Quote of the day

In The Perils of Regulation: A Market Process Approach, Israel Kirzner writes:

A realization that the market yields knowledge -- the sort of knowledge that peple do not at present even know they need -- should engender among would-be social engineers who seek to replace or to modify the results of the free market a very definite sense of humility. To announce that once can improve on the performance of the market, one must also claim to know in advance what the market will reveal. This knowledge is clearly impossible in all circumstances. Indeed, where the market process has been thwarted, in general it will not be possible to point with certainty to what might have been discovered that has now been lost (ibid., 1985, p. 131).