Jeffrey A. Tucker

We are surrounded by miracles created in the private sector, particularly in the digital universe, and yet we don't appreciate them enough. Meanwhile, the public sector is systematically wrecking the physical world in sneaky and petty ways that really do matter. Jeffrey Tucker, in It's a Jetsons World, draws detailed attention to both. He points out that the products of digital capitalism are astounding — more outrageously advanced than anything the makers of the Jetsons could even imagine. Indeed the pace of change is mind-boggling. The world is being reinvented in our lifetimes, every day. Email has only been mainstream for 15 years or so, and young people now regard it as a dated form of communication used only for the most formal of correspondence. And no one uses the telephone unless a call has already been scheduled in advance. Oddly, hardly anyone seems to care, and even fewer care about the institutional force that makes all this progress possible — the market economy. Instead, we just adjust to the new reality. We even hear of the grave problem of "miracle fatigue" — too much great stuff, too often. Truly, this new world seems to have arrived without much fanfare at all. And why? We absorb amazing things and don't think much about their source or the system that produces them. We don't appreciate the market. The Jetsons' world of rapid innovation is our world, but there is one major difference — and it isn't the flying car, which we might already have were it not for the government's promotion of roads and the central plan that manages transportation. It is this: we also live in the midst of a gigantic Leviathan state that seeks to control every aspect of our life down to the smallest detail. This is what keeps getting in our way. With good, incisive economic sense and an indelible wit, this book will inspire love for free markets — and loathing of government. To search for Mises Institute titles, enter a keyword and LvMI (short for Ludwig von Mises Institute); e.g., Depression LvMI

The rise of the so-called alt-right is the most unexpected ideological development of our time. Most people of the current generation lack a sense of the historical sweep of the intellectual side of the right-wing collectivist position. Jeffrey Tucker, in this collection written between 2015 and 2017, argues that this movement represents the revival of a tradition of interwar collectivist thought that might at first seem like a hybrid but was distinctly mainstream between the two world wars. It is anti-communist but not for the reasons that were conventional during the Cold War, that is, because communism opposed freedom in the liberal tradition. Right-collectivism also opposes traditional liberalism. It opposes free trade, freedom of association, free migration, and capitalism understood as a laissez-faire free market. It rallies around nation and state as the organizing principles of the social order—and trends in the direction of favoring one-man rule—but positions itself as opposed to leftism traditionally understood. We know about certain fascist leaders from the mid-20th century, but not the ideological orientation that led to them or the ideas they left on the table to be picked up generations later. For the most part, and until recently, it seemed to have dropped from history. Meanwhile, the prospects for social democratic ideology are fading, and something else is coming to fill that vacuum. What is it? Where does it come from? Where is it leading? This book seeks to fill the knowledge gap, to explain what this movement is about and why anyone who genuinely loves and longs for liberty classically understood needs to develop a nose and instinct for spotting the opposite when it comes in an unfamiliar form. We need to learn to recognize the language, the thinkers, the themes, the goals of a political ethos that is properly identified as fascist. "Jeffrey Tucker in his brilliant book calls right-wing populism what it actually is, namely, fascism, or, in its German form national socialism, nazism. You need Tucker’s book. You need to worry. If you are a real liberal, you need to know where the new national socialism comes from, the better to call it out and shame it back into the shadows. Now." — Deirdre McCloskey

Jeffrey Tucker is well known as the author of many informative and beloved articles and books on the subject of human freedom. Now he’s turned his attention to the most shocking and widespread violation of human freedom in our times: the authoritarian lockdown of society on the pretense that it is necessary in the face of a novel virus. Learning from the experts, Jeffrey Tucker has researched this subject from every angle. In this book, Tucker lays out the history, politics, economics, and science relevant to the coronavirus response. The result is clear: there is no justification for the lockdowns. It’s liberty or lockdown. We have to choose. The book includes a foreword by George Gilder. Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and eight books in 5 languages, most recently The Market Loves You. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. The American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was founded in 1933 as the first independent voice for sound economics in the United States. Today it publishes ongoing research, hosts educational programs, publishes books, sponsors interns and scholars, and is home to the world-renowned Bastiat Society and the highly respected Sound Money Project. The American Institute for Economic Research is a 501c3 public charity.

