Rothbard A to Z
GAMBLING
GAMBLING
There are few laws more absurd and iniquitous than the laws against gambling.
For a New Liberty, p. 134
A standard argument for outlawing gambling is that, if the poor workman is allowed to gamble, he will improvidently blow his weekly paycheck and thereby render his family destitute. Aside from the fact that he can now spend his payroll on friendly betting, this paternalistic and dictatorial argument is a curious one. For it proves far too much: If we must outlaw gambling because the masses might spend too much of their substance, why should we not outlaw many other articles of mass consumption? After all, if a workman is determined to blow his paycheck, he has many opportunities to do so: he can improvidently spend too much on a TV set, a hi-fi, liquor, baseball equipment, and countless other goodies. The logic of prohibiting a man from gambling for his own or his family’s good leads straight to that totalitarian cage, the cage in which Pappa Government tells the man exactly what to do, how to spend his money, how many vitamins he must ingest, and forces him to obey the State’s dictates.
For a New Liberty, pp. 135–36
There is a distinction between gambling and betting. Gambling refers to wagering on events of class probability, such as throws of dice, where there is no knowledge of the unique event. Betting refers to wagering on [a] unique event about which both parties to the bet know something—such as a horse race or a Presidential election. In either case, however, the wagerer is creating a new risk or uncertainty.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 555n44
GOLD
Gold is simply the monetary medium, and the duty of government is to leave the people free to do with the gold as they see fit. It is therefore its corollary duty not to inflate the money supply beyond the gold stock or to stimulate and encourage such inflation.
America’s Great Depression, p. 148
… gold, that scarce and valuable market-produced metal, has always been, and will continue to be, by far the best money for human society.
Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 17
… our modern national moneys emerged originally from gold and silver …
Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 31
Governments have persistently tried their best to promote, encourage, and expand the circulation of bank and government paper, and to discourage the people’s use of gold itself.
Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 39
… gold (as well as silver) is uniquely suitable as a monetary commodity …
Economic Controversies, p. 703
Over the centuries of civilization, gold and silver have been the leading commodities to be thus established as moneys.
Economic Controversies, p. 709
Without gold, without an international money, the world is destined to stumble into one accelerated monetary crisis after another …
Economic Controversies, p. 753
Originally, the dollar, along with every national currency, was simply defined as a definite unit of weight of gold or silver.
Economic Controversies, p. 887
Specie standards, whether gold or silver, have been virtually coextensive with the history of civilization.
History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 352
… the only genuine money is gold.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 118
… a rise in the price of gold would bring gold back more strongly into the international scene. It would hinder the long-run aim of the Establishment to abandon gold altogether. …
… the Establishment is interested, not in maximizing economic freedom … but in abolishing gold altogether to pave the way for unchallenged fiat paper.… The outlawry of gold is a vital step on the road to unchecked government control of money and toward unchecked paper inflation.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 247
… most urgent monetary task: getting the dollar, pound, etc., out of the hands of government and into the hands of the people and the free market. In short, we must denationalize the dollar; we must get the government out of the dollar business. And that can only be done by restoring the status of the dollar (and the pound, franc, etc.) to its original role as a unit of weight of gold. Only a return to the dollar as a unit of gold can denationalize the dollar and other contemporary currencies and return their supply and regulation to the private market, to the mining of gold.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 993
The most important aspect of the gold problem is how we answer this seemingly simple but vital question: Whom do we trust, the people or the government?
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1011
No one says that gold is an abstractly “perfect” money, whatever that may be. It is far more trustworthy, however, than government.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1012
… governments need a leash, a tight rein, in order to cease their counterfeiting and inflationary activities.… we always need a checkrein on government, in all areas. In the monetary area, the best checkrein is one wielded not by government itself but by the people themselves through being able to redeem their dollars whenever they wish in gold coin.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1017
The great thing about gold is that it, and only it, is money supplied by the free market, by the people at work. For the stark choice before us always is: gold (or silver), or government.
Making Economic Sense, p. 273
It is curious that, even though the Fed and the government Establishment continually proclaim the obsolescence and worthlessness of gold as a monetary metal, the Fed (as well as all other central banks) clings to its gold for dear life.
Making Economic Sense, p. 286
It is vitally important to denationalize the U.S. gold stock by returning it to private hands.
Making Economic Sense, p. 345
In all countries and all civilizations, two commodities have been dominant whenever they were available to compete as moneys with other commodities: gold and silver.
Mystery of Banking, p. 8
Through the centuries, two commodities, gold and silver, have emerged as money in the free competition of the market … the free market has found gold and silver to be the most efficient moneys.
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 8
Gold, like other commodities, will be traded in units of weight.
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 12
In a purely free market, gold would simply be exchanged directly as “grams,” grains, or ounces, and such confusing names as dollars, francs, etc., would be superfluous.
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 14
Silver and gold could easily circulate side by side …
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 34
… depreciation is highly embarrassing to the government.… The existence of gold in the economy is a constant reminder of the poor quality of the government paper, and it always poses a threat to replace the paper as the country’s money. Even with the government giving all the backing of its prestige and its legal tender laws to its fiat paper, gold coins in the hands of the public will always be a permanent reproach and menace to the government’s power over the country’s money.
