The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

510 THE FREEMAN Augustcartoons also makes it lively; theirimpact may remain when the memoryof marginal cost curves haglong faded.This would be an ideal book fora one semester course, especiallyfor nonmajors. It should also be asource of classroom controversy.For example, on page 299, hesimultaneously praises militaryconscription laws and calls for theabolition of laws against prostitutionand narcotics. His basicallypragmatic approach mars the finalchapter especially, where he callsfor various. kinds of governmentintervention to eliminate minor defectsof the market system("neighborhood effects," naturalmonopoly), but on the whole thesedeviations are few. The first halfof the book is exceptionally good.The one major flaw is his explanationof profits: he accepts the entrepreneurialtheory of Frank H.Knight (and Mises), only to abandonit in later pages for a "returnon company inputs" theory whichis distressingly vague, for goodreason. If this is cleared up inlater editions, it will be a verygood introductory textbook.~ IMPUTED RIGHTS by Robert v.Andelson (Athens: University ofGeorgia Press, 1971, 153 pp. $6.00)Reviewed by Edmund A. OpitzIN VIEW of the central importanceof the idea of rights to the philosophyof liberty it is astonishingthat books dealing with the subjectare so few. Professor Andelson'sformidable little volume standsvirtually alone; interest in theidea, either for its own sake or forits significance in our history, hasinspired few researchers and writers.There are other puzzling questions.The doctrine of individualrights is an idea of the first magnitude,to be ranked alongside theidea of gravity or the theory ofrelativity. Why, if the idea is soimportant, did it take Westerncivilization more than two thousandyears to grasp it? Why hasno other civilization even comeclose? Why, having once embracedthe idea of rights, did we abandonit in a fraction of the time it tookthe West to gain it? And afterhaving largely let go of the substance,why do we so patheticallycherish the label of "rights" thatwe now paste on patents of privilegegranted by the state!Things were different in theeighteenth century. Men of thatera echoed Locke when they talkedabout the right to life, liberty, and