It is true that a competitive market is not the whole of society. A great deal depends on the qualities of the population and the nation in how they organize the non-market aspects of society.

The Federal Reserve the privately owned U.S. central bank definitely caused The Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one third from 1929 to 1933.

It all would have been much better if individuals saved for their own old age.

There's no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn't exist.

Making prohibition work is like making water run uphill; it's against nature.

What you have as a result of past policies is that German entrepreneurs go outside of Germany for many of their activities. They are investing abroad instead of at home because there isn't the openness, fluidity and opportunity they find outside their borders.

A free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their own objectives. It prevents some people from arbitrarily suppressing others. It does not prevent some people from achieving positions of privilege, but so long as freedom is maintained, it prevents those positions of privilege from becoming institutionalized; they are subject to continued attack by other able, ambitious people.