The Market for Liberty Quotes

“Not only is democracy mystical nonsense, it is also immoral. If one man has no right to impose his wishes on another, then ten million men have no right to impose their wishes on the one, since the initiation of force is wrong (and the assent of even the most overwhelming majority can never make it morally permissible). Opinions—even majority opinions—neither create truth nor alter facts. A lynch mob is democracy in action. So much for mob rule.”
― Morris Tannehill, The Market for Liberty

“Because crimes cannot be committed against society, it is fallacious to regard government as an agent of society for the punishment of crime. Nor can government be considered to be the agent of the individual members of society, since these individuals have never signed a contract naming the government as their agent. There is, therefore, no valid reason for government officials to be designated the arbiters of disputes and rectifiers of injustice.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“We can bring about a laissez-faire society, but only through the tremendous, invisible power of ideas. Ideas are the motive power of human progress, the force which shapes the world. Ideas are more powerful than armies, because it was ideas which caused the armies to be raised in the first place, and it is ideas which keep them fighting (if this weren’t true, political leaders wouldn’t have to bother with their tremendous propaganda machinery). When an idea gains popular support, all the guns in the world cannot kill it.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“If you throw a bomb, the police will come after you and the terrified public will cry for “law and order.” But if you disseminate a constructive idea, people who are receptive will catch it, understand it, and pass it on, while the power structure will blindly ignore it.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“a laissez-faire society wouldn’t degenerate into chaos, that instead it would solve most of our problems. And we must be ready to show just how such a society would maintain itself and why it would solve the problems.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“freedom, because it is the right way for men to live, is practical. A laissez-faire society would work, and work well. The social problems that perplex almost everyone are the result, not of too much freedom, but of government meddling in our lives with its compulsions, prohibitions, and ever-growing taxes.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“When some men rule over others, a condition of slavery exists, and slavery is wrong under any circumstances. To advocate limited government is to advocate limited slavery. To say that government is a necessary prerequisite for a civilized society is to say that slavery is necessary for a civilized society. To say that men cannot protect their freedom without a government is to say that men cannot protect their freedom without a system of slavery. Slavery is never either right or necessary ... and neither is that form of slavery called government.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“The idea we have to spread is very easy to understand—it is simply that government is an unnecessary evil and that freedom is the best and most practical way of life.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“So long as the majority of men believe that government is right and/or necessary, they will have a government. If their government is destroyed before they understand the desirability and practicality of freedom, they will rush to set up a new one, because they believe they must be governed in order to have a civilized world. Until we change this idea, we can never have a free society.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“Government is only the concrete expression and result of the prevailing idea that it is right for men to be governed by force.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“In a governmental society, the reason some men rule over others is that the vast majority of opinion-molders in that society consider it proper or even necessary for men to be ruled by force. In order to get rid of government it is only necessary to change the prevailing idea that men must or should be kept in some degree of slavery by their rulers. In a society dominated by the idea that no man has a right to govern anyone else, government would be impossible—no would-be ruler could muster enough gunmen to inforce his will.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“A laissez-faire society is worth the thought, effort, and struggle necessary to achieve it, because liberty is the answer to all of our societal problems.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“the operations of the free market always penalize the incompetent, causing them to lose properties which they are incapable of operating effectively. If a drunken bum claimed the Chicago Main Post Office, what would he do with it? If he lacked the skill to operate the facility, he would have to simply hold on to it while someone else started a profitable private mail service in some other Chicago building, or he would have to sell it. If he sold it, it would then be put to productive use and he would be left with a sum of money to squander on liquor. Either way, the market would soon reach a condition of maximum productivity and the fate of the bum would become irrelevant to everyone but himself.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“One of the most important considerations raised in connection with the abolition of government is what should be done with government wealth and property. As far as monetary wealth goes, this is no problem ... since the government doesn’t have any (as a look at the national debt figures will show). The government does, however, possess a tremendous amount and variety of “property” in the form of land, buildings, roads, military installations, schools, businesses such as the Post Office, Government Printing Office, and hundreds less well-known, prisons, libraries, etc., etc. Though these items are in the temporary possession of whatever bureaucrats happen to be in charge of them, they are not actually owned by anyone. “The public” is unable to own them, since nothing can be owned by a collective myth like “the people.” Politicians and bureaucrats don’t own them for the same reason that a thief doesn’t rightfully own the property he has stolen. “Public property” is actually unowned potential property. Since valuables in the possession of government are not actually owned, it would be perfectly proper for anyone to take possession of any piece of “public property” at any time that the government became too weak or careless to prevent him from doing so. The man who took possession of a piece of former “public property,” claiming it and marking it as his own for all to see, would become the rightful owner of that property.