Walter Block
Encyclopedia
Walter Edward Block is a free market
economist and anarcho-capitalist associated with the Austrian School of economics
.
, New York
to Abraham Block, a certified public accountant
, and Ruth Block, a paralegal, both of whom Block has said were liberals. He earned his undergraduate degree in Philosophy
summa cum laude from Brooklyn College
, where he was a member of the varsity swimming team. Block earned his Ph.D.
degree in economics
from Columbia University
and wrote his dissertation on rent control
.
Block self-identifies as a "devout atheist".
in New Orleans. From 1979 to 1991, he was the Senior Economist with the Fraser Institute
. In addition to his faculty position at Loyola, Block is also a Senior Faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute
for Austrian Economics. His most famous work is Defending the Undefendable, of which John Stossel
said, "Defending the Undefendable... opened my eyes to the beauties of libertarianism. It explains that so much of what is assumed to be evil--is not." Lew Rockwell
of the Mises Institute said this about Walter Block's active role in modern libertarianism:
Block's early thinking life was characterized by egalitarian thought. In an interview by the Austrian Economics Newsletter, Block stated, "In the fifties and sixties, I was just another commie living in Brooklyn." Block credits his "conversion" to Libertarianism
to personal meetings with Ayn Rand
while he was an undergraduate student. Alan Greenspan
was in attendance at some of these meetings. As Block describes it, "In 1963, when I was a senior at Brooklyn College, Ayn Rand came there to give a lecture. I attended, along with about 3,000 of my fellow mainly leftish students, in order to boo and hiss her, since she was evil incarnate. Afterward, the president of the group that had invited her to campus announced there was to be a luncheon in her honor, and anyone was welcome to take part, whether or not they agreed with her ideas. Not having had enough booing and hissing at Ayn in her formal lecture, I decided to avail myself of this opportunity to further express my displeasure with her and her views."
Block thereafter attended a luncheon with Rand, Nathaniel Branden
, and Leonard Peikoff
. After Block's challenging of several luncheon attendees, Branden forged an agreement with Block: "Nathan very graciously offered to come to the other end of the table with me for this purpose, but he imposed two preconditions: first, I would be honor bound not to allow this conversation to lapse with this one meeting, but would continue with it until we had achieved a resolution: either he would convince me of the error of my ways, or I would convince him of his. Second, I would read two books he would later recommend to me (Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand and Economics in One Lesson
by Henry Hazlitt
).
Although Block credits Ayn Rand, Branden, and other Objectivists with his initial interest in laissez faire theory in general, he says of Murray Rothbard
that,
, is one of the leading Libertarian
defenders of voluntary slave contracts, arguing that a slave contract is "a bona fide contract where consideration crosses hands; when it is abrogated, theft occurs". He critiques other libertarians who oppose voluntary slavery as being inconsistent with their shared principles. Block seeks to make "a tiny adjustment" which "strengthens libertarianism by making it more internally consistent." He argues that his position shows "that contract, predicated on private property
[can] reach to the furthest realms of human interaction, even to voluntary slave contracts."
. He is quoted as saying,
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
economist and anarcho-capitalist associated with the Austrian School of economics
Austrian School
The Austrian School of economics is a heterodox school of economic thought. It advocates methodological individualism in interpreting economic developments , the theory that money is non-neutral, the theory that the capital structure of economies consists of heterogeneous goods that have...
.
Personal history and education
Block was born in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
to Abraham Block, a certified public accountant
Certified Public Accountant
Certified Public Accountant is the statutory title of qualified accountants in the United States who have passed the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination and have met additional state education and experience requirements for certification as a CPA...
, and Ruth Block, a paralegal, both of whom Block has said were liberals. He earned his undergraduate degree in Philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
summa cum laude from Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
, where he was a member of the varsity swimming team. Block earned his Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
degree in economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
and wrote his dissertation on rent control
Rent control
Rent control refers to laws or ordinances that set price controls on the renting of residential housing. It functions as a price ceiling.Rent control exists in approximately 40 countries around the world...
.
Block self-identifies as a "devout atheist".
Professional career
Block now holds the Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola UniversityLoyola University New Orleans
Loyola University New Orleans is a private, co-educational and Jesuit university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Originally established as Loyola College in 1904, the institution was chartered as a university in 1912. It bears the name of the Jesuit patron, Saint Ignatius of Loyola...
in New Orleans. From 1979 to 1991, he was the Senior Economist with the Fraser Institute
Fraser Institute
The Fraser Institute is a Canadian think tank. It has been described as politically conservative and right-wing libertarian and espouses free market principles...
