You will often hear people say that free markets have been discredited, as they sip cups of coffee while sitting on chairs, wearing clothes and checking text messages – each of which was supplied by hundreds, thousands of producers whose beautifully coordinated collaboration was unplanned but achieved by ‘market forces’. You will hear people say that none of this could happen without government to provide the roads, the traffic lights, the air-traffic control, the police, the law that make commerce possible. True, and Adam Smith was the first person to observe that it is the duty of the state
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