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, pp. 79–80
GOLD STANDARD
… the issue is a stark one: we can either return to gold or we can pursue the fiat path and return to barter. It is perhaps not hyperbole to say that civilization itself is at stake in our decision.
Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, p. 61
To work, a gold standard must, of course, be truly in effect—in practice as well as in the official statues.
Classical Economics, p. 228
… to make bank paper currency stable and tied to gold, it must be regulated to conform to the movements of the gold supply.
Classical Economics, p. 232
… a money under the control of the government and its banking system is subject to inexorable pressures toward continuing monetary inflation. In contrast, the supply of gold cannot be manufactured ad libitum by the monetary authorities; it must be extracted from the ground, by the same costly process as governs the supply of any other commodities on the market. Essentially the choice is: gold or government.
Economic Controversies, p. 703
To call for a “free market” in the “price of gold” is as ludicrous as calling for a free market of ounces in terms of pounds, or inches in terms of yards. How many inches equal a yard is not something subject to daily fluctuations on the free or any other market. The answer is fixed eternally by definition, and what a gold standard entails is a fixed, absolute, unchanging definition as in the case of any other measure or unit of weight. The market necessarily exchanges two different commodities rather than one commodity for itself. To call for a free market in the price of gold would, in short, be as absurd as calling for a fluctuating market price for dollars in terms of cents. How many cents constitute a dollar is no more subject to daily fluctuation and uncertainty than inches in terms of yards. On the contrary, a truly free market in money will exist only when the dollar is once again strictly defined and therefore redeemable in terms of weights of gold.
Economic Controversies, pp. 767–68
… the dollar should once again be defined as a unit of weight of gold.
Economic Controversies, p. 768
… the dollar must be tied to gold permanently at a fixed weight, and must be redeemable in gold coin at that weight. That rules out all forms of pseudo gold standards …
Economic Controversies, p. 770
… the gold-exchange standard establishes a system, in the name of gold, which in reality manages to install coordinated international inflationary paper money. The idea was to replace a genuine gold standard, in which each country (or, domestically, each bank) maintains its reserves in gold, by a pseudo-gold standard in which the central bank of the client country maintains its reserves in some key or base currency, say pounds or dollars.
History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 209
… it is the inherent tendency of every money-issuer to create as much money as it can get away with, but governments or central banks were, on the gold standard, restricted in their issue of paper or bank deposits by the iron necessity of immediate redemption in gold, and particularly in gold coin on demand.
History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 354
… the classical gold standard put a severe limit upon the inherent tendency of monopoly money-issuers to issue money without check.
History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 355
In a gold-exchange standard, only one country … is on a gold standard in the sense that its currency is actually redeemable in gold, albeit only gold bullion for foreigners. …
The gold-exchange standard, then, cunningly broke the classical gold standard’s stringent limits on monetary and credit expansion … instead of checking inflation, a gold-exchange standard encourages all countries to inflate …
History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 385
… the international gold standard was the monetary equivalent and corollary of international free trade in commodities. It was a method of separating money from the State just as enterprise and foreign trade had been so separated. In short, the gold standard was the monetary counterpart of laissez-faire in other economic areas.
History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 438
In the classical, prewar gold standard, each country kept its reserves in gold, and redeemed its paper and bank currencies in gold coin upon demand. The new gold-exchange standard was a clever device to permit Britain and the other European countries to remain inflated and to continue inflating, while enlisting the United States as the ultimate support for all currencies.
History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 440
… a phony gold standard, as a gold-exchange standard must be, allows far more room for monetary management and inflation by central governments. It takes away the public’s power over money and places that power in the hands of the government.
Keynes, the Man, p. 182
The soundest—and the most libertarian—international monetary order would be a world gold standard, with each currency indelibly fixed in terms of units of weight of gold; a far distant second best would be a pseudo-world gold standard of the Bretton Woods type; a distant third would be the Friedmanite dream of national fiat moneys and fluctuating exchange rates … Fixed exchange rates with no international money to back them makes no sense whatever …
Libertarian Forum v. 1, pp. 294–95
Unfortunately, now that the last vestiges of the gold standard are gone, the Fed has the power to create more money indefinitely; and so long as we continue to allow them to retain such power, they will continue to use it, with disastrous results.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 485
Anyone who knows anything about gold or money knows that there ain’t no such thing as a “gradual return”; either one is on gold or off it. A gradual return to gold makes as much sense as someone being “gradually pregnant.”
