If there is anything that government is actually good at doing, it is destroying things. Strangely, love for this destruction has become a popular cause, revealed in the push for "sustainability" and the banning of technologies that improve our lives.
Thomas Mun set forth what would become the standard mercantilist line. He pointed out that there was nothing particularly evil about the East India Company trade. The company imported valuable drugs, spices, dyes, and cloth from the Indies, and it re-exported most of these products to other countries.
Hayek noticed that the British habit of proclaiming compromise to be ingenious is an excuse for closing the eyes to unpleasant facts. If there is anyone who is not entitled to put his trust in the genius for compromise and for muddling through, it is the modern planner.
"The Randist analysis of the nature of crime implies the necessity for a minimal government."
"Let the banks perish. … Now is the time for the complete emancipation of trade from legislative thralldom."
William Leggett (1801–1839)
There is, after all, the surprisingly favorable response that libertarianism encounters from people in all walks of life.
"Wells's science-fiction parable fails to offer a fair test of Adam Smith's economic principles. Smith would in fact agree that to make a man invisible would be to turn him into a monster of egoism, for it would set him free from the normal discipline of the market."
But what both the classical and the historical schools have neglected, the Austrian School is today trying to accomplish.
It is very difficult to convince someone that if they refuse free money they will be better off.
