It is difficult, indeed, to understand what the advantages of a stable value of money are supposed to be. One of the most frequently cited advantages, for example, is that debtors will no longer be harmed by unforeseen rises in the value of money, while creditors will no longer be harmed by unforeseen declines in its value. Yet if creditors and debtors want such a hedge against future changes, they have an easy way out on the free market. When they make their contracts, they can agree that repayment be made in a sum of money corrected by some agreed-upon index number of changes in the value of money. Such a voluntary tabular standard for business contracts has long been advocated by stabilizationists, who have been rather puzzled to find that a course which appears to them so beneficial is almost never adopted in business practice. Despite the multitude of index numbers and other schemes that have been proposed to businessmen by these economists, creditors and debtors have somehow failed to take advantage of them. Yet, while stabilization plans have made no headway among the groups that they would supposedly benefit the most, the stabilizationists have remained undaunted in their zeal to force their plans on the whole society by means of State coercion.
—Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, 2nd ed. of the Scholar's ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009), 847-848.
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