The marketplace is commonly described as brutish, greed-based, cutthroat, or unrelentingly exploitative. The Market Loves You – Jeffrey Tucker’s latest collection of evocative observations of everyday products, services, and life in the market – rejects this characterization. He argues that benevolence characterizes trading relationships, entrepreneurship, work contracts, and the effects of decisions by market players. These are a civilizing, evenly lovely, institutions that embed complex human relationships that extend all over the world, involving potentially billions of people. Every unforced decision to trade represents a spark of insight, a hope for a better future, and the instantiation of a human relationship that affirms the dignity of everyone involved, he writes. Sometimes that relationship is personal; it is even more awesome to consider the enormously complex impersonal relationships that make up the vast global networks of exchange that make our lives wonderful. We take the results for granted because they are so much part of our daily experience. If they suddenly went missing, any aspect of what we depend on to live a better life, we would experience demoralization and even devastation. The lights go out. The gas stations close. The shelves are empty. The doctors run out of medicine. There is no one to fix the plumbing, no one to repair the heater, no one to do the surgery on my heart. This is a world that is less lovely than the world of plenty we’ve come to expect. The institutional setting in which human relationships become real in our lives is the market. This does not entail reducing human life to dollars and cents. It is about the recognition that our value as human beings is bound up with our associations with others, our trading relationships, and the opportunities we have to value and be valued by others. Looked at this way, the moral aesthetic of the market is lovely. It fosters love. It needs love. “Economics, love, and life – these are all the same topic in the creative intelligence of Jeffrey Tucker. His writing sweeps you into a world of beautiful stories about the material world, infused with his gift for seeing the underlying human element in every exchange (as well as the brutality of the political means of social control). His new hymn to market forces brings what economics too often lacks, a vivid celebration of life and love as real human beings experience it. To see the world as Tucker does is a gift that few writers in economics have ever possessed.” ~ Helio Beltrão, President, Mises Institute Brazil "If you want to understand the plain sense of real economics, as against the fairy tales of fake economics, Tucker is your main man. In scores of charming little essays, free of pomp or pretense, he brings you to understand how a free people can live without coercion. He's a liberal 2.0, a sweet egalitarian, a generous, open-hearted spirit, yet realistic and tough-minded, too." ~ Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago “Jeffrey Tucker is always a delight to read because he understands and appreciates the market’s invisible heart as well as its invisible hand.” ~ Art Carden, Samford University “Jeffrey Tucker writes with a rare mix of economic understanding, historical awareness, philosophical depth, and unaffected humanity. And oh, also on display in these pages is a fearlessness in going to wherever the logic of his reasoning brings him. I learned something important from each of the 91 essays collected here.” ~ Donald Boudreaux, George Mason University

What is your impression of what it means to sing like a Catholic? Not good? Well, it doesn't have to be that way. Jeffrey Tucker, managing editor of Sacred Music and weekly columnist in The Wanderer, offers is an introduction to the sacred-music perspective on Catholic music in parishes, drawing from tradition and documents as well as the author’s own experience as a parish music and managing editor of the leading journal in the field. It is a book that provides both direction and inspiration, closely engaging many topics and controversies in Catholic music today. Today, many priests and musicians are thoroughly confused concerning a core issue: what music belongs at Catholic liturgy? There are clear answers to this question, though one might never know them if the only sources you have at your disposal are the resources from mainstream music publishers. The answer is found in the music that grew up alongside the liturgy itself, and is deeply embedded as part of its structure. It is also found in the teaching of the Church. A tremendous revival is taking place in Catholic music, centered on chant and polyphony, with new scholas starting in parish after parish. This is a wonderfully hopeful sign, documented in this book To discover and sing truly Catholic music is not a burden but the opposite: a tremendous liberation from the commercial-pop industry and an thrilling immersion in the most theologically and aesthetically rich treasure of music available, a tradition that enlists artistic talent in the service of transcendent ends. It is published in the hope of raising scholarship funds for seminarians and others to attend the Sacred Music Colloquium held every year. All proceeds will be devoted to that end.

The state makes a mess of everything it touches, argues Jeffrey Tucker in Bourbon for Breakfast. Perhaps the biggest mess it makes is in our minds. Its pervasive interventions in every sector affect the functioning of society in so many ways, we are likely to intellectually adapt rather than fight. Tucker proposes another path: see how the state has distorted daily life, rethink how things would work without the state, and fight against the intervention in every way that is permitted. Whether that means hacking your showerhead, rejecting prohibitionism, searching for large-tank toilets, declining to use government courts, homeschooling, embracing alternative microcultures, watching profreedom movies, baking at home, maintaining manners and standards of dress, publishing without copyright, and just living outside what he calls the "statist quo," we should not lose touch with what freedom means, even in these times. The essays cover commercial life, digital media, culture, food, literature, religion, music, and a host of other issues — all from the perspective of a Misesian-Rothbardian struggling to get by in a world in which the walls of the state have been closing in. He writes about the glories of commerce, the horrors of jail, the joy of private life, and defends a kind of aristocratic radicalism in times of increasingly restricted choices. "From federalized showerheads to the libertarian Jetsons, Jeffrey Tucker has written a funny and important book about state meddling, and the possibility of pure freedom. Read Bourbon for Breakfast, and give a copy to everyone you know. It's a smart, subversive, and devastatingly effective case for liberty." – Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., Chairman of the Mises Institute and editor of LewRockwell.com To search for Mises Institute titles, enter a keyword and LvMI (short for Ludwig von Mises Institute); e.g., Depression LvMI

