Thread by @SenatorBrakey

The key difference between Marxists and Rothbardians:

Marxists view capitalism as a centralizing force.

Rothbardians view capitalism as a decentralizing force.

Marxists see capitalism akin to gravity — capital attracting more capital, all the wealth gradually concentrating in the hands of the few.

They believe an outside force (sometimes government) is needed to counter this and redistribute the wealth.

Rothbardians view aggression generally (most prominently, the aggression of state power) as the force that concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few.

We see capitalism as a force akin to entropy — challenging that centralization through the power of the market.

When I look at our American economy, I agree with the Marxists who warn about the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

Where we disagree is the mechanism by which this concentration — “making the rich richer and the poor poorer” — is achieved.

It is not through the free market the healthcare system is monopolized by massive corporations, but through government regulations and grants of privilege.

Certificate of Need outlaws competition among providers and Obamacare outlaws competition among insurers.

In Western Civilization, the advance of free markets and honest money created the middle class.

Before the merchant class, there was only the rich and the poor — those who could own property and those who could not.

The ability for regular people to accumulate savings and purchase capital brought the lowest poverty rates in all history and created the middle class.

The market is not the enemy of the middle class — but the source of it.

Without the institution of saving, the foundation of the middle class erodes from beneath us.

And Federal Reserve Bank has stolen our savings, devaluing the dollar by 40% over this last year — printing trillions for Washington politicians to hand out to special interests.

How do we save the middle class?

The monetary machine is built to steal middle class savings through depreciating currency.

Only sound money can protect us against it, and Washington central bankers will never give us that.

Hard metals, like gold and silver, were the ideal sound money for thousands of years because they were uniform, portable, limited in supply, and possessed intrinsic value.

As such, they made excellent stores of value and mediums of exchange.

The Washington D.C. government enticed us, after the Civil War, to deal exclusively with their paper currency, under the promise that a $20 bill was redeemable for an ounce of gold.

By making the dollar “as good as gold,” people adopted it.

By World War II, FDR had made possession of gold illegal and forced all Americans to turn their gold into the government.

From FDR to Nixon, the semblance of a gold standard was maintained under the new Breton Woods Agreement, but only foreigners could redeem their dollars for gold — at a new rate of $35 an ounce.

Since Nixon took us off the gold standard, the value of our currency has been in free fall — losing over 96% of its value to inflation — as the Federal Reserve prints trillions of dollars to fund Washington deficits, never-ending wars and bailouts for Corporate America.

Washington is never going to give up the “free money machine,” so it’s time for us to move on from the dollar.

The politicians and special interests have so distorted our money that we can’t rely on it anymore.

Cryptocurrencies offer the first potential competition to this crooked financial system that I have seen in my lifetime.

As Bitcoin hit $50,000 for the first time today (and other cryptocurrencies continue rising in value), I’m excited to see where this goes.

Cryptocurrency represents the decentralizing force of free market capitalism at work, challenging the central government’s monopoly on money and restoring economic power to the people.