Please continue to share this sublime book with your students.

Keep in mind that there were certain things that Hazlitt needed to include in order for his book to be published. He states, somewhere in the book, that labor unions can be beneficial if the market is not holding their wages ‘high enough, or at market value.’ This strikes one as absurd – for it is the market that determines one’s value, not the government or labor unions.

However, when someone critized Hazlitt for this passage, Hazlitt, exasperated, told him that it was the only way he could get his book published! I believe I heard this in either the interview with Dr. Reisman or Dr. Block about the new edition of Economics in One Lesson.

Keep that in mind, Josh. Of course Hazlitt’s minarchy (like Mises) might have caused him to condone the building of, say, roads and the like, but passages such as these are most likely because of his publisher.

Only, if I had to suggest one book to read I would personally recommend Bastiat’s The Law, though.

That’s because I think strategically realisation of free market economy depends on correct understanding of moral/ethical fundamentals.

josh,

I think there is a danger in taking the quote from this early chapter out of context. Hazlitt was writing this book to teach non-economists the basic ideas of Austrian economics. As such, he is telling a story and building the reader’s understanding gradually. At the end of this chapter, he states “I have deliberately chosen the most favorable examples of public spending schemes—that is, those that are most frequently and fervently urged by the government spenders and most highly regarded by the public.”

In the very next chapter, “Taxes Discourage Production,” he begins with, “There is a still further factor which makes it improbable that the wealth created by government spending will fully compensate for the wealth destroyed by the taxes imposed to pay for that spending.” He continues to elaborate and illustrate this concept throughout the book.

As Dr. Block has noted, Hazlitt builds an elegant argument, as a story that anyone can follow, piece by piece, chapter by chapter, to tear down the arguments of the New Dealers. That is the historical context in which he wrote it. He was not attempting to argue the finer points of praxeology, as that was not the aim of such a book for general audiences.

Given the New New Deal we are about to get, this book remains an amazingly elegant explanation of why we are in trouble today, and why the new administration and congress will likely only make it worse.

But just taking the quoted passage at face value, it was my understanding (albeit, not vast in the least) of A.E. and praxeology in general, that any end achieved by coercive means can never be more highly valued than the end(s) that would have come about if the money had been spent voluntarily by those that earned it.

But here, (from what I can tell), Hazlitt is contradicting that—he clearly states that the outcome of forced redistribution (the bridge) is “more necessary …than the things for which they would have individually spent their money had it had not been taxed away from them.”

I don’t see how that doesn’t fly in the face of the most fundamental principle of praxeology, which is you can’t create greater value via coercive means.

I suspect what Hazlitt meant was that the bridge, it if truly contributes to the “commonwealth” of the community, that community members would not object.

If getting your goods across the river before the bridge was built cost more overall than your contribution to the cost of the bridge in taxes, then as a taxpayer you would be unlikely to object to the bridge being built. It has materially improved your life at an acceptable cost.

One might even argue that, by lowering the cost of trade in general for your community, it has enhanced everyone’s individual wealth, as an unintended consequence.

Could the bridge have been built cheaper by a private entrepreneur than by Govt? Most likely, but that is not the point of this example, as he goes on to explain in the paragraph you are quoting: http://blog.mises.org/archives/009012.asp#comment-477234 I hope someone can answer this for me– there’s one passage in the book I don’t quite get :