Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2, 1926 January 7, 1995) was an American intellectual, individualist anarchist, author, and economist of the Austrian School who helped define modern libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism". Rothbard wrote over twenty books.Building on the Austrian School's concept of spontaneous order in markets, support for a free market in money production and condemnation of central planning, Rothbard sought to minimize coercive government control of the economy. He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term wellbeing of the populace, labeling the State as nothing but a "gang of thieves writ large" - the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.Rothbard concluded that virtually all services provided by monopoly governments could be provided more efficiently by the private sector.