The fact is that, exactly as Mark Lilla fears, when people distrust authority in a generalized way and start thinking for themselves, often without much relevant information to guide them, they'll make many decisions that they'll later regret. But whose decisions are they to make?
"Instead of spending time on adapting their product to the desires of consumers, homebuilders are busy adapting their homes to the code. Innovation is the victim."
"But if peace meant disaster to the company, it also taught it an important lesson. A company that manufactured more rifles than it could sell to hunters, or to its own government, must seek foreign business."
"What if the management is done by the government? Then we abandon the realm of service and enter into the realm of policy."
Today, as always, the general citizenry needs to understand economic principles and to recognize economic fallacies.
It happens in every single economic exchange that is undertaken by virtue of human choice. Both sides benefit.
"The government can talk about entrepreneurship and act like it is promoting it, but all of what government does by taxing and regulating impedes the entrepreneur."
If you behave as a sovereign individual in your personal relationships, you will be contributing to your happiness and also to the transmission of the concept of individual sovereignty. That chain of good, I am certain, will abolish the chains of evil.
The garbage situation in Cairo is a classic example of government imposing a supposedly rational and modern solution that fits the needs of the people in charge but doesn't fit the needs of people. The end result is a spectacular failure.
