Free Markets

It is very difficult to convince someone that if they refuse free money they will be better off.

It takes a lot of PhDs to convince the public that their systematic looting at the hands of politicians is actually for their own good.

In light of all the varied and bizarre beliefs, usually incorrect and often pernicious, that have informed human communities throughout the past, is it inconceivable that the far more sensible views of libertarianism might someday become widely accepted?

"As long as the easy, attractive, superficial philosophy of Statism remains in control of the citizen's mind, no beneficent social change can be effected, whether by revolution or by any other means."

We may either incorporate ourselves into market civilization, the system by which we may serve ourselves as ends by serving other people as means, or return to the idyllic and isolated "noble" savagery that long characterized our human past.

"Politicians have a vested interest in preventing the alleviation of poverty. If Americans are fully employed and earning continually increasing wages, who needs the thousands of welfare bureaucrats in Washington?"

The Memoranum did not only denounce debasement and call for a high-valued currency, but it also enunciated "Gresham's law" that the cause of a shortage of gold coin in England was the legal undervaluation of gold.

Tourist Joe can complain about rising prices in the event of a papal death, but he should recognize their role in minimizing problems resulting from scarcity.

"An improving economy neither consists of an increasing GDP nor does it cause the overall stock market to rise."

First published in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman, "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read" is written from the point of view of an Eberhard Faber pencil.