Quotes from "What has government done to our money?" by Murray N. #Rothbard #Thread #AustrianEconomics 
1. (...) man discovered, in the process of trial and error, the route that permits a greatly-expanding economy: indirect exchange.
2. If one good is more marketable than another—if everyone is confident that it will be more readily sold—then it will come into greater demand because it will be used as a medium of exchange.
3. It is clear that in every society, the most marketable goods will be gradually selected as the media for exchange.
4. This process: the cumulative development of a medium of exchange on the free market—is the only way money can become established.
5. Because of money, an elaborate “structure of production” can be formed, with land, labor services, and capital goods cooperating to advance production at each stage and receiving payment in money.
6. The [Gresham] law really says that “money overvalued artificially by government will drive out of circulation artificially undervalued money.”
7. What makes us rich is an abundance of goods, and what limits that abundance is a scarcity of resources: namely land, labor, and capital. Multiplying coin will not whisk these resources into being.
8. Money has only utility for prospective exchange; its utility lies in its exchange value, or “purchasing power.”
9. Any supply will do as well as any other supply. The free market will simply adjust by changing the purchasing power, or effectiveness of the gold-unit.
10. It is misleading, furthermore, to say that money “circulates.” Like all metaphors taken from the physical sciences, it connotes some sort of mechanical process, independent of human will, which moves at a certain speed of flow, or “velocity.”
11. If people want more effective gold ounces in their cash balances, they can get them only through a fall in prices and a rise in the effectiveness of each ounce.
12. The free market, in short, is eminently orderly not only when money is free but even when there is more than one money circulating.
13. The gold in the vault is then no longer a part of the effective money supply, but is held as a reserve for its receipt, to be claimed whenever desired by its owner.
14. Inflation may be defined as any increase in the economy’s supply of money not consisting of an increase in the stock of the money metal.
15. In short, the bank is already and at all times bankrupt; but its bankruptcy is only revealed when customers get suspicious and precipitate “bank runs.”
16. Any attempt by government to fix the price will interfere with the satisfaction of people’s demands for money.
17. An increase in money supply will then merely dilute the effectiveness of each ounce of money without helping the economy.
18. The first receivers of the new money gain most, and at the expense of the latest receivers.
19. By creating illusory profits and distorting economic calculation, inflation will suspend the free market’s penalizing of inefficient, and rewarding of efficient, firms.
20. Inflation also penalizes thrift and encourages debt, for any sum of money loaned will be repaid in dollars of lower purchasing power than when originally received.
21. For then debtors are permitted to pay back their debts in a much poorer money than they had borrowed, and creditors are swindled out of the money rightfully theirs.
22. The bluntest way for government to foster inflation, then, is to grant the banks the special privilege of refusing to pay their obligations, while yet continuing in their operation.
23. A Central Bank attains its commanding position from its governmentally granted monopoly of the note issue.
24. Government, after all, appoints the Bank officials and coordinates its policy with other state policy.
25. In the twentieth century, governments, rather than deflate or limit their own inflation, have simply “gone off the gold standard” when confronted with heavy demands for gold.
26. The existence of gold in the economy is a constant reminder of the poor quality of the government paper, and it always poses a threat to replace the paper as the country’s money.
27. If government dictates over money, it has already captured a vital command post for control over the economy, and has secured a stepping-stone for full socialism.
28. The international gold standard meant that the benefits of having one money medium were extended throughout the world.
29. 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.
Disclaimer: This collection of quotations may not have expressed all the nuances provided by the author. Therefore, I advise you to consult the original text.
