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

Categorized in : People Liberty Events

There can be no such thing as 'fairness in taxation.' Taxation is nothing but organized theft, and the concept of a 'fair tax' is therefore every bit as absurd as that of 'fair theft.'

Murray Rothbard

fairness taxation liberty

The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress.

Murray Rothbard

liberty race enemy

It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost.

Murray Rothbard

libertarian cost liberty

The man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, ‘Limit yourself’; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.

Murray Rothbard

gun men hands

The State is a gang of thieves writ large - the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.

Murray Rothbard

gang thieves individual

We libertarians are not the spokesmen for any ethnic or economic class; we are the spokesmen for all classes, for all of the public; we strive to see all of these groups united, hand-in-hand, in opposition to the plundering and privileged minority that constitutes the rulers of the State.

Murray Rothbard

groups class hands

The state has typically been a device for producing affluence for a few at the expense of many.

Murray Rothbard

expenses affluence states

States have always needed intellectuals to con the public into believing that its rule is wise, good, and inevitable

Murray Rothbard

states wise believe

Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can't really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism

Murray Rothbard

anarchism capitalism expression

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

Murray Rothbard

discipline ignorance people

We must, therefore, emphasize that 'we' are not the government; the government is not 'us.' The government does not in any accurate sense 'represent' the majority of the people. But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority. No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that 'we are all part of one another,' must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.

Murray Rothbard

government suicide people

Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?

Murray Rothbard

block government new-york

Governmental subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation.

Murray Rothbard

subsidies government coercion

The libertarian sees the State as a giant gang of organized criminals, who live off the theft called "taxation" and use the proceeds to kill, enslave, and generally push people around. Therefore, any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible. Any person or group who liberates such property, who confiscates or appropriates it from the State, is performing a virtuous act and a signal service to the cause of liberty.

Murray Rothbard

liberty hands people

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

currency raises giants

Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences.

Murray Rothbard

law natural order

Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.

Murray Rothbard

minimum-wage law jobs

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

plunder anarchy desire

All government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer.

Murray Rothbard

operations consumers government

You don't need a treaty to have free trade.

Murray Rothbard

libertarian liberty needs