Murray Rothbard
(March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American
economist,
historian, and
political theorist. He was a prominent exponent of the
Austrian School of economics and fundamentally influenced the American
libertarian movement and contemporary libertarian and
classical liberal thought, by theorizing a form of
free-market anarchism which he termed "
anarcho-capitalism". Building on the Austrian School's concept of
spontaneous order, support for a
free market in
money production, and condemnation of
central planning Rothbard advocated abolition of
coercive 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 populace, labeling the
state as "the organization of robbery systematized and writ large" and the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society. Rothbard concluded that all services provided by
monopolygovernments could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. He viewed many regulations and laws ostensibly promulgated for the "public interest" as self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats engaging in dangerously unfettered self-aggrandizement, as they were not subject to
market disciplines. Rothbard held that there were inefficiencies involved with government services and asserted that
market disciplines would eliminate them, if the services could be provided by competition in the private sector. Rothbard was equally condemning of state corporatism, criticizing many instances where business elites co-opted government's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals. He argued that
taxation represents coercive theft on a grand scale, and "a compulsory
monopoly of force" prohibiting the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers. He also considered
central banking and
fractional reserve banking under a monopoly
fiat money system a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial
fraud, antithetical to
libertarian principles and ethics.
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