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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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Murray Rothbard
Age: 68 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 2
Died: 1995
Died: January 7
Activist
Economist
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The Bronx
New York City
Murray Newton Rothbard
Murray N. Rothbard
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Inflation

More quotes by Murray Rothbard

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It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost.
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The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for predation on the property of the producers.
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The natural tendency of the state is inflation.
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Subjectivism is not an absolute principle it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for sound methodology.
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Libertarians regard the state as the Supreme, the eternal, the best organized aggressor against the persons and property of the mass of the public. All states everywhere, whether democratic, dictatorial, or monarchical, whether red, white, blue or brown.
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Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism.
Murray Rothbard
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Positivism eliminates any kind of natural law principle - for example, that there are economic laws which can be transgressed only at your peril. With positivism, there is a tendency to leap into ad hoc economic theory.
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Since 1933, New Deal farm policy has continued and expanded, pursuing its grisly logic at the expense of the nation's consumers, year in and year out, in Democrat or Republican regimes, in good times and in bad.
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Scratch an egalitarian, and you will inevitably find a statist.
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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.
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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.
Murray Rothbard
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Soaking the rich would not only be profoundly immoral, it would drastically penalize the very virtues: thrift, business foresight, and investment, that have brought about our remarkable standard of living. It would truly be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Murray Rothbard
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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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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?
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You don't need a treaty to have free trade.
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.
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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 .
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Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation.
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[Professional politicians] don't mind if price controls cause shortages of health care. In fact, they welcome the prospect, because then they can impose rationing they can impose priorities, and tell everyone how much of what kind of medical care they can have. And besides, ... there's that deeply satisfying rush of power.
Murray Rothbard
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The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress.
Murray Rothbard