… is from page 10 of my late colleague Jim Buchanan‘s 1971 paper “The Bases for Collective Action,” as this paper is reprinted in James M. Buchanan, Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory (2001), which is volume 15 of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan:
Perhaps more important than any efficiency advantage, however, is the market organization’s minimization of man’s power over man….
As we move away from idealized models of the pure-market economy, the efficiency advantages of laissez faire may disappear in many specific cases. The personal freedom of the individual participant that a free-trade or free-exchange (free-enterprise) economy guarantees remains a major advantage of this organizational structure, even when the real-world departures from the conditions required for markets to work perfectly are acknowledged.
