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Preface

Students of Murray Rothbard owe a great debt to Edward Fuller. He has gathered together Rothbard’s remarks on a vast array of subjects. There are two ways Fuller could have done this, and he has selected the more difficult of the two. He might have chosen just the highlights, the most striking and memorable of Rothbard’s remarks. Of these there is an abundance. Rothbard says, for example, “Keynes was much more than a Keynesian.

Introduction

Murray N. Rothbard was the most hardcore free market economist in the history of economic thought. For this reason, he is destined to be remembered as one of the most important economists of the twentieth century. Of course, in his age of anti-free market sentiment, he never approached the influence of John Maynard Keynes, Paul Samuelson, Friedrich Hayek, or Milton Friedman. Still, Rothbard’s unrivaled commitment to the free market economy guarantees him a special place in the history of thought.

ACTION

Individual human beings exist. Moreover, they do not simply “move,” as do unmotivated atoms or molecules; they act, that is, they have goals and they make choices of means to attain their goals. They order their values or ends in a hierarchy according to whether they attribute greater or lesser importance to them …

Economic Controversies, p. 33

… the fact of human action and of purposive choice also becomes evident to each person who bothers to contemplate it; it is just as evident as the direct sense experience of the laboratory.

BALANCE OF PAYMENTS

The “keeping money at home” argument is patently fraudulent …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 236

There is nothing wrong with a trade deficit.

Making Economic Sense, p. 178

During the day of the gold standard, a deficit in the national balance of payments was a problem, but only because of the nature of the fractional-reserve banking system.

… in the fiat-money era, balance of payments deficits are truly meaningless.

Making Economic Sense, pp. 365–66

CANTILLON EFFECT

Monetary inflation, then, acts as a hidden “tax” by which the early receivers expropriate (i.e., gain at the expense of) the late receivers.

Case Against the Fed, p. 24

… the inflation process necessarily involves a redistribution of wealth and income.

DEFICITS

Huge deficits … cripple private investment by crowding out private savings and channeling them into unproductive and wasteful government boondoggles which will also impose higher taxes on future generations.

… While deficits are often inflationary and always pernicious, curing them by raising taxes is equivalent to curing an illness by shooting the patient. …

Deficits, then, should be eliminated, but only by cutting government spending.

America’s Great Depression, p. xviii

ECONOMETRICS

… the very concept of “variable” used so frequently in econometrics is illegitimate, for physics is able to arrive at laws only by discovering constants. The concept of “variable” only makes sense if there are some things that are not variable, but constant. Yet in human action, free will precludes any quantitative constants …

Economic Controversies, p. 13

FAIRNESS

Whenever someone starts talking about “fair competition” or indeed, about “fairness” in general, it is time to keep a sharp eye on your wallet, for it is about to be picked.

Making Economic Sense, p. 359

… there is no “just” (or “fair”) price outside the market price.

Making Economic Sense, p. 360

Whenever anyone talks about “fairness,” the average American had better look to his wallet.

Making Economic Sense, p. 378