One thing Friedman didn’t address. I used to think the greatest evil of central banking was that they were always watering down the value of peoples money … lying to them about it. But now I think the greatest evil is that they take investment power away from the people.

On a gold standard, money can’t be printed up so the only way to get money to invest is to get it from people who have earned it and saved it up. This gives people who are hard working and productive control over investment power in the economy. In a fiat system, the right of free people to control economic allocation is destroyed because all new investment money in the economy comes from central bankers who print it up. That destroys the natural accountability and tendency of the system to center around people who are productive.

In a way it is like socialized farming. The act of taking away the farmers control over their property is even more evil than the taking of their profit margins.