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“No government obligation of any sort is morally binding on the citizen-subjects (or former citizen-subjects) of that government. Those who voluntarily loaned money to the government were at fault for sanctioning and supporting the activities of the hoodlum gang, and justice demands that they must take their losses and make the best of it.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“the U. S. Government once formed an Abaca Production and Sales bureau to take over the growing of hemp in four Central American countries, on the theory that hemp, which is used for the manufacture of rope, was vitally strategic. But this government-produced hemp was of such inferior quality that it couldn’t be sold, even to the Government’s own rope factory. To get out of its embarrassment, Abaca Production and Sales sold the worthless hemp to another Government agency, the Strategic Stockpile. The hemp was then stored, at taxpayers’ expense, in specially built warehouses. Each year the previour year’s crop was shoveled out and destroyed to make room to store the new crop. Total loss to the taxpayers averaged $3 million a year.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“The choice is not laissez-faire vs. the status quo, because we cannot possibly keep the status quo anyway. Tremendous socioeconomic forces, set in motion long ago by governmental plundering and power-grabbing, are sweeping the present order out from under our feet. We can only choose whether we will allow ourselves to be pushed into economic chaos and political tyranny or whether we will resist the bureaucratic tyrants and looters and work to set up a free society where each man can live his own life and “do his own thing.” Whichever we choose, the road ahead will probably be rough; but the important question is, “What kind of society do we want to arrive at in the end?”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“Through the decades, government has silently grown and spread, thrusting insidious, intertwining tentacles into nearly every area of our lives. Our society is now so thoroughly penetrated by government bureaucracy and our economy so entangled in government controls that dissolution of the State would cause major and painful temporary dislocations. The problems of adjusting to a laissez-faire society are somewhat like those facing an alcoholic or heroin addict who is thinking of kicking the habit, and the difficulties and discomforts involved may make some people decide that we’d be better off just staying as we are. It is naive, however, to assume that we can “just stay as we are.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“Since life offers no automatic guarantees of safety and success, there is no guarantee that a laissez-faire society would survive and prosper. But freedom is stronger than slavery, and a good idea, once spread, is impossible to stamp out. The idea of liberty is the innoculation which can kill parasitical governments and prevent the disease of war.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“Picture a small South American dictatorship, weakened by economic stresses and a popular demand for more freedom, resulting from the existence of a laissez-faire society nearby. What would the dictator of such a country do if faced by a large and powerful insurance company and its defense service (or even a coalition of such companies) demanding that he remove all taxes, trade restrictions, and other economic aggressions from, say, a mining firm protected by the insurance company? If the dictator refuses the demand, he faces an armed confrontation which will surely oust him from his comfortable position of rule. His own people are restless and ready to revolt at any excuse. Other nations have their hands full with similar problems and are not eager to invite more trouble by supporting his little dictatorship. Besides this, the insurance company, which doesn’t recognize the validity of governments, has declared that in the event of aggression against its insured it will demand reparations payments, not from the country as a whole, but from every individual directly responsible for directing and carrying out the aggression. The dictator hesitates to take such an awful chance, and he knows that his officers and soldiers will be very reluctant to carry out his order. Even worse, he can’t arouse the populace against the insurance company by urging them to defend themselves—the insurance company poses no threat to them. A dictator in such a precarious position would be strongly tempted to give in to the insurance company’s demands in order to salvage what he could (as the managers of the insurance company were sure he would before they undertook the contract with the mining firm). But even giving in will not save the dictator’s government for long As soon as the insurance company can enforce noninterference with the mining company, it has created an enclave of free territory within the dictatorship. When it becomes evident that the insurance company can make good its offer of protection from the government, numerous businesses and individuals, both those from the laissez-faire society and citizens of the dictatorship, will rush to buy similar protection (a lucrative spurt of sales foreseen by the insurance company when it took its original action). At this point, it is only a matter of time until the government crumbles from lack of money and support, and the whole country becomes a free area. In this manner, the original laissez-faire society, as soon as its insurance companies and defense agencies became strong enough, would generate new laissez-faire societies in locations all over the world. These new free areas, as free trade made them economically stronger, would give liberty a tremendously broadened base from which to operate and would help prevent the possibility that freedom could be wiped out by a successful sneak attack against the original laissez-faire society. As the world-wide, interconnected free market thus formed became stronger and the governments of the world became more tyrannical and chaotic, it would be possible for insurance companies and defense agencies to create free enclaves within more and more nations, a sales opportunity which they would be quick to take advantage of.