error Coercion
Force and compulsion in society
format_quote Quotes
"Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power."
menu_book Capitalism and Freedom
View Full Quote"With a democratic government anyone in principle can become a member of the ruling class or even the supreme power. The distinction between the rulers and the ruled as well as the class consciousness of the ruled become blurred. The illusion even arises that the distinction no longer exists: that with a public government no one is ruled by anyone, but everyone instead rules himself."
menu_book Democracy: The God That Failed
View Full Quote"As for the moral status of majority rule, it must be pointed out that it allows for A and B to band together to rip off C."
menu_book Democracy: The God That Failed
View Full Quote"There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state."
menu_book A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics, and Ethics
View Full Quote"States everywhere are highly intent on outlawing or at least controlling even the mere possession of arms by private citizens—and most states have indeed succeeded in this task—as an armed man is clearly more of a threat to any aggressor than an unarmed man. It bears much less risk for the state to keep things peaceful while its own aggression continues, if rifles with which the taxman could be shot are out of the reach of everyone except the taxman himself!"
menu_book A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics, and Ethics
View Full Quote"In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out."
menu_book The Private Production of Defense
View Full Quote"Every state is a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making and taxation. Because it is a monopoly, it will inevitably produce its goods at higher cost and lower quality than would competing private providers, and it will use its compulsory revenue to further entrench and expand its power."
menu_book The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production
View Full Quote"Paper money has never been introduced through voluntary cooperation. In all known cases it has been introduced through coercion and compulsion, sometimes with the threat of the death penalty."
menu_book The Ethics of Money Production
View Full Quote"The first reason why men serve willingly is that they are born serfs and are reared as such. From this there follows another result, namely that people easily become cowardly and submissive under tyrants. For the people, being numbed and having been made sleepy, are little by little lulled into insensibility, and accustomed to the idea of serving."
menu_book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
View Full Quote"This single tyrant need not be combated, need not be defeated; he is automatically defeated if the country refuses to consent to its own enslavement. It is not necessary to deprive him of anything; simply give him nothing. There is no need for the country to do anything for itself, provided it does nothing against itself."
menu_book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
View Full Quote"The State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion."
menu_book Anatomy of the State
View Full Quote"Every act of coercion that creates obstacles to exchange is a destroyer of wealth."
menu_book Libéralisme
View Full Quote"The State has no moral or scientific justification; it is the pure product of the emergence of violence in human societies."
menu_book Libéralisme
View Full Quoteauto_stories Books
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
Written around 1549 by the young French magistrate Étienne de La Boétie and first published posthumously in 1576, this founding text of libertarian...
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