Misty Peñuelas



Articles by Misty Peñuelas

Did the US Steal Cherokee Land?

In a recent lecture on her new book, Redressing Historical Injustice: Self-Ownership, Property Rights and Economic Equality, Wanjiru Njoya challenged current calls among some indigenous groups for “land justice” to redress the alleged historical injustices of European colonization. Drawing from Murray N. Rothbard’s book The Ethics of Liberty, Njoya outlined a set of guideposts for determining the actual justice of such claims with reference to South Africa. As general principles, these guideposts are useful in other historical contexts as well. Here, for example, I apply these natural law principles to the specific case of the Cherokee Indians to answer the question, did Anglo colonizers steal Cherokee land?
As Rothbardians know, there are three ways to acquire private property under

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Is It Real Money or Just Artifice?

Money proper is not artifice. It is a physical "thing" of value, acquired through labor and emerging out of the needs of individuals, who through voluntary exchanges determine its value.

Original Article: "Is It Real Money or Just Artifice?"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

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Is It Real Money or Just Artifice?

In his 1884 article “Mind as a Social Factor,” Lester F. Ward attacked the laissez-faire doctrine in an “inversion of values” that would have made Friedrich Nietzsche blush. “But how shall we distinguish,” Ward asked,
this human, or anthropic, method from the method of nature? Simply by reversing all the definitions. Art is the antithesis of nature. If we call one the natural method we must call the other the artificial method. If nature’s process is rightly named natural selection, man’s process is artificial selection. . . .
The fallacy [in the laissez-faire doctrine] is a non sequitur. . . . [E]very mechanical invention proves that nothing is easier than to interfere successfully with the operation of . . . uniform natural forces. They have only to be first thoroughly understood and

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