The Dollar: Independent Name or Unit of Weight?

The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar audiobook

Tags: Gold Standard, Money and Banking, Value and Exchange

08/05/2026 Murray N. Rothbard

The conceptual core of the essay. Rothbard answers the charge that gold advocates want government to fix a price by rejecting its premise—“dollar” was never an independent entity but a name for a weight of gold. He shows how money is properly obtained only through production, and argues that a bare name could never have arisen as money on a free market.

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Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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The Dollar: Independent Name or Unit of Weight?