Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse - for both the addict and the rest of us.
Interpretation
Prohibition fails to solve addiction and exacerbates the problems for society as a whole.
Milton Friedman critiques the effectiveness of prohibition as a strategy to combat addiction, arguing that it not only fails to help the individual struggling with substance use but also negatively impacts society. He suggests that the efforts to ban substances often lead to more harm than good, highlighting the need for more thoughtful and effective approaches to addiction and drug use.
In practice
In a discussion about drug policy reforms.
The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.
Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly -whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world.
The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.
Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.
Vegetarianism is a link to perfection and peace. But it's a small link. There are lots of other issues: apartheid , vivisection, political prisoners, the arms race. There's so much going on in this world today, so much ignorance among people. That's not to say I'm not standing amongst everybody. But the point is, what can we do now? That's the thing about vegetarianism; it's an individual's decision and it's something you have control over. How many things do we really have control over?
Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.
He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.
Lord, give me firmness without hardness, steadfastness without dogmatism, love without weakness.
I'm not sure I've learned anything new about life; but I've had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.
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