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Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

Murray Rothbard

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Murray Rothbard
Age: 68 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 2
Died: 1995
Died: January 7
Activist
Economist
Essayist
Historian
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Murray Newton Rothbard
Murray N. Rothbard
Force
Maintain
Coercion
Use
Contribution
Payment
Given
Areas
Attempts
States
Organization
Revenue
Obtains
Violence
Monopoly
Territorial
Particular
Anarchy
Briefly
State
Services
Rendered
Society
Area
Voluntary

More quotes by Murray Rothbard

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On the free market, everyone earns according to his productive value in satisfying consumer desires. Under statist distribution, everyone earns in proportion to the amount he can plunder from the producers.
Murray Rothbard
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You don't need a treaty to have free trade.
Murray Rothbard
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Since the State necessarily lives by the compulsory confiscation of private capital, and since its expansion necessarily involves ever-greater incursions on private individuals and private enterprise, we must assert that the state is profoundly and inherently anti-capitalist .
Murray Rothbard
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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
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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
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After the Volcker Fund collapsed, I got another grant from the Lilly Endowment to do a history of the U.S., which I worked on from 1962-66. The original idea was to take the regular facts and put a libertarian assessment on everything.
Murray Rothbard
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States have always needed intellectuals to con the public into believing that its rule is wise, good, and inevitable
Murray Rothbard
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...The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology.
Murray Rothbard
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The natural tendency of the state is inflation.
Murray Rothbard
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Monetary inflation not only raises prices and destroys the value of the currency unit it also acts as a giant system of expropriation.
Murray Rothbard
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Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at.
Murray Rothbard
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The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for predation on the property of the producers.
Murray Rothbard
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Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium.
Murray Rothbard
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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.
Murray Rothbard
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The natural tendency of the state is inflation. This statement will shock those accustomed to viewing the state as a committee of the whole nation ardently dispensing the general welfare, but I think it nonetheless true.
Murray Rothbard
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Throughout history governments have been chronically short of revenue. The reason should be clear: unlike you and me, governments do not produce useful goods and services that they can sell on the market governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and off society.
Murray Rothbard
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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
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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
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Only the State legally obtains its revenue by coercion.
Murray Rothbard
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Essentially, I mean the almost self-evident fact that individuals, ethnic groups, and races differ among themselves in intelligence and in many other traits, and that intelligence, as well as less controversial traits of temperament, are in large part hereditary.
Murray Rothbard