The Legalized Counterfeiting of Monetary Issue Enables the State to break the Production-Monetary Income Chain to Its Own Advantage

There is no mystery in the fact that the state clung to its control of money even while temporarily relinquishing its grip on other areas of the economy. For one thing, as we have seen, control over a nation's money is a prerequisite for dictation over the rest of the economy. Another reason for the state's vital interest in money is that only through such control can it break the production-income nexus of the free market. We have seen that, on the free market, the only way to obtain money is to produce and sell goods or services to those who wish to buy; thus, the only way to acquire money from other people is to provide them with services which they desire. But there is only one way to break the requirement of producing desired goods and services to obtain money; and that is to gain control of the means of creating money. If one can create new money simply and easily, then one can enter the market to consume goods and services without first having to produce any oneself. On the market, private individuals cannot do this, as this constitutes the crime of "counterfeiting."

--Murray N. Rothbard, "Money, the State, and Modern Mercantilism," in Central Planning and Neomercantilism, ed. Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1964), 141.