2,793 works, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
A reputation for defending markets is not, for Hoppe, proof of a commitment to market freedom. This one-page introduction to the 2002 “Chicago vs. the Free Market” symposium challenges the Chicago School’s familiar identification with free-market economics, contrasting its Nobel prestige with the scrutiny Hoppe believes its positions deserve. He announces a critical assessment of six economists, including Friedman, Coase, and Becker, without presenting the individual cases here. The piece offers a concise statement of the symposium’s polemical purpose: to test whether celebrated market advocates differ in principle, rather than merely in degree, from economists Hoppe calls interventionists.
A village road poses a concrete problem for Hoppe’s case for total privatization: who may take ownership of a shared route without depriving residents of their established access? In this essay, republished in 2021, he distinguishes common use from compulsory public ownership and argues that private title can preserve inherited rights of way while assigning responsibility for maintenance. His rationale is restitution rather than the efficient sale of state assets: ownership should pass to those with legitimate prior claims or those who financed the property through taxation. The interest lies in the friction between that principle and difficult cases—missing ownership records, buildings erected on expropriated land, and competing taxpayer claims. These cases make explicit what Hoppe’s proposal would protect, whom it would exclude, and why voluntary collective ownership remains compatible with his rejection of public property.