How is he a statist? Although I also didn't finish Human Action, I never got that feeling from it.
Discussion
He’s doesn’t worship the state or anything like that, but he makes it clear that he thinks a state is necessary to protect civil liberties and, in particular, economic freedom.
That being said, I give a lot more leeway to the OG philosophers who laid the groundwork.
Murray Rothbard, in my view, was the first guy to really hit the nail on the head.
Makes sense. Rothbard believes that you didn’t need a state but just need free competition for state services. The problem is that those services can centralize and eventually form into an entity that is indistinguishable from a state.