Britain, with the most completely socialized health system in the West, now spends the lowest fraction of GNP on health care of any major nation. There are frequent complaints of excessive waits for elective surgery and other inconveniences, but British citizens live slightly longer than Americans, on average, and our overall health conditions are comparable.

When laissez-faire creates instability, the move to a freer market can be something less than pure gain.

Technological advance often thrives in sheltered and subsidized markets, which defy free trade.

American critics of welfare statism are often surprised to learn that countries like West Germany, with a much more comprehensive welfare state and a statistically larger public sector, have fewer government employees per capita than the United States does.

By default, we have created a "system" of nursing-home care for the aged in which middle-class people pay exorbitant rates to for-profit nursing-home entrepreneurs - and then when private resources are consumed and the patient qualifies as a pauper, the nursing home begins billing Medicaid. This is precisely the antithesis of social citizenship; instead of the poor being accorded the dignity associated with the middle class, equality of treatment is achieved by making the middle class undergo pauperization.

We are already well down the road toward a managed-trade regime. It would be far better to acknowledge that reality, and seek a set of reasonable rules, than to pretend that Ricardian trade is the norm and allow mercantilist states to overwhelm U.S. industry and ratchet down wages, in the name of free trade.

In practice, a good deal of the outcomes produced by the market reflect nothing more than luck - good or bad.