The state has typically been a device for producing affluence for a few at the expense of many.
Murray RothbardIf 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 โred threadโ 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.
Murray RothbardGold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium.
Murray RothbardSince the State necessarily lives by the compulsory confiscation of private capital, and since its expansion necessarily involves ever-greater incursions on private individuals and private enterprise, we must assert that the state is profoundly and inherently anti-capitalist .
Murray Rothbard[W]hich category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely? [T]hose against private citizens or those against itself? The gravest crimes in the State's lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax.
Murray Rothbard