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 951
… the Western world enjoyed far greater price stability under the gold standard than we have had since.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1012
Only if the average person can redeem his dollars at a fixed weight of gold coin can a true gold standard exist or perform its important functions.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1012
The gold standard is unfortunately commonly talked of as “fixing the price of gold.” The gold standard however, does not fix the price of gold in terms of dollars; rather it defines the dollar in terms of a weight of gold. Changing that definition makes as little sense, and is even more pernicious, than changing the definition of a pound from 16 to 14 ounces. Just as an “ounce” or “pound” is each a unit of weight and therefore fixed in relation to each other, so should be the dollar and a weight of gold.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1012
The essence of a gold standard is that the monetary unit (the “dollar,” “franc,” “mark,” etc.) is defined as a certain weight of gold. Under the gold standard, the dollar or franc is not a thing-in-itself, a mere name or the name of a paper ticket issued by the State or a central bank; it is the name of a unit of weight of gold. It is every bit as much a unit of weight as the more general “ounce,” “grain,” or “gram.”
Making Economic Sense, p. 288
So long as a country is in any sense “on the gold standard,” the central bank and the banking system must worry about an external drain of specie should the inflation become too great. …
… Governments, of course, are always anxious to remove all checks on their powers of inducing monetary expansion.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1017–18
Proponents of the gold standard do not suffer from a mysterious “gold fetish.” They simply recognize that gold has always been selected by the market as money throughout history.
Mystery of Banking, p. 8
The classical gold standard, which basically prevailed before World War I, placed a firm restraint on the propensity of national central banks to inflate: The expansion of one country’s currency would raise nominal income and prices in that country, cause a deficit in its balance of payments and an outflow of gold, thereby causing a check on inflation and perhaps a compulsion on the central bank to deflate back to its previous position.
Progressive Era, p. 489
What kind of “standard” will a free money provide? The important thing is that the standard not be imposed by government decree. If left to itself, the market may establish gold as a single money (“gold standard”), silver as a single money (“silver standard”), or, perhaps most likely, both as moneys with freely-fluctuating exchange rates (“parallel standards”).
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 35
The international gold standard provided an automatic market mechanism for checking the inflationary potential of government.
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 90
So while the classical gold standard of the nineteenth century was not perfect, and allowed for relatively minor booms and busts, it still provided us with by far the best monetary order the world has ever known, an order which worked, which kept business cycles from getting out of hand, and which enabled the development of free international trade, exchange, and investment. …
If the classical gold standard worked so well, why did it break down? It broke down because governments were entrusted with the task of keeping their monetary promises …
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, pp. 91–92
The point of the gold-exchange standard is that it cannot last; the piper must eventually be paid, but only in a disastrous reaction to the lengthy inflationary boom.
What Has Government Done to Our Money?, p. 96
GOVERNMENT
… unlike private persons or firms, who obtain money by selling needed goods and services to others, governments produce nothing of value and therefore have nothing to sell. Governments can only obtain money by grabbing it from others, and therefore they are always on the lookout to find new and ingenious ways of doing the grabbing.
Case Against the Fed, pp. 58–59
… government is best that governs—or in this case, spends and taxes—not at all!
Classical Economics, p. 43
… in society, robbery through government is far easier, and hence more attractive, than hard work for the acquisition of wealth.
Classical Economics, p. 459
… government is always and everywhere the potential or actual aggressor against the rights and liberties of the people. Liberty, the source of all the fruits of civilization and human happiness, is ever liable to suffer the aggressions and encroachments of government, of power, the source from which war, tyranny, and impoverishment ever flow. Power always stands ready to conspire against liberty, and the only salvation is for the public to keep government within strictly limited bounds, and to be ever watchful, vigilant, and hostile to the inevitable tendencies of government power to encroach upon liberty.
Conceived in Liberty v. 2, p. 192; p. 690
… the very use of government implies a whole host of questionable political value judgments: for example, that government action per se involves neither psychic costs nor ethical injustice.
Economic Controversies, p. 247
Far from adding to the private sector, the public sector can only feed off the private sector; it necessarily lives parasitically upon the private economy. But this means that the productive resources of society—far from satisfying the wants of consumers—are now directed, by compulsion, away from these wants and needs. The consumers are deliberately thwarted, and the resources of the economy diverted from them to those activities desired by the parasitic bureaucracy and politicians.… the “public sector” is actually antiproductive … it subtracts from, rather than adds to, the private sector of the economy. For the public sector lives by continuous attack on the very criterion that is used to gauge productivity: the voluntary purchases of consumers.
Economic Controversies, pp. 421–22
… that government is best that spends and taxes and employs the least, and privatizes the most.
Economic Controversies, p. 446
… there is no waste—no misallocation—like government …
Economic Controversies, p. 512
Examine the problem areas, and everywhere, like a red thread, there lies the overweening stain of government.
Economic Controversies, p. 664
The wisest course is to keep the government simple and inactive …
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 24
… the government itself is a violent exploitation of the weak by the strong. The system itself is the problem, and the object of government is not to benefit the people, but to control and plunder them. There is no ruler who can compare in virtue with a condition of non-rule.
