Abstract
The Dwight D. Murphey I have known for years has been a combination of classical liberal and conservative, who made significant intellectual contributions to these philosophies. As a free-market advocate, he would never have countenanced non-market distribution of property to everyone in a given society, whether they have done anything to earn them or not. He would not have placed quotation marks around the word earn, signifying that people do not really earn things, or, if they do, it is not important. He would have dismissed any such proposal as socialism or welfarism. However, the Dwight D. Murphey who has written Controversy: Do Market Economies Allocate Resources Optimally? A Response to Walter Block, not only allows this sort of material to slip by him but actually endorses it. He states explicitly: Being non-market, and involving in part compulsion through taxation, we can easily identify it, by itself, as a Socialist means. What I am saying is that it will be a necessary means.