I think that Mason Gaffney and I (and Mises) are perpetual ships passing in
the night.  As Mises argued in THEORY AND HISTORY (Yale University Press,
1957), history is not theory, although it requires theory to understand
it--as Mason amply illustrates as he recounts and "explains" the dastardly
historical past of our corrupt present.

Yes, almost all governments that I can call to mind originated from some
brute(s) seizing resources and parceling them out to his (or their) lackeys.
It still goes on today.  Recounting those events is not providing a
foundation for theory or for its application.  Mises's concept of
interventionism relies on a theoretical construct of an unimpeded market
process that is not set in a specific historical or institutional context,
as Mason would have it.

Samuel Bostaph