Rothbard called Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit “the best book on money ever written.” But Rothbard himself may have written the best money book for lay readers, namely What Has Government Done to Our Money?
Bob Murphy joins the show to discuss this superb and eminently readable tract: a mini-course on money itself, from its origins and uses to its degradation by kings, politicians, and central bankers. In only 119 short pages, Rothbard gives us everything we need to know about this most critical commodity in society—along with the ruinous development of fully fiat (unbacked) state money. Readers also enjoy a brilliant history of money regimes, from early barter to the classical gold standard and the ultimate collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement.
Read this fantastic book for free in HTML format: Mises.org/WHGD
Bob Murphy’s series, “Understanding Money Mechanics”: Mises.org/MM
Bob Murphy interviews Fed economist David Andolfatto on the devaluation of money, among other topics: Mises.org/BMS175
Hans-Hermann Hoppe reconsiders Hutt’s seminal article, “The Yield from Money Held”: Mises.org/HoppeHutt
The Mises Institute exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian school of economics, and individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. These great thinkers developed praxeology, a deductive science of human action based on premises known with certainty to be true, and this is what we teach and advocate. Our scholarly work is founded in Misesian praxeology, and in self-conscious opposition to the mathematical modeling and hypothesis-testing that has created so much confusion in neoclassical economics. Visit https://mises.org