Get all 3 FDR books Completely Free!

Introduction to Economics

New to FDR? Click here for a narrated introduction.

Find the shows you most want to hear! Check out the Philoso-Physician!

I started my economic education as a minarchist (small State, somewhat free market); I have more recently evolved into a pure voluntarist, also known as a market anarchist - no State, absolute property rights, complete freedom.

Figuring out free market solutions to existing State functions such as the police, the military, the court system and so on is a considerable challenge, and a central component of my early podcasts. The argument against the validity of the State is not primarily economic, but moral - but morality is so often considered the opposite of practicality that I want to show how ending the moral abomination of governments is not only morally necessary, but a functional improvement as well!

Economics is the study of how choices affect the allocation of resources - and as such is one of the most empirical of the social sciences. Economics is also about understanding the hidden costs of resource allocation decisions - particularly those achieved through State compulsion. When the government spends millions of dollars creating jobs, the jobs created are easily visible - what is far harder to see, without economics, are the jobs that were not created because the money was forcibly taxed out of the private sector. Similarly, the myth that war is good for a capitalist economy is easily debunked by rational economics - war is good for government income, and for the income of those who supply war materials, but disastrous for everyone else.

Economics is not about the maximization of wealth, but rather the logical and moral analysis of costs and benefits. No competent economist would say that a man who quits his job to pursue philosophy is acting incorrectly, but rather would be interested in the cost-benefit analysis of the decision. The ultimate "resource" is happiness, not money - though the two are not unrelated.

In the fight for freedom, an understanding of economics is essential. The majority of arguments against a free society are based on the fantasy of the efficient use of force, as represented by governments. For some reason, people are willing to hand over half their income, their children to war, and their freedoms in perpetuity -- all because they cannot imagine how roads might function in the absence of taxation. Eliminating the fantasy that the initiation of violence - i.e. taxation - can ever achieve any long-term good is essential to helping deconstruct the mythology of State virtue.