Ludwig von Mises Institute · CC BY 3.0

Rothbard fused libertarian economics with an uncompromising anarchist conclusion: that no function performed by the state, including money and courts, could not be done better by markets. Trained in the Austrian School under Ludwig von Mises, he wrote more than twenty books, co-founded the Cato Institute with Charles Koch before breaking with it, and later helped establish the Mises Institute in 1982. He was also a persistent critic of fellow free-market thinkers, including Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand, whose views he considered insufficiently radical.