Rothbard shows how money must originate from a commodity. In an ideal system, a dollar would be a unit of weight, and paper money would operate strictly as warehouse receipts for the stock of the monetary metal. There would be no fractional reserve banking. Rothbard offers a rebuttal to the objections to a 100 percent gold dollar raised by Professor Leland Yeager.
Murray N. Rothbard made major contributions to economics, history, political philosophy, and legal theory. He combined Austrian economics with a fervent commitment to individual liberty.
In this article from 1950, Murray Rothbard suggests some of the less bad ways of financing military operations. Hint: monetary inflation and taxing savings and investment are among the worst.
Who would join a radical minority movement, and commit him- or herself for life to social obloquy and a marginal existence, for the sake of 20% more bathtubs, or 15% more candy bars? Who will man the barricades either physically or spiritually, for more peanuts or Pepsi?
Every nation-state boundary was drawn by force. Should we treat them as sacred the same way we treat a house or factory? Rothbard says no, and proposes something more radical.
Mises Institute, 2001
