Governments resort to inflation with popular support because the people apparently are naïve enough to believe that they can have their cake and eat it, too.

Is it not obvious that the more complex an economy, the more certainly will governmental control of productive effort exert a retarding influence?

The welfare state destroys the market mechanisms - lessens free choice and willing exchange. Simultaneously creating unnatural specializations, it must, granted statism's premise, resort to welfarism; that is, it must assume the responsibility for the people's welfare: their employment, their old age, their income, and the like. As this is done, man loses his wholeness; he is dispossessed of responsibility for self, the very essence of his manhood. The more dependent he becomes, the less dependable!

The advancement of freedom is not a matter of who wields political power over creative actions; rather, it depends upon the disassembling of such power.

There is no moral distinction between petty thievery and 'from each according to ability, to each according to need.'

There could be no greater error than to conclude that statism caused prosperity.

I would have government defend the life and property of all citizens equally; protect all willing exchange; suppress and penalize all fraud, all misrepresentation, all violence, all predatory practices; invoke a common justice under law; and keep the records incidental to these functions. Even this is a bigger assignment than governments, generally, have proven capable of. Let governments do these things and do them well. Leave all else to men in free and creative effort.