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 26
… the crucial question in society is not, as so many believe, whether property should be private or governmental, but rather whether the necessarily “private” owners are legitimate owners or criminals. For, ultimately, there is no entity called “government”; there are only people forming themselves into groups called “governments” and acting in a “governmental manner.” All property is therefore always “private”; the only and critical question is whether it should reside in the hands of criminals or of the proper and legitimate owners. There is really only one reason for libertarians to oppose the formation of governmental property or to call for its divestment: the realization that the rulers of government are unjust and criminal owners of such property.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 56
In the phrase “we are the government,” the useful collective term “we” has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the naked exploitative reality of political life. For if we truly are the government, then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and not tyrannical; it is also “voluntary” on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group on behalf of another, this reality of burden is conveniently obscured by blithely saying that “we owe it to ourselves” (but who are the “we” and who the “ourselves”?). If the government drafts a man, or even throws him into jail for dissident opinions, then he is only “doing it to himself” and therefore nothing improper has occurred. Under this reasoning, then, Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; they must have “committed suicide,” since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and therefore anything the government did to them was only voluntary on their part.
… we must conclude that “we” are not the government; the government is not “us.”
For a New Liberty, p. 60
If we look around, then, at the crucial problem areas of our society—the areas of crisis and failure—we find in each and every case a “red thread” marking and uniting them all: the thread of government. In every one of these cases, government either has totally run or heavily influenced the activity.
For a New Liberty, p. 95
… much of Big Government, much of the welfare-interventionist State, is pushed by private businesses in order to force the taxpayers to subsidize their own costs.… business groups don’t mind socialism at all when the government is socializing their cost.
Irrepressible Rothbard, p. 147
… we must take and welcome any reduction of government that we can get, anywhere down the line.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 533
No, the government is not just another business firm; it is not a business firm at all. It is our enemy; it is Leviathan.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1000
… governments, by virtue of their very existence, are “aggressors” …
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1020
… the best way for the government to benefit the economy is to disappear.
Making Economic Sense, p. 176
In the long run, as we have seen under communism, the parasitic sector destroys the private productive sector and harms even the parasites in the process.
Making Economic Sense, p. 22
… the whole point of government, of an institution with a monopoly, or preponderance, of violence, is to use it to defend persons and property against violent assault.
Making Economic Sense, p. 65
It is private enterprise, however, not government, that we can rely on to take the long and not the short view.… private owners have every economic incentive to be farsighted … It is precisely government—or firms allowed to rent resources from government but not own them—whose every incentive is to be short-run. Since government bureaucrats control but do not own the resource “owned” by government, they have no incentive to maximize or even consider the long-run value of the resource. Their every incentive is to loot the resource as quickly as possible.
Making Economic Sense, p. 87
… government, unlike private enterprise, is not in the business of seeking profits or trying to avoid losses. Far from eager to court the consumer, government officials invariably regard consumers as an annoying intrusion and as “wasteful” users of “their” (government’s) scarce resources. Governments are invariably at war with their consumers.
Making Economic Sense, p. 96
… governments do not produce useful goods and services which they can sell on the market; governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and off society. Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation.
Making Economic Sense, p. 274
… the broader and more important problem of Big Government is not the deficit; it is not even, as Milton Friedman has long emphasized, total government spending; it is government action period, which fiscally means all three interlocking items: deficits, government spending, and taxation. Big Government is a swollen, ever-expanding and parasitic entity crushing the productive economy, the “private sector”; and the focus must be on rolling back, as much and as “drastically” as possible, all three of these facets of the government budget.
Making Economic Sense, pp. 437–38
All government rests on the coerced levy of taxation …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 907–08
The higher the relative level of government, the narrower the base of the producers, and the greater the “take” of those expropriating the producers. The higher the level of government, the less resources will be used to satisfy the desires of those consumers who have contributed to production, and the more resources will be used to satisfy the desires of nonproducing consumers.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 910
… government cannot be in any way a fountain of resources; all that it spends, all that it distributes in largesse, it must first acquire in revenue, i.e., it must first extract from the “private sector.”
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 913
… people’s benefits from government are considerably less than the amount that they are required to pay …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 923
Those laissez-faire economists and writers, past and present, who have stopped short at the impossibly Utopian ideal of a “limited” government are trapped in a grave inner contradiction.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1056
It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1302
… the government does its best and most constructive job, not by positive intervention into the society, but by repealing its own restrictions on free activity …
Science, Technology, and Government, p. 36
GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES
… it is absurd to expect the ruling clique to act altruistically for the “public good.” Like everyone else, they will use their opportunities for their own gain, which means to loot the many, and to favor their own or allied special interests as against those of the public.
Classical Economics, p. 76
… the only difference between state rulers and out-and-out robber chieftains is the size of their depredations.
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 25
Tyranny by majority vote may be unpleasant enough, but at least if the rulers are subject to democratic checks, they have to please the majority of the voters. But government officials who cannot be voted out at the next election are not subject to any democratic check whatever. They are permanent tyrants.
Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 49
… government bureaucrats do not pay taxes; they consume the tax proceeds.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 908
Bureaucratic managers and politicians have no real incentive to develop entrepreneurial skills, to really adjust to consumer demands.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 948
… the government itself contains inherent mechanisms that lead to poor choices of experts and officials. For one thing, the politician and the government expert receive their revenues, not from service voluntarily purchased on the market, but from a compulsory levy on the populace. These officials, therefore, wholly lack the pecuniary incentive to care about serving the public properly and competently.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1072
Who benefits from taxation? It is clear that the primary beneficiaries are those who live full-time off the proceeds, e.g., the politicians and the bureaucracy. These are the full-time rulers. It should be clear that regardless of legal forms, the bureaucrats pay no taxes; they consume taxes.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1151
… the personnel have no incentive to be efficient. In fact, the skills they will develop will not be the economic skills of production, but political skills—how to fawn on political superiors, how demagogically to attract the electorate, how to wield force most effectively. These skills are very different from the productive ones, and therefore different people will rise to the top in the government from those who succeed in the market.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1265–66
… the “worst get on top” in a collectivist regime. This is true for any government-run enterprise … for any task, those who get on top will be those with the most skill in that particular task—a praxeological law.… the market promotes and rewards the skills of production and voluntary cooperation; government enterprise promotes the skills of mass coercion and bureaucratic submission.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1266n9
On the market, workers get paid in accordance with their (discounted) marginal value product. But in a government enterprise, which can charge any price it pleases, there is no discernible value product, and workers are hired and paid according to the personal charm or political attractions that they have for their superiors.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1266n10
… rulers under socialism are those most adept at wielding force …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1281n22
… the government expert acquires his revenue by compulsory levy. There is no market test of his success in teaching people their true interests. The only test is his success in acquiring the political support of the State’s machinery of coercion.
… what incentive does the government expert have to care about the interests of his subjects? Surely he is not especially endowed with superior qualities by virtue of his government post. He is no more virtuous than the private expert; indeed, he is inherently less capable and is more inclined to wield coercive force.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1301
… there is no reason why these governmental experts should be efficient, i.e., why they should be experts at all. Indeed, they will be efficient not at providing the governmental service, whatever it may be (post office, foreign intercourse, etc.), but at organizing robber gangs to bludgeon the populace into yielding them more money and power—i.e., they will be most efficient at coercion.
Strictly Confidential, p. 38
GOVERNMENT SERVICES
… the services government indubitably supplies are to itself and to its favorites … all government spending is therefore consumption spending by the politicians and the bureaucracy.… the tax funds for that spending are extracted by coercion at the expense of the tax-paying public.
Classical Economics, p. 40
… the voluntary methods of the free market can successfully provide services that are almost always regarded as uniquely governmental.
Conceived in Liberty v. 2, p. 31; p. 529
Government’s numerous “free” services, moreover, create permanent excess demand over supply and therefore permanent “shortages” of the product. Government, in short, acquiring its revenue by coerced confiscation rather than by voluntary investment and consumption, is not and cannot be run like a business. Its inherent gross inefficiencies, the impossibility for it to clear the market, will insure its being a mare’s nest of trouble on the economic scene.
Economic Controversies, p. 424
… every good, without exception, that economists glibly term a “collective good” has actually been successfully supplied by the free market.
Economic Controversies, p. 475
… we must take a very hard look at government services. Are they “services,” or are they embodiments of repression? Or are they “services,” at best, that no one really wants? And if they are genuine services, wouldn’t they be supplied more efficiently, as well as voluntarily, by private enterprise?
Economic Controversies, p. 513
Problems and breakdowns are inherent in the operations of the public sector and of government generally. Deprived of a profit-and-loss test to gauge productivity and efficiency, the sphere of government shifts decision-making power from the hands of every individual and cooperating group, and places that power in the hands of an overall governmental machine.
Economic Controversies, p. 665
… the State is careful to monopolize police and judicial service, the ownership of roads and streets, the supply of money, and the postal service, and effectively to monopolize or control education, public utilities, transportation, and radio and television.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 121
Far from adding cozily to the private sector, the public sector can only feed off the private sector; it necessarily lives parasitically upon the private economy. But this means that the productive resources of society—far from satisfying the wants of consumers—are now directed, by compulsion, away from these wants and needs. The consumers are deliberately thwarted, and the resources of the economy diverted from them to those activities desired by the parasitic bureaucracy and politicians.… the “public sector” is actually antiproductive; that is, subtracts from rather than adds to the private sector of the economy. For the public sector lives by continuous attack on the very criterion that is used to gauge productivity: the voluntary purchases of consumers.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, pp. 136–37
If there is an increased demand for a privately-owned good, consumers pay more for the product, and investors invest more in its supply, thus “clearing the market” to everyone’s satisfaction. If there is an increased demand for a publicly-owned good (water, streets, subway, etc.), all we hear is annoyance at the consumer for wasting precious resources, coupled with annoyance at the taxpayer for balking at a higher tax load. Private enterprise makes it its business to court the consumer and to satisfy his most urgent demands; government agencies denounce the consumer as a troublesome user of their resources.… Government’s numerous “free” services, moreover, create permanent excess demand over supply and, therefore, permanent “shortages” of the product. Government, in short, acquiring its revenue by coerced confiscation rather than by voluntary investment and consumption, is not and cannot be run like a business. Its inherent gross inefficiencies, the impossibility for it to clear the market, will insure its being a mare’s nest of trouble on the economic scene.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, pp. 139–40
Any reduction of the public sector, any shift of activities from the public to the private sphere, is a net moral and economic gain.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 142
If the laissez-fairists object that the government should not build steel plants or shoe factories and provide them to consumers (either free or for sale) because tax-coercion had been employed in constructing these plants, well then the same objection can of course be made to governmental police or judicial service.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 182
All of the services commonly thought to require the State—from the coining of money to police protection to the development of law in defense of the rights of person and property—can be and have been supplied far more efficiently and certainly more morally by private persons.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 188
… whatever services the government actually performs could be supplied far more efficiently and far more morally by private and cooperative enterprise.
