Mises and "Value-Free" Laissez Faire". Section A, "Introduction: Utilitarian Social Philosophy", critiques the use of utilitarianism as a foundation for a libertarian or laissez-faire political philosophy. Utilitarianism, which holds that the "good" policy is the one that yields the "greatest good for the greatest number," is criticized for several reasons. First, it is unclear why the happiness of the majority should be more important than the happiness of the minority. Second, the idea that each person should count for one is an unexamined assumption. Third, the assumption that individual desires and values are absolute and unchanging is problematic, as experience and moral persuasion can cause individuals to change their values. Additionally, economics correctly informs us that utilities and costs are subjective and ordinal, making it illegitimate to add or weight them to arrive at any estimate for "social" utility or cost. Section B, "The Unanimity and Compensation Principles", explores the Unanimity Principle, a variant of Pareto optimality, which suggests that a political policy is good if one or more people are better off, while no one is worse off. Rothbard argues that this principle is flawed because it depends on the goodness of justice of the existing situation. The Compensation Principle is another variant of Pareto optimality, which suggests that a public policy is good if the gainers from that policy can compensate the losers and still enjoy net gains. However, it is flawed because it assumes that it is possible to add and subtract utilities interpersonally, and each individual’s gains and losses can be precisely estimated, which is not the case. The author concludes that in advocating public policy, it is essential to have some ethical system or concept of justice. Section C, "Ludwig von Mises and 'Value-Free' Laissez Faire", discusses Ludwig von Mises' position on the matter of praxeology, value-judgments, and the advocacy of public policy. Mises was an uncompromising adherent of laissez-faire and a rigorous and uncompromising advocate of value-free economics, but he attempted to reconcile these two positions in two different ways. The first solution is a variant of the Unanimity Principle, which affirms that an economist cannot say a governmental policy is "good" or "bad." However, if the consequences of the policy are agreed to be bad by all its supporters, then the economist can call it a "bad" policy. But this attempt fails as Mises can't know the value-scales of the advocates of the