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Comment by googthrowaway42 | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, Thomas Sowell was a Marxist up until he did a summer internship at the US Department of Labor.

Excerpt from interview where he talks about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6PDpCnMvvw

I know that; I think his book on Marx(ism), from the parts I've read, is actually one of the better ones written by mainstream economists, but that's quite a low bar. There are some good criticisms of it floating around on the 'net.

The best criticism of Marxism I've read is in the introduction to Human Action by Mises where he shows that the concept of class struggle, specifically class itself, is illogical.

Also FWIW I have been upvoting you as you get downvoted.

Rothbard (and later Mises) are both on my reading list, I'm nothing if not open-minded. Thanks.

Personally I would recommend starting with Human Action by Mises as it represents essentially the purest distillation of that school of thought and the culmination of a lot of Mises' earlier works. Rothbard studied under Mises so it would serve as a good introduction to him as well.

I highly recommend Rothbard's Anatomy of the State as an excellent starting place. It's really short, practically a pamphlet.

At the end of the day, when it comes to Ludwig von Mises, it's a question of whether or not you believe humans have free will. If you've studied long enough to become a neurologist, you find that free will is laughable.

Do people that have studied long enough to become a neurologist, find this laughable out of their own free will?

Remember the rules.

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