The Entrepreneur

The Deepwater Horizon crisis has sparked the next battle in the never-ending war of ideas between the proponents of government intervention and the defenders of laissez-faire.

It is no accident that Germany, the country that inaugurated the social-security system, was the cradle of both varieties of modern disparagement of democracy, the Marxian as well as the non-Marxian.

"The more controls and taxation a State imposes on its people," Sam wrote, "the more they will evade and defy them.

But history proceeds, miracle after miracle, driving progress forward, uplifting humanity, bringing glorious things to life on earth.

Huebert correctly grounds his philosophy in Murray Rothbard's nonaggression principle, and even has the temerity to apply this vital insight to the state: "If one person cannot steal money from another, then the government (which is made up only of individual people) should not be allowed to forcibly take money from people, even if it is called taxation."

On the other hand, you can spend your life refusing to straighten ties because you aren't paid enough to do that. That person will never be paid to do anything.

There is as much work to be done as there are unfulfilled desires.

"Most of the essays in this book imagine radical new possibilities of living outside the status quo. Or perhaps we should say statist quo…"

The fact is that, exactly as Mark Lilla fears, when people distrust authority in a generalized way and start thinking for themselves, often without much relevant information to guide them, they'll make many decisions that they'll later regret. But whose decisions are they to make?

"Instead of spending time on adapting their product to the desires of consumers, homebuilders are busy adapting their homes to the code. Innovation is the victim."