. In addition to his faculty position at Loyola, Block is also a Senior Faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute
Ludwig von Mises Institute
The Ludwig von Mises Institute , based in Auburn, Alabama, is a libertarian academic organization engaged in research and scholarship in the fields of economics, philosophy and political economy. Its scholarship is inspired by the work of Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises...
for Austrian Economics. His most famous work is Defending the Undefendable, of which John Stossel
John Stossel
John F. Stossel is an American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist. In October 2009 Stossel left his long time home on ABC News to join the Fox Business Channel and Fox News Channel, both owned and operated by News Corp...
said, "Defending the Undefendable... opened my eyes to the beauties of libertarianism. It explains that so much of what is assumed to be evil--is not." Lew Rockwell
Lew Rockwell
Llewellyn Harrison "Lew" Rockwell, Jr. is an American libertarian political commentator, activist, proponent of the Austrian School of economics, and chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.-Life and work:...
of the Mises Institute said this about Walter Block's active role in modern libertarianism:
Murray RothbardMurray RothbardMurray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
, in his life, was known as Mr. Libertarian. We can make a solid case that the title now belongs to Walter Block, a student of Rothbard's whose own vita is as thick as a big-city phonebook, and as diverse as Wikipedia. Whether he is writing on economic theory, ethics, political secession, drugs, roads, education, monetary policy, social theory, unions, political language, or anything else, his prose burns with a passion for this single idea: if human problems are to be solved, the solution is to be found by permitting greater liberty.
Introduction to Libertarianism
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
to personal meetings with Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
while he was an undergraduate student. Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan is an American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. He currently works as a private advisor and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC...
was in attendance at some of these meetings. As Block describes it, "In 1963, when I was a senior at Brooklyn College, Ayn Rand came there to give a lecture. I attended, along with about 3,000 of my fellow mainly leftish students, in order to boo and hiss her, since she was evil incarnate. Afterward, the president of the group that had invited her to campus announced there was to be a luncheon in her honor, and anyone was welcome to take part, whether or not they agreed with her ideas. Not having had enough booing and hissing at Ayn in her formal lecture, I decided to avail myself of this opportunity to further express my displeasure with her and her views."
Block thereafter attended a luncheon with Rand, Nathaniel Branden
Nathaniel Branden
Nathaniel Branden, né Nathan Blumenthal , is a psychotherapist and writer best known today for his work in the psychology of self-esteem from a humanistic perspective...
, and Leonard Peikoff
Leonard Peikoff
Leonard S. Peikoff is a Canadian-American philosopher. He is an author, a leading advocate of Objectivism and the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute. A former professor of philosophy, he was designated by the novelist Ayn Rand as heir to her estate...
. After Block's challenging of several luncheon attendees, Branden forged an agreement with Block: "Nathan very graciously offered to come to the other end of the table with me for this purpose, but he imposed two preconditions: first, I would be honor bound not to allow this conversation to lapse with this one meeting, but would continue with it until we had achieved a resolution: either he would convince me of the error of my ways, or I would convince him of his. Second, I would read two books he would later recommend to me (Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing...
by Ayn Rand and Economics in One Lesson
Economics in One Lesson
Economics in One Lesson is an introduction to free market economics written by Henry Hazlitt and published in 1946, based on Frédéric Bastiat's essay .The "One Lesson" is stated in Part One of the book:...
by Henry Hazlitt
Henry Hazlitt
Henry Stuart Hazlitt was an American economist, philosopher, literary critic and journalist for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The American Mercury, Newsweek, and The New York Times...
).
Although Block credits Ayn Rand, Branden, and other Objectivists with his initial interest in laissez faire theory in general, he says of Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
that,
After I met Murray, it took him probably all of 15 minutes to convert me to the same anarcho-capitalist position I have held ever since.... In retrospect, before I had met Murray, I was nine tenths of the way toward embracing laissez faire capitalist anarchism; all I needed was a little push in the same direction I had already been going for some time.
Slave contracts
Block, along with Robert NozickRobert Nozick
Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia , a right-libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice...
, is one of the leading Libertarian
Libertarian
Libertarian may refer to:*A proponent of libertarianism, a political philosophy that upholds individual liberty, especially freedom of expression and action*A member of a libertarian political party; including:**Libertarian Party...
defenders of voluntary slave contracts, arguing that a slave contract is "a bona fide contract where consideration crosses hands; when it is abrogated, theft occurs". He critiques other libertarians who oppose voluntary slavery as being inconsistent with their shared principles. Block seeks to make "a tiny adjustment" which "strengthens libertarianism by making it more internally consistent." He argues that his position shows "that contract, predicated on private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
[can] reach to the furthest realms of human interaction, even to voluntary slave contracts."
Endorsement
On February 17, 2006, Dr. Walter Block publicly expressed his support for the Free State Project (FSP)Free State Project
The Free State Project is a political movement, founded in 2001, to recruit at least 20,000 libertarian-leaning people to move to New Hampshire in order to make the state a stronghold for libertarian ideas....
