In short both the things we feel we need and the things available for us to buy depend largely—beyond some point, almost entirely—on the things that others choose to buy.

The primary source of waste in government is that legislators are often under heavy pressure to vote for projects that will benefit their campaign contributors, even when those projects fail a simple cost-benefit test. But with the Supreme Court showing little interest in permitting tighter rules on campaign contributions in recent years, there is little reason to be optimistic that we'll start curbing this kind of waste any time soon.

The link between rational individual behavior and collectively desirable outcomes is extremely tenuous.

All parents want to send their children to the best possible schools. But because a good school is a relative concept, a family cannot achieve its goal unless it outbids similar families for a house in a neighborhood served by such a school. Failure to do so often means having to send your kids to a school with metal detectors at the front entrance and students who score in the 20th percentile in reading and math. Most families will do everything possible to avoid having to send their kids to a school like that. But because of the logic of musical chairs, they're inevitably frustrated.

When the economic pie grows larger, it's always possible for everyone to have a larger slice than before. So it's really in all of our interest to make the economic pie larger by eliminating waste whenever and wherever possible.

In short both the things we feel we need and the things available for us to buy depend largely—beyond some point, almost entirely—on the things that others choose to buy.

Unless we can act collectively, there would be no way to defend ourselves, no way to define or enforce property rights. We couldn't curb congestion or pollution or build and maintain public infrastructure.