For a New Liberty, p. 29
While the long-held motto of private enterprise is that “the customer is always right,” the implicit maxim of government operation is that the customer is always to be blamed.
For a New Liberty, p. 245
There is no profit-and-loss mechanism in government to induce investment in efficient operations and to penalize and drive the inefficient or obsolete ones out of business. There are no profits or losses in government operations inducing either expansion or contraction of operations …
For a New Liberty, p. 246
The ultimate libertarian program may be summed up in one phrase: the abolition of the public sector.
For a New Liberty, p. 248
… we must always distinguish carefully between legitimate services that the State has now monopolized and arrogated to itself, and illegitimate activities that no one, including the State, should be permitted to perform. An example of the latter is the draft, which is the illegitimate enslavement of innocent people to serve the purposes of others. The draft could therefore never exist in a purely libertarian world. But other services are legitimate but now coercively monopolized by the government: e.g., postal service, roads, police, and prisons. In opposing the Post Office, libertarians do not oppose postal service per se; on the contrary, we wish to make that service more efficient and of higher quality by allowing competing private postal businesses.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 244
Every good or service now supplied by government has, at one time or another, been successfully supplied by private enterprise.
Making Economic Sense, p. 145
Whereas private firms try to price their goods or services to achieve the highest profit—i.e., to supply consumer needs most fully and at least cost—government has no incentive to price for highest profit or to keep down costs. Quite the contrary. Government’s incentive is to subsidize favored pressure groups or voting blocs; for government is pressured by its basic situation to price politically rather than economically.
Since government services are almost never priced so as to clear the market, i.e., equate supply and demand, it tends to price far below the market, and therefore bring about an artificial “shortage.”
Making Economic Sense, p. 97
Businesses are always eager for consumers to buy their product or service. On the free market, the consumer is king or queen and the “providers” are always trying to make profits and gain customers by serving them well. But when government operates a service, the consumer is transmuted into a pain-in-the-neck, a “wasteful” user-up of scarce social resources. Whereas the free market is a peaceful cooperative place where everyone benefits and no one loses; when government supplies the product or service, every consumer is treated as using a resource only at the expense of his fellow men. The “public service” arena, and not the free market, is the dog-eat-dog jungle.
Making Economic Sense, p. 131
… the private sector will always be more efficient than the governmental because income in the private sector is only a function of efficient service to the consumers. The more efficient that service, the higher the income and profits. In the government sector, in contrast, income is unrelated to efficiency or service to the consumer. Income is extracted coercively from the taxpayers (or, by inflation, from the pockets of consumers). In the government sector, the consumer is not someone to be served and courted; he or she is an unwelcome “waster” of scarce resources owned or controlled by the bureaucracy.
Making Economic Sense, p. 144
… government provision of a labor service is far less efficient and sensitive to consumer needs than private firms would be.
Making Economic Sense, p. 199
… all government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer.
Making Economic Sense, p. 273
… the politician and the government expert receive their revenues, not from service voluntarily purchased on the market, but from a compulsory levy on the inhabitants. These officials, then, wholly lack the direct pecuniary incentive to care about servicing the public properly and competently.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 889
… government enterprise can never be operated on a business basis, no matter how ardent a government’s intentions.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 947
… costs of government operation will be higher than for similar operations on the free market.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 950
… each governmental firm introduces its own island of chaos into the economy; there is no need to wait for full socialism for chaos to begin its work. No government enterprise can ever determine prices or costs or allocate factors or funds in a rational, welfare-maximizing manner. No government enterprise could be established on a “business basis” even if the desire were present. Thus, any governmental operation injects a point of chaos into the economy; and since all markets are interconnected in the economy, every governmental activity disrupts and distorts pricing, the allocation of factors, consumption/investment ratios, etc. Every government enterprise not only lowers the social utilities of the consumers by forcing the allocation of funds to other ends than those desired by the public; it lowers the utility of everyone (including the utilities of some government officials) by distorting the market and spreading calculational chaos. The greater the extent of government ownership, of course, the more powerful will this impact become.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 953
… governmental, as opposed to private, provision of services, lowers the standard of living of much of the population.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 954
… scarcity and inefficiency are inherent in government operation of any activity.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 986
It is particularly absurd to call for “business principles” where a government enterprise functions as a monopoly.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1266
… the State is always inefficient …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1319
GOVERNMENT SPENDING
All government expenditures are unproductive …
Classical Economics, p. 6
Since genuine demand only comes from the supply of products, and since the government is not productive, it follows that government spending cannot truly increase demand.
