In much of the world, perhaps all of it, the basic problem is not only that governments do too much, but also that they do too little. But as they cease doing what they ought not to do, governments should start doing some of the things that would in fact increase justice and create the…

Mere “privatization” in the absence of a functioning legal system is not the same as creating a market. Markets rest on a foundation of law; failed privatizations are not failures of the market, but failures of the state to create the legal foundations for markets.

While money prices may go up in the short time when prices are freed, the result is to increase production and diminish wasteful rationing and corruption, with the result that total real prices — expressed in terms of a basic commodity, human labor time — goes down.

When trade takes place in free markets, both parties win. Free societies also lead to the “circulation of elites,” with no one guaranteed a place or kept from entering by accident of birth. The phrase “the rich get richer and the poor gets poorer” applies, not to free markets, but to mercantilism and political cronyism,…