agorism-eastern-europes-example-libertarianism-without-academic-guidance

For many years, some economists and politicians have painted income equality as a major threat to our economy and well-being. As usual, they understand neither inequality nor economics.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-much-inequality-there-depends-how-its-measured

On the Declaration's 250th anniversary, Larsen Plyler asks what the document was actually written to do. Taking Justice Clarence Thomas's recent claim that it ranks among the West's great anti-slavery documents as his starting point, Plyler argues that the Declaration's legacy has been shaped less by Jefferson than by Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., who read a later conception of equality and a single unified nation back into it. Returning the text to its context—grievances aimed at the king alone, a closing paragraph declaring thirteen free and independent states—he makes the case for the legacy that got lost.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 25, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Egalitarians assume people would be equal but for oppression or the random hand of luck, and that where injustice can't be shown, luck alone justifies equalizing by force. Joshua Mawhorter turns the presupposition around. Drawing on Rothbard's Egalitarianism: A Revolt Against Nature and Sowell's Discrimination and Disparities, he argues that inequality is the normal condition of a world of scarcity, change, time, and choice; that it is precisely what makes exchange possible; and that the only equality worth defending is equality of liberty under the rule of law.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 25, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Is neoliberalism a real intellectual tradition or just an insult? Tho Bishop argues it is real and precise: a program for a regulated market economy running on technocratically managed, socialized money. He traces it from Henry Simons's 1934 "A Positive Program for Laissez-Faire" into the Mont Pelerin Society—where Mises watched enthusiasm for antitrust and credit expansion take root, and where the vacuum left by Hayek was filled by Chicago rather than by libertarians—and forward through Friedman's career to Greenspan and Bernanke. The Rothbardians, he concludes, have been the only sustained non-socialist opposition.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 25, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Plenty of people say they like Ron Paul on the economy but part ways with him on war. Connor O'Keeffe argues that's not a coherent place to stand. The warfare state—roughly $900 billion a year for the Pentagon alone, plus the intelligence agencies and veterans' programs—is only fundable because of the two things most libertarians most want gone: the income tax and the Federal Reserve. Strip those away and the empire collapses on the spot. And the causation runs the other way too: war is the health of the state, the coercive tools built for use abroad boomerang home, and the whole imperial project is quietly hollowing out the property rights and sound money that made the country wealthy enough to afford it. Pro-market and anti-war, he argues, is the only consistent position.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 25, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

In this episode of Radio Rothbard, recorded live at Mises University 2026, Ryan sits down with Mark Thornton to talk through the economic trends fueling today's unrest.Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off