In completing the manuscript for a book I’m finishing up concerning government expropriation of private property, I dug up one of my favorite Hoppe quotes which pithily and masterfully summarizes the means of acquiring wealth: One can acquire and increase wealth either through homesteading, production and contractual exchange, or by expropriating and exploiting homesteaders, producers, or contractual exchangers There are no other ways. Both methods are natural to mankind. Alongside an interest in producing and contracting there has always been an interest in non-productive and non-contractual property and wealth acquisitions. And in the course of economic development, just as the … Continue reading The Source of Wealth