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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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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
Producers
Property
State
Predation
Orderly
States
Systematic
Channel
Provides
Legal

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The best way to help the poor is to slash taxes and allow savings, investment, and creation of jobs to proceed unhampered.
Murray Rothbard
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Money ... is the nerve center of the economic system. If, therefore, the state is able to gain unquestioned control over the unit of all accounts, the state will then be in a position to dominate the entire economic system, and the whole society.
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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.
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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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Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power.
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.
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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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The more these readjustments are delayed ... the longer the depression will have to last, and the longer complete recovery is postponed.
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.
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Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation.
Murray Rothbard
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John Stuart was the quintessence of soft rather than hardcore, a woolly minded man of mush in striking contrast to his steel-edged father.
Murray Rothbard
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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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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
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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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Scratch an egalitarian, and you will inevitably find a statist.
Murray Rothbard
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Unlike the days of the gold standard, it is impossible for the Federal Reserve to go bankrupt it holds the legal monopoly of counterfeiting (of creating money out of thin air) in the entire country.
Murray Rothbard
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All government wars are unjust.
Murray Rothbard
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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
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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
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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