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“Tyranny by itself is impotent because looters don’t produce and producers can’t produce unless they’re free to do so. The belief that totalitarian nations are naturally stronger than freer ones is an outgrowth of the moral/practical dichotomy. If that which is moral were, because of its morality, unavoidably impractical, then the good would necessarily be helpless and disarmed, since the evil would have all the practicality on its side. Those who persist, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, in believing that totalitarianism makes a nation strong are revealing a sneaky admiration for dictatorship. Such an admiration springs from a psychological dependency which cannot conceive of having to be free and thrown on one’s own uncertain resources. The phychologically dependent man longs either to be led and directed in order to escape the responsibility of decision-making, or to dictate to others in order to convince himself of an efficacy he doesn’t possess.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“When free from interference, the market is always in motion toward equilibrium—that is, toward a condition which eliminates shortages and surpluses and minimizes economic waste. To the degree the market is interfered with by governmental controls, it can no longer respond to economic reality and becomes distorted. Then shortages, surpluses, delays, waste, queues, ration books, high prices, and shoddy merchandise become the order of the day.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“Popular misconception to the contrary notwithstanding, the degree of a government’s tyranny is the degree of its vulnerability, particularly in the sphere of economics. Totalitarian governments, in spite of their outward appearance of unconquerably massive solidarity, are inwardly rotten with ineptitude, waste, corruption, fear, and unbelievable mismanagement. This is, and must be, so ... because of the very nature of government control.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“government officials don’t give up their power and patronage easily, even when there is a great popular demand for a reduction in government.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“The existence of a successful laissez-faire society would both demonstrate the practicality of freedom and force governments to take sudden new restrictive measures, thus further amplifying their internal stresses by setting the people consciously against their governments. By demonstrating that government is not only unnecessary but positively detrimental, a successful laissez-faire society would strip all governments of their mystical sanctity in the eyes of their citizens. The reason the institution of government has persisted into modern times is that people submit to its depredations, and they submit because they believe that without a government there would be chaos. This nearly universal belief in the necessity of government is tyranny’s strongest defense. Once the idea of the nature of full liberty has been let loose in the world and its practicality demonstrated, governments will lose the respect of their citizens and will be able to evoke no more allegiance from them than they could obtain by force. It is ideas, after all, which determine how human beings will shape their lives and societies.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“a sizable laissez-faire society, simply by existing, would amplify stresses within the nations and compel them to move rapidly toward either complete freedom or tyranny. The laissez-faire society wouldn’t create these stresses; its presence would merely aggravate tensions created long ago by the irrational and coercive policies of governments. These stresses would destroy the precarious equilibrium of all the nations at the same time.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“to abolish war, it is not necessary to attempt the impossible task of changing man’s nature so that he can’t choose to initiate force against others—it is merely necessary to abolish governments.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“Wars are initiated and carried on by governments. Governments, not private individuals, provoke massive conflicts by arms buildups and imperialistic territorial grabs. It is rulers, not businessmen and citizens, who declare wars, draft soldiers, and levy taxes to support them. There is no societal organization capable of waging a war of aggression except government. If there were no governments, there would still be individual aggressors and possibly even small gangs, but there could be no war.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“Business is a natural opponent of war because businessmen are traders, and you can’t trade amid falling bombs. An industrialist can gain nothing from the ruins and poverty which are the chief results of war. Furthermore, businessmen are a society’s producers, and it is always the producers who must foot the bills. It is not business which gains from war, but government”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty

“Wars are expensive, and the burden of supporting wars falls heavily on business, both directly and by taking spending money out of the pocket of the consumer. The vast amount of money poured out to support a war is permanently gone without bringing any economic return. After you have exploded a hundred thousand dollars worth of bombs, you have nothing to show for it except a hundred thousand dollars worth of bomb craters and rubble. Thus the gains made by munitions makers and government suppliers are more than swallowed up by the losses suffered by business as a whole. Those few who do make huge fortunes from war do so not because they are businessmen operating in a free market, but because they have political pull. And their profiteering from war harms all producers (as well as the consuming public) by hurting the economy as a whole.”
― Morris Tannehill, Market for Liberty