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The necessary consequence of an egalitarian program is the decidedly inegalitarian creation of a ruthless power elite.

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
Elites
Consequence
Program
Necessary
Creation
Egalitarian
Power
Decidedly
Elite
Ruthless

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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.
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Absolute freedom need not be lost as the price we must pay for the advent of civilization men are born free, and need never be in chains. Man may achieve liberty and abundance, freedom and civilization.
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Governmental subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation.
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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.
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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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Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism.
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The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism.
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If we look around, then, at the crucial problem areas of our society - the areas of crisis and failure - we find in each and every case a “red thread” marking and uniting them all: the thread of government. In every one of these cases, government either has totally run or heavily influenced the activity.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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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.
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The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress.
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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.
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Monetary expansion is a massive scheme of hidden redistribution.
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You don't need a treaty to have free trade.
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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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