… is from page 156 of Thomas Sowell’s excellent 1999 book, The Quest for Cosmic Justice (footnote deleted):
Metaphors about how “society” should “arrange” this or that result evade the institutional reality that someone must be empowered to constrict other people’s freedom – and thus evade the need to weigh whether the expected value of the result being sought, given the chances of achieving it, is greater or less than the expected value of the loss of freedom that this effort entails.
