Murray Rothbard Quotes - Page 4

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• It is particularly odd that economists who profess to be champions of a free-market economy, should go to such twists and turns to avoid facing the plain fact: that gold, that scarce and valuable market-produced metal, has always been, and will continue to be, by far the best money for human society.

  Murray Rothbard

  Champion, Gold, Facts

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• The essence and the glory of the free market is that individual firms and businesses, competing on the market, provide an ever-changing orchestration of efficient and progressive goods and services: continually improving products and markets, advancing technology, cutting costs, and meeting changing consumer demands as swiftly and as efficiently as possible.

  Murray Rothbard

  Cutting, Technology, Essence

  Murray Newton Rothbard (1978). “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto”, p.242, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.

  Murray Rothbard

  Rights, Focus, Defense

  "Society Without A State". The Libertarian Forum, 1975.

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• Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation.

  Murray Rothbard

  Government, Taxation, Coercion

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• [T]he crucial question is not, as so many believe, whether property rights should be private or governmental, but rather whether the necessarily 'private' owners are legitimate owners or criminals. For ultimately, there is no entity called 'government'; there are only people forming themselves into groups called 'governments' and acting in a 'governmental' manner. All property is therefore always 'private'; the only and critical question is whether it should reside in the hands of criminals or of the proper and legitimate owners.

  Murray Rothbard

  Believe, Rights, Government

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• 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.

  Murray Rothbard

  Money, Oil, Discovery

  "Making Economic Sense". Book by Murray Rothbard (p. 274), 1995.

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• The costs of government are bound to be much higher than those of the free market. . .The State cannot calculate well and therefore cannot gauge its costs accurately.

  Murray Rothbard

  Government, Gauges, Cost

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• There can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle. In concentrating on the ends of choice, the conservative, by neglecting the conditions of choice, loses that very morality of conduct with which he is so concerned. And the libertarian, by concentrating only on the means, or conditions, of choice and ignoring the ends, throws away an essential moral defense of his own position.

  Murray Rothbard

  Freedom, Mean, Responsibility

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• Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error.

  Murray Rothbard

  Errors, Punishment, Cop

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• 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.

  Murray Rothbard

  Freedom, Men, Rights

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• [W]hich category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely? [T]hose against private citizens or those against itself? The gravest crimes in the State's lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax.

  Murray Rothbard

  Soldier, Enemy, Contentment

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• If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation, and tyranny levied on society by governments over the ages, we need not be loath to abandon the Leviathan State and . . . try freedom.

  Murray Rothbard

  Government, Black, Trying

  Murray Newton Rothbard (1978). “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto”, p.290, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• To those advocates of independent paper moneys who also champion the free market, I would address this simple question: "Why don't you advocate the unlimited freedom of each individual to manufacture dollars?" If dollars are really and properly things-in-themselves, why not let everyone manufacture them as they manufacture wheat and baby food?

  Murray Rothbard

  Baby, Money, Freedom

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• 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.

  Murray Rothbard

  Land, Important, Example

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• The modern welfare state, highly touted as soaking the rich to subsidize the poor, does no such thing. In fact, soaking the rich would have disastrous effects, not just for the rich but for the poor and middle classes themselves. For it is the rich who provide a proportionately greater amount of saving, investment capital, entrepreneurial foresight, and financing of technological innovation that has brought the Unites States to by far the highest standard of living - for the mass of the people - of any country in history.

  Murray Rothbard

  Country, Class, People

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• While big-business leaders and firms can be highly productive, servants of consumers in a free market economy, they are also all too often, seekers after subsidies, contracts, privileges, or cartels furnished by big government. Often, business lobbyists and leaders are the sparkplugs for the statist, interventionist system.

  Murray Rothbard

  Government, Leader, Subsidies

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• Inflation, being a fraudulent invasion of property, could not take place on the free market.

  Murray Rothbard

  Invasion, Free Market, Inflation

  Murray Newton Rothbard (1981). “What Has Government Done to Our Money?”, p.48, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Modern economics is a set of formal models and equations purporting to fully determine human behaviour, at least in the economic realm. And there is no way that uncertainty can be compressed into determinate mathematical models.

  Murray Rothbard

  Way, Behaviour, Modern

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• I see a great future for gold and silver coins as the currency people may increasingly turn to when paper currencies begin to disintegrate.

  Murray Rothbard

  People, Gold, Coins

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• All interstate wars intensify aggression – maximize it … some wars are even more unjust than others. In other words, all government wars are unjust, although some governments have less unjust claims.

  Murray Rothbard

  War, Government, Unjust

  Interview in Reason magazine, February 1973.

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• 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.

  Murray Rothbard

  People, Liberty, Events

  "The Case Against the Fed" by Murray Rothbard, mises.org. June 5, 2009.

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• Having examined the nature of fractional reserve and of central banking, and having seen how the questionable blessings of Central Banking were fastened upon America, it is time to see precisely how the Fed, as presently constituted, carries out its systemic inflation and its control of the American monetary system.

  Murray Rothbard

  Money, Blessing, America

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• In fact, the libertarian would reason that the fact that human nature is a mixture of both good and evil provides its own particular argument in his favor. For if man is such a mixture, then the best societal framework is surely one in which evil is discouraged and the good encouraged. The libertarian maintains that the existence of the State apparatus provides a ready, swift channel for the exercise of evil, since the rulers of the State are thereby legitimated and can wield compulsion in ways that no one else is permitted to do.

  Murray Rothbard

  Exercise, Men, Evil

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• True #‎ anarchism will be #‎ capitalism , and true capitalism will be anarchism.

  Murray Rothbard

  Anarchism, Capitalism

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• The ingenious slogan that the public debt does not matter because 'we owe it to ourselves' is clearly absurd.

  Murray Rothbard

  Doe, Debt, Matter

  Murray N. Rothbard (2009). “Man, Economy, and State, Scholar's Edition”, p.1027, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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