It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

Rothbard also criticized businesses who attempt to influence law and public policy in a manner which benefits them at the expense of their competitors. Rothbard held that government services were inefficient and that they would be better provided by the private sector. He called the state "the organization of robbery systematized and writ large" and the locus of the most immoral grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.