Corruption Is Government Intrusion Into Market Efficiencies

George Stigler Was A Delightful Correspondent. In A Letter From London In 1948, After Remarking On The Inconvertibility Of The Pound And The Inedible, Still-rationed Food, He Concluded, "so Here I Am Losing Weight And Gaining Pounds.

When You Argue For Free Markets, You Are Arguing Against The Trend.

When A Private Enterprise Fails, It Is Closed Down; When A Government Enterprise Fails, It Is Expanded. Isn't That Exactly What's Been Happening With Drugs?

What Happened Was That For Every $100 Of Money, By Which I Mean The Cash That People Keep In Their Pockets, And The Deposits They Have In The Bank, For Every $100 Of Money That There Was In 1929, By 1933 There Was Only $67. The Federal Reserve Allowed The Quantity Of Money To Decline By A Third. While, At All Times, It Had The Possibilities And The Power Of Preventing That From Happening.

The Great Virtue Of Free Enterprise Is That It Forces Existing Businesses To Meet The Test Of The Market Continuously, To Produce Products That Meet Consumer Demands At Lowest Cost, Or Else Be Driven From The Market. It Is A Profit-and-loss System. Naturally, Existing Businesses Generally Prefer To Keep Out Competitors In Other Ways. That Is Why The Business Community, Despite Its Rhetoric, Has So Often Been A Major Enemy Of Truly Free Enterprise.