What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in some markets billions, of people making personal decisions that express their preferences. When you hear someone say that he doesn't trust the market, and wants to replace it with government edicts, he's really calling for a switch from a democratic process to a totalitarian one.
Interpretation
The market reflects individual choices and preferences, and replacing it with government control undermines democracy.
Walter E. Williams emphasizes that the market functions as a democratic mechanism where countless individuals express their preferences through personal choices. When people express distrust in the market and advocate for government intervention, they are inadvertently pushing towards a totalitarian system that centralizes decision-making and suppresses individual freedoms.
In practice
During a lecture on economics, one could cite this quote to illustrate the importance of individual choice in market dynamics.
However, if we wish to be compassionate with our fellow man, we must learn to engage in dispassionate analysis. In other words, thinking with our hearts, rather than our brains, is a surefire method to hurt those whom we wish to help.
In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.
The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.
Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top".
If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.
The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
Whatever the situation may be, in the recollection of death there is reward and merit. For even the man engrossed in the world benefits from it by acquiring an aversion to this world, since it spoils his contentment and the fullness of his pleasure; and everything which spoils for man his pleasures and his appetites is one of the means of deliverance.
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.
In our society, the ideal self is bold, gregarious, and comfortable in the spotlight. We like to think that we value individuality, but mostly we admire the type of individual who's comfortable 'putting himself out there.'
You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.
I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.
The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.