Murray N. Rothbard

Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Era20th-century Economists
(Austrian Economics)
RegionWestern Economists
SchoolAustrian economics
Main interests
Economics, Political economy, Anarchism, Natural law, Praxeology, Numismatics, Philosophy of law, Ethics, Economic history
Notable ideas
Founder of Anarcho-capitalism, Rothbard's law, largely influenced Agorism
Influences
Influenced
  • Hoppe, Friedman, Rockwell, Konkin, Narveson, Heath, Callahan, Raico, Salerno, Sobran, McElroy, Tucker, Bylund, Long, Caplan, Murphy, Lottieri, Woods, Kinsella, Nozick, Molyneux, Thornton, Horton, Hülsmann, Raimondo, DiLorenzo, Block, Linda & Morris Tannehill, Paul, Robert Higgs
Rothbard circa 1955

Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist and writer. He helped make the Austrian School of economics popular in the United States.

Rothbard helped to create modern libertarianism, a political belief in less government and more personal freedom. He founded a form of free-market anarchism which he called "anarcho-capitalism".[1][2] Rothbard believed society should organise itself, and he didn't like central planning.[3]

Rothbard wrote over twenty books and was an important central figure in the American libertarian movement.[4]

His ideas

Rothbard advocated the abolition of government control of society and the economy. He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term well-being of the people. He called the state a "gang of thieves writ large — the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society".[5][6][7][8]

Rothbard thought that all services provided by monopoly governments could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. According to him, many regulations and laws passed "for the public interest" were self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats to make themselves look important. These schemes were not subject to market disciplines.

Government services were not efficient, and would get eliminated, if the services could be provided by competition in the private sector.[9][10][11]

Rothbard was equally condemning of big business working with government. Business elites, he thought, used government's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy to help themselves at the expense of their competitive rivals.[12]

He argued that taxation was theft on a grand scale, backed by law. It was "a compulsory monopoly of force" which prevented the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers.[6][13] He also argued against central banking and fractional reserve banking.[14] A monopoly system where the government decides how much money to print is, to him, a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial fraud. It is against libertarian principles and ethics.[15][16][17][18] Rothbard opposed military, political, and economic interferences in the affairs of other nations.[19][20]

Books

Related pages

Notes

  1. ↑ Miller, David, ed. (1991). Blackwell encyclopaedia of political thought. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-17944-5.
  2. ↑ Wendy McElroy. "Murray N. Rothbard: Mr. Libertarian". Lew Rockwell. July 6, 2000. Archived from the original on August 3, 2006. Retrieved October 17, 2008.
  3. ↑ Noce, Jaime E. & Miskelly, Matthew 2002. Anarchism: political theories for students. Gale. p7
  4. ↑ Ronald Hamowy, Editor, The encyclopedia of libertarianism, p 441.
  5. ↑ The ethics of liberty, Murray Rothbard
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Hans-Hermann Hoppe (18 August 2014). "The Ethics of Liberty". Ludwig von Mises Institute.
  7. ↑ Repudiating the National Debt Archived 2011-06-27 at the Wayback Machine, Murray Rothbard
  8. ↑ To save our economy from destruction, Murray Rothbard
  9. ↑ The Great Society: a libertarian critique, Murray Rothbard
  10. ↑ The noble task of revisionism Archived 2012-10-18 at the Wayback Machine, Murray Rothbard
  11. ↑ The fallacy of the 'public sector', Murray Rothbard
  12. ↑ For a new liberty, Chapter 3
  13. ↑ Tax day, Murray Rothbard
  14. ↑ By 'fractional reserve banking' is meant banks who do not keep enough reserves to cover their debts.
  15. ↑ Rothbard, Murray. The mystery of banking Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2008. p. 111
  16. ↑ "Has fractional-reserve banking really passed the market test? (Controversy)". Independent Review. January 2003.
  17. ↑ The Case for the 100% Gold Dollar Archived 2010-02-26 at the Wayback Machine, Murray Rothbard
  18. ↑ See also Murray Rothbard articles: Private Coinage; Repudiate the National Debt; and Taking money back
  19. ↑ Rothbard on War, excerpts from a 1973 Reason Magazine article and other materials, published at Antiwar.com, undated.
  20. ↑ Murray N. Rothbard For a new liberty, p. 265.

Other websites

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