| | Well, yes, there were the egos too large to share a room... and there was the religion of Mrs. R... Am I stating the obvious when I point to "The Nature of Government" in The Virtue of Selfishness?
"A recent variant of anarchistic theory, which is befuddling some of the younger advocates of freedom, is a weird absurdity called 'competing governments'." Obviously, this was Rothbard's idea, which Rand mischaracterized. She lived through -- and barely survived -- the Russian Civil War. No wonder that "competing governments" sounded like a bad idea to her.
As much as I might have agreed with much of Rothbard, as I have pointed out, he was not a good researcher.
I bought his A History of Money and Banking in the United States: the Colonial Era to World War II from the Von Mises Institute for research of my own into the "wildcat" era of (nominally) unregulated banking in the USA before the Civil War. Rothbard second-sourced his information on the Suffolk Bank Plan. I found it -- and it is not exactly as he presented the story. He twisted the demise of the Suffolk System to meet his own political views. In fact, the story of the Suffolk System has been retold better elsewhere. I got a copy of another article from The Adam Smith Institute -- along with an Adam Smith necktie, both for $50, quite a deal.
I have been looking for a publisher for this article, but, so far, none of the libertarian or objectivist magazines I queried were interested. (I am not a college professor. I have no degrees. "Disproving Rothbard" has not much to do with the story I wish to tell.) So, my market for this is numismatics, where I have some status as an author, editor, and convention speaker.
(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 11/01, 2:37pm)
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