Beware: The Government Is People

by | Mar 25, 2024

Nearly everyone complains about capitalism’s defects, or market failures. In fact, those are social failures, not specifically market failures, which show up when many rational individual actions create a social situation that displeases everyone. This means that government dirigisme — state direction or displacement of the market — cannot be a remedy because who do you think staffs the government and how do they get there? A big difference between the two systems — market and state — is that while the market diminishes social defects, the government magnifies them.

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

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