Quotation of the Day…

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… page 563 of the 2025 Liberty Fund edition (translated by Jurgen Reinhoudt) of Jacques Rueff’s 1945 magnum opus, The Social Order:

Under the liberal system, the laws and regulations – once taxes have been paid – do not prohibit any of the uses allowed by the natural order of things. A strictly liberal society is therefore a society without any laws or regulations other than those that forbid the enjoyment and disposal of other people’s property or that establish tax obligations.

By contrast, under the authoritarian system of government, the laws and regulations subject individual wills to the restrictions that are willed by government authority.