[A selection from Deflation and Liberty.] The production of money in a free society is a matter of free association. Everybody from the miners to the owners of the mines, to the minters, and up to the customers who buy the minted coins — all benefit from the production of money. None of them violates the property rights of anybody else, because everybody is free to enter the mining and minting business, and nobody is obliged to buy the product. Things are completely different once we turn to money production in interventionist regimes, which have prevailed in the West for the … Continue reading Keeping the Rich Up and the Poor Down