6 Quotes by Robert P. Murphy

Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.

According to Mises, “If the parents are too poor to feed their children adequately, prohibition of child labor condemns the children to starvation.

Praxeology exhibits subjectivism in that it takes actors’ subjective ends as they exist in the minds of each person. By refraining from passing judgment on these ends, praxeology itself is objective.

What distinguishes the successful entrepreneur and promoter from other people is precisely the fact that he does not let himself be guided by what was and is, but arranges his affairs on the ground of his opinion about the future. He sees the past and the present as other people do; but he judges the future in a different way.

So it’s really not true, after all, that the government has spared children from toil and instead lets them romp on the playgrounds. No, the government instead buses them into mass worker-training programs and is very resentful indeed when parents try to opt out of this arrangement, as in homeschooling.

We can anticipate Mises’s ultimate conclusion: There is no viable third system. People must choose between capitalism and socialism.