The state is an organization of mere mortals who, by one dubious method or another, have been allowed to don the mantle of political legitimacy and to command obedience on pain of imprisonment even of those who never consented to the preposterous arrangement.

We think of prices as simply the notation of how much we must pay for things. But the price system accomplishes far more than that. Hundreds of millions of people buying and selling, and abstaining from buying and selling, generate a system of signals - prices to producers and consumers about relative scarcities and demand. Through this system, consumers can convey to producers their subjective priorities and entrepreneurs can invest accordingly.

The government's coercive taxing power necessarily creates two classes: those who create and those who consume the wealth expropriated and transferred by that power.

Today, the people who would use guns to violate rights have little trouble getting them, while those who would use them to defend their rights have increasing trouble getting them. ... Gun control is in effect a subsidy for criminals.

Government interference with the economic process represents a substitution of political for consumer objectives.

The alternative to the market process is government control, and we know where that principle leads.

No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains.