Murray Rothbard

Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbardwas an American heterodox economist of the Austrian School, a revisionist historian, and a political theoristwhose writings and personal influence played a seminal role in the development of modern libertarianism. Rothbard was the founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism, a staunch advocate of historical revisionism, and a central figure in the twentieth-century American libertarian movement. He wrote over twenty books on political theory, revisionist history, economics, and other subjects. Rothbard asserted that all services provided by the "monopoly...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth2 March 1926
CountryUnited States of America
The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his reason about any given subject. In short, the natural fact of his "free will." He also discovers the natural fact of his mind's command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self.
Harold, the young kids out there are not going to be willing to go to the barricades in defense of lowered transaction costs.
An Atlas, whose back is bowed and whose hands are busy holding up the world, has no arms to lift to deal with his own defense. Increase his burdens and you will crush him...This is our present posture...This suggestions I make...would...conserve American lives for American ends.
Scratch an egalitarian, and you will inevitably find a statist.
Every man must have freedom, must have the scope to form, test, and act upon his own choices, for any sort of development of his own personality to take place. He must, in short, be free in order that he may be fully human.
In short, the early receivers of the new money in this market chain of events gain at the expense of those who receive the money toward the end of the chain, and still worse losers are the people (e.g., those on fixed incomes such as annuities, interest, or pensions) who never receive the new money.
All of the services commonly thought to require the State-from the coining of money to police protection to the development of law in defense of the rights of person and property-can be and have been supplied far more efficiently and certainly more morally by private persons. The State is in no sense required by the nature of man; quite the contrary.
This, by the way, is the welfare state in action: Its a whole bunch of special interest groups screwing consumers and taxpayers, and making them think they're really benefiting.
Monetary inflation not only raises prices and destroys the value of the currency unit; it also acts as a giant system of expropriation.
One of the most important features of our economic resources is their scarcity: land, labor, and capital goods factors are all scarce, and may all be put to various possible uses. The free market uses them 'productively' because the producers are guided, on the market, to produce what the consumers most need: automobiles, for example, rather than buggies.
Falling prices through increased production is a wonderful long-run tendency of untrammeled capitalism.
Who wants good people in government? Good people should be in the private sector. Helping us out, helping themselves out in the private sector. We want schmoes in government. We want people who can't find the doorknob. Why waste productive people, as well as looting the taxpayer?
The drum-fire of propaganda that the Fed is manning the ramparts against the menace of inflation brought about by others is nothing less than a deceptive shell game. The culprit solely responsible for inflation, the Federal Reserve, is continually engaged in raising a hue-and-cry about 'inflation,' for which virtually everyone else in society seems to be responsible. What we are seeing is the old ploy by the robber who starts shouting 'Stop, thief!' and runs down the street pointing ahead at others.
Money is different from all other commodities: other things being equal, more shoes, or more discoveries of oil or copper benefit society, since they help alleviate natural scarcity. But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed. Since the only use of money is for exchange and reckoning, more dollars or pounds or marks in circulation cannot confer a social benefit: they will simply dilute the exchange value of every existing dollar or pound or mark.