Murray Rothbard
Biography
Murray Rothbard was Mises's most prolific student and the founder of modern anarcho-capitalist political philosophy. His 1962 Man, Economy, and State remains the definitive treatise systematizing Austrian economics in the post-Mises era. America's Great Depression applied Austrian Business Cycle Theory to show that the 1929 crash and subsequent depression were caused not by laissez-faire but by the Federal Reserve's credit expansion of the 1920s. Rothbard taught at NYU and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and was a co-founder of both the Cato Institute and the Mises Institute. His ethical framework — strict natural rights anarcho-capitalism — provided the philosophical scaffolding for much of the libertarian movement.
Major Works
- Man, Economy, and State (1962)
- America's Great Depression (1963)
- What Has Government Done to Our Money? (1963)
- The Case for a 100% Gold Dollar (1962)
- The Ethics of Liberty (1982)
The Bitcoin Connection
Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money? is required reading for anyone trying to understand the monetary thesis behind Bitcoin. The book explains, in plain English, why fiat money systems collapse, why gold's monetary properties matter, and why the state's monopoly on money issuance is the root cause of business cycles, persistent inflation, and the funding mechanism for permanent warfare. Bitcoin is the first technology that makes Rothbard's alternative — a 100% reserve, scarce, neutral money that no government can debase — actually feasible at global scale. He didn't live to see it, but Bitcoin is in every meaningful sense a Rothbardian project.