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