Markets help people pursue their happiness more efficiently and effectively. Because they are so effective, markets provide benefits right here and right now, even while government is busy batching the protection of happiness.

Instead of doing more badly, government should focus on doing less well.

The government doesn't create wealth of its own; it can only take it from some and distribute it to others or dictate particular public uses of private resources.

The more government does, the greater chance that its efforts will be tilted toward a particular group's good, instead of the common good.

The only way to effectively secure the common good is for the government to remain small.

Money spent in complying with a regulation cannot be spent again on marketing or product research.

Markets are nimble and efficient, gathering the collective but disbursed intelligence of the economy's players and communicating up-to-the-minute realities of prices, product availability, etc. Government is typically cumbersome, plodding, and slow.