“It’s a seemingly impossible task to select the best of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) whose teaching and writing career spanned six decades and whose literary output includes several mighty and timeless treatises on political economy. They were not written in isolation from the real and often horrifying events of the 20th century; they were heavily informed by the brilliance and tragedy of his life experiences – including as a refugee forced to flee his home in Vienna – in battling every form of totalitarianism. I’ve been reading his work since the dawn of my intellectual consciousness but I’ve yet to discover the end of his capacity to illuminate the world around us. I never fail to profit from re-reading even the books I think I understand best. Learning from Mises is a lifelong project. Even so, these five essays carry amazing power, as you will soon discover.” ~ Jeffrey Tucker, Editorial Director, American Institute for Economic Research Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (1881-1973) was an economist, historian, and philosopher. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of the market order and is best known for his 1949 book Human Action. Mises worked and taught in Vienna until he was driven out by the Nazi movement in 1934. He took sanctuary in Geneva until 1940, immigrated to the United States, and eventually taught at New York University. Mises’s colleague Friedrich Hayek viewed Mises as one of the major figures in the revival of liberalism in the post-war era. Mises’s Private Seminar in Vienna was a formative event for many social scientists of the period, and many of its alumni, including Hayek and Oskar Morgenstern, emigrated from Austria to the United States and Great Britain.

The United States has one of the world's highest rates of unemployment among 20 to 26-year-olds. Nearly half of the U.S. army of unemployed is under the age of 34. As for those who are hired, there is a huge gap between wage expectations and paycheck realities, which is exactly what you would expect in a post-boom world. The rising generation faces challenges unlike any that most people alive have seen. This situation requires new adaptive strategies. Jeffrey Tucker’s “Advice for Young, Unemployed Workers” addresses these challenges in concise, compelling ways that are immediately actionable by those who intend to blaze their own trail in life. Jeffrey A. Tucker is Director of Digital Development for the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). He is also Chief Liberty Officer and founder of Liberty.me, the global liberty community with advanced social and publishing features, executive editor of Laissez Faire Books, research fellow at the Acton Institute, policy adviser of the Heartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of the Molinari Review, an advisor to the blockchain application builder Factom, and author of five books. He has written 150 introductions to books and many thousands of articles appearing in the scholarly and popular press. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World. The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is the premier source for understanding the humane values of a free society, and the economic, legal, and ethical principles that make it possible. At FEE, you’ll be connected with people worldwide who share those values and are inspired by the dynamic ideas of free association, free markets, and a diverse civil society. Explore freedom’s limitless possibilities through seminars, classroom resources, social media, and daily content at FEE.org. Learn how your creativity and initiative can result in a prosperous and flourishing life for yourself and the global community. Whether you are just beginning to explore entrepreneurship, economics, or creating value for others or are mentoring others on their journeys, FEE has everything you need. FEE is supported by voluntary, tax-deductible contributions from individuals, foundations, and businesses who believe that it is vital to cultivate a deep appreciation in every generation for individual liberty, personal character, and a free economy. Supporters receive a subscription to FEE's flagship magazine, the Freeman, also available at FEE.org.

