The stories are now legendary: internet hotshots going from riches to rags in a period of months, infallible stock-pickers with their reputations in tatters, and stock prices of established companies off 75 percent from their highs. The business press is now talking openly about the possibility that the bull market is over. We may be in for a long period of disappointing returns and falling net worth of individual portfolios heavily invested in stocks.

Let’s say you set out on a Saturday shopping trip, drive up to the mall, and see a sign that says “50 percent off everything!” That’s great news, right?

Or let’s say you are in the market for a new car, and the sticker shock you experience is that cars are cheaper than they used to be. Amazing and wonderful!

Or let’s say you are paying for your daughter’s college education and find that you have set aside more money than is necessary because the price of tuition and books is lower than you expected. Glory be!

William F. Buckley and Irving Kristol recently explained why they are not drawn to consistent free-market logic, and why they have never been shy to advocate various forms of statism: they find market thinking rather dull.

Freedom can stand or fall on issues large (wars, depressions, natural disasters) or small (a hundred thousand regulations that manage our daily lives). Regulations on food labeling count among the small issues. It is a tricky issue for market advocates because bad labeling might actually count as breach of contract and thereby require legal intervention of some sort.

As Murray Rothbard writes,

In a man bites dog story, some of America’s richest men have joined together to oppose one of the best ideas in years: cutting or repealing the estate tax. Investor Warren Buffett, Bill’s dad William Gates, anticapitalist speculator George Soros, lefty ice-cream magnate Ben Cohen, at least two Rockefellers, and many others, have signed an ad that decries the proposed tax cuts on many spurious grounds.

In its dealings with foreign nations, the United States generally tries to maintain the moral high ground in its pronouncements and policies. But by slapping a 30 percent tariff on foreign steel, the US government has hit rock bottom in hypocrisy and favoritism, and everyone knows it.

Senator Kennedy says that minimum wage laws are essential to make sure that no working person lives in poverty, which is a strange thing to say, if you think about it. The reason a person works is precisely so that the person will not live in poverty. The minimum wage law does nothing but specify the floor below which a person may not work, and thus it can only, on the margin, increase the likelihood of poverty. If the key to eliminating poverty were more severe laws, why not forbid people from working for less than $100 per hour?

Like all government operations (public schools, domestic security, tax collection), the Post Office has to continually reform itself to avoid a complete public-relations meltdown. Thus did the Post Office become the Postal Service some 30 years ago. The name change was supposed to indicate how its management was going to be less like government and more like business.

At the heart of the Christmas story rest some important lessons concerning free enterprise, government, and the role of wealth in society.

Let’s begin with one of the most famous phrases: “There’s no room at the inn.” This phrase is often invoked as if it were a cruel and heartless dismissal of the tired travelers Joseph and Mary. Many renditions of the story conjure up images of the couple going from inn to inn only to have the owner barking at them to go away and slamming the door.