Rothbard’s Button Doesn’t Exist, but It Needs to Be Invented
With totalitarianism accelerating on a global scale and having kicked off in earnest with government attacks on their own populations during the still-running ruse of the covid vaccine, the state as a necessary feature of civilization stands before us shamelessly as a blood-dripping monster.
And acting as tyranny’s bulldog is the state’s handmaiden and echo chamber, the legacy media.
Are future generations destined to live in an Orwellian nightmare?
Relying on the constitution and electing “good people” into office will not remove the source of our problems, which is: the government we inherited, the only organization that claims the legal right to fund itself coercively through taxes and bank counterfeiting. We’re attempting to live by a double standard—what’s legal for the state is criminal for you, and never forget, the state has more guns than you.
The only permanent solution is to get rid of the state altogether—end the “political means” of acquiring wealth, as Franz Oppenheimer wrote in his book The State (an organization that Albert Jay Nock characterized as a “professional criminal class” in his classic book Our Enemy, the State). But what’s the chance of that happening? Is it forever doomed to the realm of fantasy? In Murray Rothbard’s words:
The [State] abolitionist is a “button pusher” who would blister his thumb pushing a button that would abolish the State immediately, if such a button existed. But the abolitionist also knows that alas, such a button does not exist, and that he will take a bit of the loaf if necessary—while always preferring the whole loaf if he can achieve it.
Ludwig Erhard, Button Pusher
Born in Furth, a part of the German empire, in 1897, Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard volunteered for the military in 1916 and was severely wounded by an Allied artillery shell in 1918. Ironically, Adolf Hitler was also lying in a military hospital at the same time, recovering from an Allied gas attack. Seven operations left Erhard’s left arm permanently shorter than his right arm. After the war he studied economics at the University of Frankfurt and received his doctorate in 1925, with Franz Oppenheimer serving as his dissertation advisor.
With the rest of Germany, he suffered under hyperinflation following the war, then under Hitler’s ascent to power in the 1930s. During World War II he quietly promoted ideas about the postwar economic recovery following Hitler’s defeat, advocating a return to (mostly) free markets.
By the war’s end in 1945, Germany was a disaster. Its major cities had been destroyed, millions had been killed, the currency was a mockery, and food was scarce. US, British, and Soviet leaders had met at Y
Article from Mises Wire