Classical Economics, p. 28
… government action or spending cannot increase the total amount of capital in society; it can only divert capital from free market to less productive uses.
Classical Economics, p. 51
… all taxation necessarily involves taking from one group to subsidize another; therefore all government expenditures, taken together, constitute one giant transfer payment.
Economic Controversies, p. 463
Where O where can the budget ever be cut? Anywhere and everywhere, with meat axes, hacksaws, anything to hand.… Of course, if I had my druthers, and could push a magic button, the federal, budget would be cut back to a nice fat zero. So don’t start wailing about “where can we cut the budget?” All we need is the will.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1076
Given the monopoly of roads or airports or postal service in the hands of government, and until they are privatized, we have no sensible alternative to using them. But this does not mean that we must blithely accept the State as an automatic proxy, or surrogate, for a firm in the private sector.
… Even when the State is actually performing an important service that it has seized and monopolized, it does not follow in any sense that we are warranted in calling for more government spending. For we cannot do so without adding to the burden of tax-theft in the society. In short, even in the case of valid but monopolized functions, it is always impermissible for libertarians to support an increase in tax-theft. For the State is not a private firm. If people want more roads, they should be willing to support this activity privately and voluntarily, and blocking at least any more State funding might even give them the idea of privatizing roads entirely. We cannot substitute the State for a private person or firm because it is inherently unsubstitutable. It is unsubstitutable because the nature of the State differs totally and radically, and not just marginally and technically, from all other social institutions. The State’s very being rests on theft and invasion of private property, and this theft and aggression must be reduced and hacked away at every way we can. At the very least, libertarians must never justify its increase.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1178
Where to cut the government budget? The simplest way is the best: just pass a law, overriding all existing ones, that no agency of the federal government is allowed to spend more, next year, than it did in some previous year …
Making Economic Sense, p. 22
… government spending is simply consumer spending.… Taxation and government spending siphon social resources away from productive consumers who earn the money they receive, and away from their private consumption and saving, and toward consumption expenditure by unproductive politicians, bureaucrats, and their followers and subsidies. …
All government taxation and spending diminishes saving and consumption by genuine producers, for the benefit of a parasitic burden of consumption spending by nonproducers. …
What is really needed is a drastic reduction of all government taxation and spending, state, local, and federal, across the board.
Making Economic Sense, p. 39
… government always underestimate its future costs and expenses …
Making Economic Sense, p. 113
… government spending is wasteful spending for the benefit of the unproductive “consumers” in politics and bureaucracy.
… the unproductive crowding out of saving comes not just from deficits but from all government spending; after all, taxes crowd out and even destroy private savings far more ruthlessly than mere borrowing. The problem is government taxation-and-spending.
Making Economic Sense, p. 122
… government spending and taxation are eating out our substance to support a growing parasitic army of crooks and moochers … the accelerating burden of government has caused our economy to stagnate …
Making Economic Sense, p. 209
… government spending is not “investment” at all; it is simply money spent for the edification or the power of the unproductive ruling elite in the government. All government spending, far from deserving the term “investment,” is in reality consumption spending by politicians and bureaucrats. Any increase in the government budget is therefore a push toward more consumption and less saving and investment; and the reverse is true for any cut in the budget.
Making Economic Sense, p. 211
… the larger the budget in relation to market activity, the greater the burden of government on the economy. A larger burden means that more and more resources of society are being coercively siphoned off from the producers into the pockets of government …
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 909–10
… the government budgetary process is a coercive shift of resources and incomes from producers on the market to nonproducers; it is also a coercive interference with the free choices of individuals by those constituting the government.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 913
Government expenditures are a coerced transfer of resources from private producers to the uses preferred by government officials.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 938
… no government expenditures can be considered genuine “investment,” and no government-owned assets can be considered capital.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 941
Government investment or subsidized investment is either malinvestment or not investment at all, but simply waste assets or “consumption” of waste for the prestige of government officials.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 969
All government expenditure for resources is a form of consumption expenditure … all talk of government “investment” is fallacious.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1153
… government expenditure is not properly “investment” at all … it is misallocation of funds that consumers and savers would have spent elsewhere … investment is only investment if it leads to its proper goal: consumption goods.… government expenditure is not really “capital,” but is actually—via taxes, controls, misallocations, etc.—destructive of the potential capital of a country.
Strictly Confidential, p. 304
GREED
I frankly don’t see anything wrong with greed.… “greed” simply means that you are trying to relieve the nature-given scarcity that man was born with. Greed will continue until the Garden of Eden arrives, when everything is superabundant, and we don’t have to worry about economics at all.… So the question then becomes: what kind of greed are we going to have, “productive greed,” where people produce and voluntarily exchange their products with others? Or exploitative greed, organized robbery and predation, where you achieve your wealth at the expense of others? These are the two real alternatives.