. He is quoted as saying,
You people are doing the Lord's work. The FSP is one of the freshest practical ideas for promoting liberty that has come out of the libertarian movement in the past few decades. May you succeed beyond your wildest dreams, and thus demonstrate in yet another empirical way the benefits and blessings of liberty.
As author
- Defending the Undefendable (1976; translated into Chinese, Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Russian languages) ISBN 0-930073-05-3
- A Response to the Framework Document for Amending the Combines Investigation ActCombines Investigation ActThe Combines Investigation Act was a Canadian Act of Parliament, implemented in 1910, passed in 1923 by MacKenzie King, which regulated certain corporate business practices that were anti-competitive. It prohibited monopolies, misleading advertising, bid-rigging, price fixing, and other means of...
(1982) - Focus on Economics and the Canadian Bishops (1983)
- Focus on Employment Equity: A Critique of the Abella Royal Commission on Equality in Employment (with Michael A. WalkerMichael A. WalkerMichael A Walker is a writer of film and television. Winner and nominee of over fifteen awards for his produced work, he recently collaborated with Anthony Horowitz on a new five part ITV drama Collision ....
; 1985) - The U.S. Bishops and Their Critics: An Economic and Ethical Perspective (1986)
- Lexicon of Economic Thought (with Michael A. Walker; 1988)
- Economic Freedom of the World, 1975-1995 (with James Gwartney, Robert Lawson; 1996)
- The Privatization of Roads and Highways: Human and Economic Factors (2006)
- The Case for Discrimination (2010)
As editor
- Zoning: Its Costs and Relevance for the 1980s (Ed.; 1980)
- Rent Control: Myths & Realities (Ed. with Edgar Olsen; 1981)
- Discrimination, Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity (Ed. with Michael A. WalkerMichael A. WalkerMichael A Walker is a writer of film and television. Winner and nominee of over fifteen awards for his produced work, he recently collaborated with Anthony Horowitz on a new five part ITV drama Collision ....
; 1982) - Taxation: An International Perspective (Ed. with Michael A. WalkerMichael A. WalkerMichael A Walker is a writer of film and television. Winner and nominee of over fifteen awards for his produced work, he recently collaborated with Anthony Horowitz on a new five part ITV drama Collision ....
; 1984) - Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation (Ed.; 1985; translated into Portuguese 1992) ISBN 0-88975-067-X
- Morality of the Market: Religious and Economic Perspectives (Ed. with Geoffrey BrennanGeoffrey BrennanGeoffrey Brennan is an Australian philosopher. He is currently a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a professor of political science at Duke University...
, Kenneth Elzinga; 1985) - Theology, Third World Development and Economic Justice (Ed. with Donald Shaw; 1985)
- Reaction: The New Combines Investigation Act (Ed.; 1986)
- Religion, Economics & Social Thought (Ed. with Irving HexhamIrving HexhamIrving Hexham is a Canadian academic and writer who has published twenty-three books and numerous articles, chapters, and book reviews in respected academic journals. Currently, he is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, married to Dr...
; 1986) - Man, Economy and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard (Ed. with Lew RockwellLew RockwellLlewellyn Harrison "Lew" Rockwell, Jr. is an American libertarian political commentator, activist, proponent of the Austrian School of economics, and chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.-Life and work:...
; 1988) - Breaking the Shackles; the Economics of Deregulation: A Comparison of U.S. and Canadian Experience (Ed. with George Lermer; 1991)
- Economic Freedom: Toward a Theory of Measurement (Ed.; 1991)
- Libertarian Autobiographies (Ed.; forthcoming)
Articles
- "Katrina and the Future of New Orleans" Telos 139, Summer 2007.
- "Hayek's Road to Serfdom". Journal of Libertarian StudiesJournal of Libertarian StudiesThe Journal of Libertarian Studies is a scholarly journal published annually by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and Lew Rockwell. It was established in the spring of 1977 by Murray Rothbard who also served as its editor until his death in 1995...
(Center for Libertarian StudiesCenter for Libertarian StudiesThe Center for Libertarian Studies was a libertarian and anarcho-capitalist oriented educational organization founded in 1976 by Murray Rothbard and Burton Blumert, which grew out of the Libertarian Scholars Conferences...
) 12 (2): 339–365 (1996).
External links
- WalterBlock.com
- Commentary by Walter Block for CNBC
- Biography and Article Archive at Mises.orgLudwig von Mises InstituteThe Ludwig von Mises Institute , based in Auburn, Alabama, is a libertarian academic organization engaged in research and scholarship in the fields of economics, philosophy and political economy. Its scholarship is inspired by the work of Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises...
. - Media Archive at Mises.org.
- Defending the Undefendable