QuoteProject
If government manages to establish paper tickets or bank credit as money, as equivalent to gold grams or ounces, then the government, as dominant money-supplier, becomes free to create money costlessly and at will. As a result, this 'inflation' of the money supply destroys the value of the dollar or pound, drives up prices, cripples economic calculation, and hobbles and seriously damages the workings of the market economy.
Murray Rothbard
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The establishment of government-controlled money systems can lead to inflation and economic instability.

Murray Rothbard's quote critiques the role of government in managing currency, particularly emphasizing how the transition to paper currency or bank credit, controlled by the government, can lead to inflation. He argues that when the government can create money without cost, it diminishes the value of existing currency, disrupts economic calculations, and undermines the functionality of the market economy.

Themes

GovernmentMoneyInflationEconomicsCurrency

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a speech about the dangers of government intervention in the economy.

More from Murray Rothbard

Human life is not some sort of race or game in which each person should start from an identical mark. It is an attempt by each man to be as happy as possible. And each person could not begin from the same point, for the world has not just come into being; it is diverse and infinitely varied in its parts. The mere fact that one individual is necessarily born in a different place from someone else immediately insures that his inherited opportunity cannot be the same as his neighbor's.
Murray RothbardRead
Ultimately, there is no entity called 'government'; there are only people forming themselves into groups called 'governments' and acting in a 'governmental' manner.
Murray RothbardRead
In the market, the fittest are those most able to serve the consumers; in government, the fittest are those most adept at wielding coercion and/or those most adroit at making demagogic appeals to the voting public.
Murray RothbardRead
The 'boom-bust' cycle is generated by monetary intervention in the market, specifically bank credit expansion to business.
Murray RothbardRead
No one may threaten or commit violence ('aggress') against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.
Murray RothbardRead
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 RothbardRead

Similar quotes

All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human wants directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth.
Alfred MarshallRead
The forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
Franklin D. RooseveltRead
There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
Frederic BastiatRead
Reforms aimed at increasing an economy's flexibility are always hard - and even more so at a time of weak growth - because they require eliminating protections for vested interests in the short term for the sake of greater long-term prosperity.
Michael SpenceRead
I think if you look back through time, the history of income, wealth and taxation is full of surprise. So I am not terribly impressed by those who know in advance what will or will not happen.
Thomas PikettyRead
Our mission, as set forth by the Congress is a critical one: to preserve price stability, to foster maximum sustainable growth in output and employment, and to promote a stable and efficient financial system that serves all Americans well and fairly.
Ben BernankeRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Murray Rothbard | QuoteProject