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Money is different from all other commodities: other things being equal, more shoes, or more discoveries of oil or copper benefit society, since they help alleviate natural scarcity. But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed. Since the only use of money is for exchange and reckoning, more dollars or pounds or marks in circulation cannot confer a social benefit: they will simply dilute the exchange value of every existing dollar or pound or mark.
Murray Rothbard
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Money, unlike other commodities, does not provide additional benefits when increased in quantity; it merely reduces its own value.

Murray Rothbard highlights the unique nature of money compared to other goods. While increasing the supply of shoes or resources like oil offers tangible benefits to society by helping to meet demand, adding more money to the economy does not similarly improve conditions. Instead, it leads to inflation, diminishing the value of existing currency. Essentially, money serves only as a medium for exchange, and its increase without a corresponding increase in goods and services dilutes its value and can lead to economic instability rather than prosperity.

Themes

MoneyInflationValueEconomicsExchange

In practice

Example use cases

During a finance lecture discussing the impact of inflation on purchasing power.

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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.
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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.
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Quote by Murray Rothbard | QuoteProject