Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation.

After the Volcker Fund collapsed, I got another grant from the Lilly Endowment to do a history of the U.S., which I worked on from 1962-66. The original idea was to take the regular facts and put a libertarian assessment on everything.

Money is the general medium of exchange. It is the thing for which all other goods are traded, the means of final payment for such goods on the market.

Inflation, being a fraudulent invasion of property, could not take place on the free market.

I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity.

What...can the government do to help the poor? The only answer is the libertarian answer: Get out of the way.

The costs of government are bound to be much higher than those of the free market. . .The State cannot calculate well and therefore cannot gauge its costs accurately.