Administrative State

Even if we assume that sclerotic bureaucracies are able to identify the ever-elusive “public good,” what incentive do they have to serve it and not their own ends? Progressivism and its crusaders simply never bothered to answer this fundamental question.

Given any quantifiable standard, freedom and private property have proven themselves superior to planning, bureaucracy, and the welfare state. As the great laissez-faire economist Jean-Baptiste Say wrote in 1803, “Nothing can be more idle than the opposition of theory to practice!” Say’s message is as clear now as it was then: the mechanics of liberty work precisely because they respect our individual rights.