Money Control Is the Supreme and Most Comprehensive of All Government Controls Short of Expropriation

In his 1942 book, This Age of Fable, German free-market economist Gustav Stolper pointed out:

Hardly ever do the advocates of free capitalism realize how utterly their ideal was frustrated at the moment the state assumed control of the monetary system.… A "free" capitalism with government responsibility for money and credit has lost its innocence. From that point on it is no longer a matter of principle but one of expediency how far one wishes or permits governmental interference to go. Money control is the supreme and most comprehensive of all government controls short of expropriation.

Even in the high-water mark of classical liberalism in the 19th century, practically all advocates of the free market and free trade believed that money was the one exception to the principle of private enterprise. The international monetary order of the 19th century, of which Wilhelm Roepke spoke in such glowing terms, was nonetheless the creation of a planning mentality. The decision to "go on" the gold standard in each of the major Western nations was a matter of state policy.

--Richard M. Ebeling, "The Gold Standard as Government-Managed Money," in Monetary Central Planning and the State (Fairfax, VA: The Future of Freedom Foundation, 2015), Kindle e-book.