A very common criticism of the libertarian position runs as follows: Of course we do not like violence, and libertarians perform a useful service in stressing its dangers. But you are very simpliste because you ignore the other significant forms of coercion exercised in society—private coercive power, apart from the violence wielded by the State or the criminal. The government should stand ready to employ its coercion to check or offset this private coercion.

It is quite common and even fashionable to discuss market phenomena in terms of “power”—that is, in terms appropriate only to the battlefield. We have seen the fallacy of the “back-to-the-jungle” criticism of the market and we have seen how the fallacious “economic-power” concept has been applied to the exchange economy.

A common complaint is that the free market would not insure the elimination of poverty, that it would “leave people free to starve,” and that it is far better to be “kindhearted” and give “charity” free rein by taxing the rest of the populace in order to subsidize the poor and the substandard.

One of the most common charges levelled against the free market (even by many of its friends) is that it reflects and encourages unbridled “selfish materialism.” Even if the free market—unhampered capitalism—best furthers man’s “material” ends, critics argue, it distracts man from higher ideals. It leads man away from spiritual or intellectual values and atrophies any spirit of altruism.

Many critics complain that the free market, in casting aside inefficient entrepreneurs or in other decisions, proves itself an “impersonal monster.” The free-market economy, they charge, is “the rule of the jungle,” where “survival of the fittest” is the law.20 Libertarians who advocate a free market are therefore called “Social Darwinist

A common criticism of free-market decisions is that “luck” plays too great a role in determining incomes. Even those who concede that income to a factor tends to equal its discounted marginal value product to consumers, and that entrepreneurs on the free market will reduce mistakes to an absolute minimum, add that luck still plays a role in income determination. After charging that the market confers undue laurels on the lucky, the critic goes on to call for expropriation of the “rich” (or lucky) and subsidization of the “poor” (or unlucky).

Because of its popularity, we may briefly consider the “traffic-manager analogy”—the doctrine that the government must obviously regulate the economy, “just as traffic must be regulated.” It is high time that this flagrant non sequitur be consigned to oblivion. Every owner necessarily regulates his own property. In the same way, every owner of a road will lay down the rules for the use of his road. Far from being an argument for statism, management is simply the attribute of all ownership. Those who own the roads will regulate their use.

Critics often level conflicting charges against the free market. The historicist-minded may concede that the free market is ideal for a certain stage of economic development, but insist that it is unsuited to other stages. Thus, advanced nations have been exhorted to embrace government planning because “the modern economy is too complex” to remain planless, “the frontier is gone,” and “the economy is now mature.” But, on the other hand, the backward countries have been told that they must adopt statist planning methods because of their relatively primitive state.