… is from page 129 of my late, great colleague Walter Williams’s 1982 book America: A Minority Viewpoint:
In fact, the first thing a dictator wants to do when he comes to power is eliminate the market. Why? Because he can’t trust people to behave voluntarily the way he thinks they should behave.
DBx: Indeed. Many of the Sams and Sarahs who oppose free markets do so because lots of other people, when left free, act in ways that don’t suit the Sams’ or the Sarahs’ fancies. And the greater is the intensity of any Sam’s or Sarah’s authoritarian itch, the stronger is that person’s opposition to free markets – meaning, the stronger is his or her opposition to the freedom of other individuals to act in whatever peaceful ways those other individuals choose to act. Opposition to free markets is opposition to freedom.
…..
Walter, who died in 2020, was born on this date, March 31st, in 1936. Few people saw the nature of the state as clearly as did Walter. Still fewer people understood the nature of the market as well as did Walter. And even fewer people championed the liberal market order with the clarity, courage, and determination that Walter brought to this task. Not a day passes that I do not miss him.