Economic Controversies, pp. 675–76
The favorite explanation of inflation is that greedy businessmen persist in putting up prices in order to increase their profits. But surely the quotient of business “greed” has not suddenly taken a great leap forward …
For a New Liberty, p. 217
GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT
In the pleasant but illusory world of “national product statistics,” government expenditures on goods and services constitute an addition to the nation’s product. Actually, since government’s revenue, in contrast to all other institutions, is coerced from the taxpayers rather than paid voluntarily, it is far more realistic to regard all government expenditures as a depredation upon, rather than an addition to, the national product. In fact, either government expenditures or receipts, whichever is the higher, may be regarded as the burden on private national product, and subtraction of the former figure from Gross Private Product (GPP) will yield an estimate of the private product left in private hands.
America’s Great Depression, pp. 253–54
We may gauge the fiscal impact of government on the private sector by subtracting government expenditures from the national product. For government payments to its own bureaucracy are hardly additions to production; and government absorption of economic resources takes them out of the productive sphere.
Economic Controversies, p. 422
The basic assumption of national income and GNP analysis is that all government operations are productive, that they contribute their expenses to the national output and the common weal. But if we truly believe in freedom and private property, we must conclude that many of these operations are not social “services” at all but disservices to the economy and society, “bads” rather than “goods.”
Economic Controversies, p. 441
… an estimate of social or national income should include only consumer spending.
Economic Controversies, p. 523
… GNP and allied concepts are flawed to the core …
Economic Controversies, p. 915
It is truly absurd to enshrine a slippery concept such as “national income” in to the basic law of the land. Who knows what “national income” is? This is not a precise or scientific concept, but whatever government statisticians say it is.
Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1038
It is absurd to include such a concept as “national income” in the fundamental law of the land; there is no such real entity, but only a statistical artifact, and an artifact that can and does wobble according to the political breeze.
Making Economic Sense, p. 237
Current “gross” figures, however, are the height of illogicality, because they are not gross at all, but only partly gross.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 401
These statistics cannot be used to frame or test economic theory, for one thing because they are an inchoate mixture of grossness and netness and because no objectively measurable “price level” exists that can be used as an accurate “deflator” to obtain statistics of some form of aggregate physical output. National product statistics, however, may be useful to the economic historian in describing or analyzing an historical period. Even so, they are highly misleading as currently used.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1292
… government contributes nothing to the national product and its activities sap the national product and channel it into unproductive uses.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1293
… either total government expenditures or total government receipts (each figure inclusive of government enterprises) should be deducted from NNP, whichever is the higher.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 1294
GROTIUS, HUGO
… Hugo Grotius, the founder of international law.
Conceived in Liberty v. 1, p. 296; p. 286
… Hugo Grotius, deeply influenced by the late Spanish scholastics, developed a natural law theory which he boldly declared was truly independent of the question of whether God had created them. The seeds of this thought were in St. Thomas Aquinas and in later Catholic scholastics, but never had it been formulated as clearly and as starkly as by Grotius.
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 369
… the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius … was an eminent natural law theorist who brought the concepts of natural law and natural rights to the Protestant countries of northern Europe.… Grotius clearly pushed natural law to its logical and rationalist conclusion: even if God did not exist, natural law would still be eternal and absolute; such law is discoverable by unaided human reason … Natural law required the rights of property to be secure in order to enjoy social cooperation, and under Grotius’s influence, the idea of the rights of property became expanded to the economic sphere. In a prefigurement of eighteenth century natural law-natural rights theory, Grotius believed in the harmony of human interaction based on free action and property rights.
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, pp. 417–18
GROUPS
… such collective concepts as groups, nations, and states do not actually exist or act; they are only metaphorical constructs for describing the similar or concerted actions of individuals. There are, in short, no “governments” as such; there are only individuals acting in concert in a “governmental” manner.
Economic Controversies, p. 54
To the libertarian, everyone has the same right in his person and in the goods which he finds, inherits, or buys—and it is illegitimate to make distinctions in property right between one group of people and another.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 122
Only individuals have ends and can act to attain them. There are no such things as end of or actions by “groups,” “collectives,” or “States,” which do not take place as actions by various specific individuals.
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 2
GUNS
… every man has the absolute right to bear arms—whether for self-defense or any other licit purpose. The crime comes not from bearing arms, but from using them for purposes of threatened or actual invasion.
Ethics of Liberty, p. 81
It should be clear that no physical object is in itself aggressive; any object, whether it be a gun, a knife, or a stick, can be used for aggression, for defense, or for numerous other purposes unconnected with crime. It makes no more sense to outlaw or restrict the purchase and ownership of guns than it does to outlaw the possession of knives, clubs, hatpins, or stones.
For a New Liberty, p. 140
… a society where peaceful citizens are armed is far more likely to be one where Good Samaritans who voluntarily go to the aid of victims of crime will flourish. But take away people’s guns, and the public—disastrously for the victims—will tend to leave the matter to the police.
For a New Liberty, p. 144
… what’s wrong with carrying guns? … Surely the crime comes not in carrying weapons but in using them aggressively.
Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 14
Any government that denies a person the right to defend himself against private and public intrusion … is not a morally legitimate government.
Making Economic Sense, pp. 493–94
