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 More Quotes by Murray Rothbard More Quotes From Murray Rothbard Monetary expansion is a massive scheme of hidden redistribution. Murray Rothbard massive schemes expansion The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism. Murray Rothbard independent criticism intellectual It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright. Murray Rothbard liberty law justice One of the most important features of our economic resources is their scarcity: land, labor, and capital goods factors are all scarce, and may all be put to various possible uses. The free market uses them 'productively' because the producers are guided, on the market, to produce what the consumers most need: automobiles, for example, rather than buggies. Murray Rothbard important land example The more the government intervenes to delay the market's adjustment, the longer and more grueling the depression will be, and the more difficult will be the road to complete recovery. Murray Rothbard delay recovery government Pollution and overuse of resources stem directly from the failure of government to defend private property. If property rights were to be defended adequately, we would find that here, as in other areas of our economy and society, private enterprise and modern technology would come not as a curse to mankind but as its salvation. Murray Rothbard technology government rights Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Murray Rothbard anarchism capitalism expression I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights. Murray Rothbard defense focus rights Falling prices through increased production is a wonderful long-run tendency of untrammeled capitalism. Murray Rothbard running long fall The natural tendency of government, once in charge of money, is to inflate and to destroy the value of the currency. Murray Rothbard currency government natural 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 like-you government reason If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his human right. Murray Rothbard real self men The best way to help the poor is to slash taxes and allow savings, investment, and creation of jobs to proceed unhampered. Murray Rothbard saving jobs way There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian. Murray Rothbard liberty political philosophy The diversity of mankind is a basic postulate of our knowledge of human beings. But if mankind is diverse and individuated, then how can anyone propose equality as an ideal? Every year, scholars hold Conferences on Equality and call for greater equality, and no one challenges the basic tenet. But what justification can equality find in the nature of man? If each individual is unique, how else can he be made 'equal' to others than by destroying most of what is human in him and reducing human society to the mindless uniformity of the ant heap? Murray Rothbard unique men years It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus. Murray Rothbard government organization exercise It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Murray Rothbard pride war peace 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 hierarchy absurd ruthless The public sector can only feed off the private sector; it necessarily lives parasitically upon the private economy. But this means that the productive resources of society - far from satisfying the wants of consumers - are now directed, by compulsion, away from these wants and needs. The consumers are deliberately thwarted, and the resources of the economy diverted from them to those activities desire by the parasitic bureaucracy and politicians. Murray Rothbard desire mean needs 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? Murray Rothbard government want people
