From A Critique of Interventionism — surrounding passage

Obviously, they are fully aware that their propaganda would be less effective if they were to admit the whole truth of the consequences. All production restrictions directly hamper some production inasmuch as they prevent certain employment opportunities that are open to the goods of higher order (land, capital, labor). By its very nature, a government decree that “it be” cannot create anything that has not been created before.

“Only the naive inflationists could believe that government could enrich mankind through fiat money.”

Government cannot create anything; its orders cannot even evict anything from the world of reality, but they can evict from the world of the permissible. Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. With most production restrictions this is so clear that their sponsors rarely dare openly claim credit for the restrictions. Many generations of writers, therefore, sought in vain to demonstrate that production restrictions do not reduce the quantity and quality of output.