Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 109 of Robert Higgs’s Summer 1995 Critical Review paper, “Coercion Is Not a Societal Constant,” as this paper is reprinted in the superb 2004 collection of some of Bob’s essays, Against Leviathan (footnote deleted; link added; original emphasis):

[G]overnment stipulation of private-property rights differs fundamentally from government command and control. In the former case, the government sets rules regarding only what may not be done – namely, a person may not take actions that violate the established rights of another. Therefore, the choices people make and hence the outcomes of the socioeconomic process remain open-ended to an enormous degree. The concept of “spontaneous order” – a pattern of socioeconomic arrangements, transactions, and realizations unforeseen and unforeseeable by anyone, including those who establish the prevailing private-property rights – nicely expresses the workings of a society based on private-property rights. In the command-and-control case, however, the authorities stipulate what must be done.