The power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power... Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.

There's nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.

The Federal Reserve the privately owned U.S. central bank definitely caused The Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one third from 1929 to 1933.

There's no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn't exist.

If the US government spends 40 percent of the nation's income, as it does through either borrowing or taxes, that income is not available for people to spend. The deficit is an indirect method of taxation. Of course, politicians prefer to borrow instead of tax because then someone down the road has to deal with the consequences.

I would say that in this world, the greatest source of inequality has been special privileges granted by government.

It is true that a competitive market is not the whole of society. A great deal depends on the qualities of the population and the nation in how they organize the non-market aspects of society.