History is shifting in radical ways. Government programs are failing to meet modern needs. Material progress around the world is proceeding without them. The twentieth century, full of central planning and leviathan control, is being left behind, and a new age is dawning. It is a time of individual empowerment, astonishing entrepreneurial achievement, global communications and engagement, and a breathtaking pursuit of new possibilities. Liberty.me: Freedom Is a Do-It-Yourself Project documents how this is happening now and presents an agenda for liberty-minded individuals to push this further. Consider that most of the technologies that define our lives today — smartphones, email, Internet banking, infinite television and radio, instant knowability of nearly everything, global real-time video communication — didn't even exist just twenty years ago. They weren't even imagined. They are blessings bestowed on us through the combined forces of entrepreneurship, risk taking, enterprising initiative, crowd-sourced cooperation, and the disruptive impulse that seeks to make the world anew. And yet they are far more integral to life than any institution created by politics. This is humanity speaking and acting, one person at a time. All over the world, people are protesting against their rulers in whatever way is possible. This represents a paradigm shift away from despotism and toward the assertion of individual rights to control our own property and self, forming social and economic associations for ourselves. With state systems failing in every direction, this is the trajectory of history in a world of global communication and trade. Breaking through the regimentation of the barriers all around us requires political action and intellectual work, to be sure, but it must not stop there. In fact, these might be the least effective paths toward real change. Building a new liberty requires taking the bold step of actually innovating tools to live freer lives. It means creating and embracing new technologies, modes of communication, educational strategies, life paths, and leveraging the new technologies to build bridges out of the status quo and into a better future. This is an essential stage of any giant social change — the stage in which we stop asking leaders to grant us liberty in law but rather take the step of acting on the liberty that is our right. For too long, people have looked at liberty as something controlled by powerful people to make or take away. We are learning that the future of liberty is something that falls to the hands of those who believe most passionately in it. This is the source of all progress in our time. There are many muses behind this project and this book. Ludwig von Mises provides the economics, Murray Rothbard the ethical drive, Ayn Rand the motive force, Albert Jay Nock the conviction that life works without government, Garet Garrett the eye for the drama of the marketplace, F.A. Hayek the vision of a self-ordering social order, Leonard Read the perception that individuals can create their own liberty, Rose Wilder Lane the intransigent resistance to all forms of authoritarianism, plus a thousand other leading intellectual lights who have prepared the way for a new generation to make real what others could only dream about. The time is now to take the idea of human liberty seriously, not only as a political agenda but a life commitment, a value that drives personal ambitions. This is the essential way to make the structures of oppression that have consumed the social order decay as anachronisms and eventually become irrelevant and obsolete. This happens when the institutions we have created serve society more effectively than the decaying apparatus of coercion and compulsion ever did or can do in the future. The state will not go away — as much as we might like it to — but it can become ever less determinative of our fate.

This bibliography contains more than 6,000 entries, with books annotated by Murray N. Rothbard, in a near-complete listing of articles by this Austrian journalist. It identifies for the first time unsigned editorials in the New York Times (1934-1946) which were actually written by Hazlitt, and reveals that he had a larger impact on our nation's intellectual life than anyone has yet realized. The contents of this work include: Introduction (Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.) Notes from the Compiler (Jeffrey A. Tucker) Books (Annotations by Murray N. Rothbard) Chapters in Books, Introductions, and Short Monographs Articles and Editorials ISBN 0945466161 158 pp.

Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World argues that today's emergent technology is about more than new and cool toys. Jeffrey Tucker, CLO of Liberty.me and Distinguished Fellow of the Foundation for Economic Education, argues that peer-to-peer technology is forging a new and brighter social, economic, and political order. People tend to look at innovations in isolation. Here is my new e-reader. Here is an app I like. Here is my new mobile device and computer. Even bitcoin is routinely analyzed and explained in terms of its properties as an alternative to national currencies, as if there were no more than that at stake. But actually there is a historical trajectory at work here, one that we can trace through its logic, implementation, and spread. It’s the same logic that led from the dial phone at the county store, operated by people pulling and plugging in wires, to the wireless smartphone in your pocket that contains the whole store of human knowledge. It’s all about technology in the service of individuation. Once you understand the driving ethos — voluntarism, creativity, networks, individual initiative — you can see the outlines of a new social structure emerging within our time, an order that defies a century of top-down planning and nation-state restrictionism. It is coming about not because of political reform. It is not any one person’s creation. It is not happening because a group of elite intellectuals advocated it. The new world is emerging organically, and messily, from the ground up, as an extension of unrelenting creativity and experimentation. In the end, it is emerging out of an anarchist order that no one in particular controls and no one in particular can fully understand. "The building of universal prosperity is a process that unfolds bit by bit through decentralized decision making and improvements at the margin through trial-and-error. To continue this process, we need understanding, patience, and dreams. Jeffrey Tucker’s book is an excellent guide to all three.” ~ Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, from the introduction. “In Bitcoin’s brief existence Jeffrey Tucker has become one of its leading proponents. In this book we can see exactly why. Many people think of bitcoin as just money, but Mr. Tucker is able to explain, in a way that is easily understandable by all, the tsunami of innovation that bitcoin is about to release upon the world.” ~ Roger Ver, Bitcoin investor, from the Foreword