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.
"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."
"But if peace meant disaster to the company, it also taught it an important lesson. A company that manufactured more rifles than it could sell to hunters, or to its own government, must seek foreign business."
"What if the management is done by the government? Then we abandon the realm of service and enter into the realm of policy."
Today, as always, the general citizenry needs to understand economic principles and to recognize economic fallacies.
It happens in every single economic exchange that is undertaken by virtue of human choice. Both sides benefit.
