I love Murray Rothbard and I believe him a man of strong principles. Was there ever an explanation as to why he had a rent controlled apartment? It seems out of character.
Wasn’t it Robert Nozick who was in a rent-controlled apartment and appealed to the Cambridge board to control his rent?
Either way, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.
- There is no way you’d know what the actual price on the uncontrolled apartment rental would have been.
- The rent merely reflects the reality of how costly it is to run the apartment and how many people bid for it.
- Rothbard already paid the cost of that apartment in lower quality service and a longer waiting period (with perhaps a bribe to get ahead).
- That’s because the rent merely reflected that above cost in the form of high prices being bid for apartments.
Sometimes you have no choice but to use services that are funded by force. I take the city bus to class every day because I can’t afford a car right now; there are few other choices aside from longboarding, and I still use that half of the time. I live quite far away from campus, and Arizona weather in the summer months is not forgiving.
One’s thoughts and actions do not necessarily (actually rarely) match up.
(On a semi-side note; that’s why I find ancap to be impossible. Even the most ardent capitalist will have no problem asking for HIS handout if he can. If the recent financial crisis is not an example of that, I don’t know what is.)
If someone breaks your leg and then hands you a (stolen) crutch, do you accept it?
How would Rothbard have opted-out?
I think Brians answer seems most sensible. I take buses sometimes as well, but f there were one that were privately run for 4 dollars as opposed to a state run 2 dollar bus, I would take it on principle.
I disagree with the handout comment.
I qualify for many handouts and I don’t take them. I’m not alone in this.
As for the crutch, Rothbard legs weren’t broken. He could have lived somewhere less expensive.
Examples to back up your empty claim?
Yeah. It’s the same kind of thing for an an-cap who goes to a local university and receives in-state tuition. They’re not going to say, “Hey, you know what? I’ll pay out-of-state tuition,” because, more than likely, the out-of-state tuition is far above market value.
Doing a Google search on “Murray Rothbard’s apartment” brings the answer:
In short, there is nothing wrong with a libertarian living in a rent-controlled apartment, and therefore paying a rent below the market. Nozick (or myself) is not responsible for the rent-control law; he or we have to live within the matrix of such laws. So there is nothing wrong with him living in a rent-controlled apartment, just as there is nothing wrong with him walking on government streets, flying from government airports, eating price-supported bread, etc. None of this is of Nozick’s (or our) making. It would be therefore foolish and martyrish for us to renounce such apartments if available, to refuse to eat any food grown under government regulation, to refuse to use the Post Office, etc. Our responsibility is to agitate and work to remove this statist situation; apart from that, that is all we can rationally do. I live in a rent-controlled apartment, but I have also written and agitated for many years against the rent-control system, and urged its repeal. That is not hypocrisy or betrayal, but simply rationality and good sense.
Living in a State-Run World by Murray Rothbard.
If I understand it correctly though, one must actively seek, or petition for, rent control.
I didn’t even think of that. I mean, you can be mad at laws that are made and public projects that are put into place, but, at the end of the day, if you were to go completely out of your way to make sure you don’t walk on government streets, having to consciously avoid these things is still the government controlling you. May as well do what’s easier.
Given the choice, I’d rather the state be made to subsidize one of its most ardent critics than some lackey.
(that’s why you find perfect ancap impossible, to be precise 
me too. I find it impossible to be perfectly consistent.
I’ve never heard of that before. Typically rent control is imposed by law on apartments in a geographic area, or some subset of apartments in that area based on whatever scheme wins the most votes for some dimwitted politician. Outside of supporting the politician or maybe suggesting the law in the first place, the renter doesn’t have any control over whether his particular apartment is rent controlled or not.
Does anyone have pictures or know what his apartment looked like? I’m wondering because I generally thought controlled prices would be point in more geographically lower income areas, and I’m sure he had a really nice apartment.