Mises Daily

"It is surely folly to say that government must socialize all property in order to prevent anyone from stealing property. Yet the reasoning behind abolition of private coinage is the same."

In an unhampered market, profit and loss are entirely determined by the success or failure of the entrepreneur to adjust production to the demand of the consumers.

The market economy is the social system of the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production. "To assign to everybody his proper place in society is the task of the consumers. Their buying and abstention from buying is instrumental in determining each individual's social position."

The Act gave the secretary of the Treasury the power to require all individuals and corporations to hand over all their gold coin, gold bullion, or gold certificates if in his judgment "such action is necessary to protect the currency system of the United States."

It is generally accepted that a government can enslave the citizens—unless it is a democratic government. Mistake!

"The East lacked the primordial thing, the idea of freedom from the state. The East never raised the banner of freedom."

Murray Rothbard explains money in his book The Mystery of Banking. The purchasing power of the dollar varies inversely with the supply of dollars, and directly with the demand. 

The radicals are for anything that tends directly or indirectly to get the government into business, for that leads to state ownership of the means of production.

What has happened here, and elsewhere, is that Mises has strayed off his great stomping ground, praxeology, and into ethics, where he is, Rothbard believes, tragically wrong.

"In order to succeed, human action must comply not only with what are called the laws of nature, but also with specific laws of human action."