Do our children need an education? We ask the government to provide schools. Do we need medical care? We ask the government to pay the bills. Is our neighborhood rundown? We ask the government to rebuild it. There seems to be no end to the solutions we seek from government.

There are, however, a few people who believe that government doesn’t have all the answers. Those of us who favor free enterprise would prefer that people look to the market economy to solve more of their problems.

But we proponents of freedom work at a seeming disadvantage. Unlike the government bureaucrat, we don’t offer what seems to be the solution. We don’t draw up the master plan to revitalize our city. We don’t propose the rationing plan to allocate fuel. We don’t figure out how to run the social security system or the postal service.

We proponents of freedom can, of course, offer numerous examples of how the market has solved people’s problems.

But we’ve no reason to say: “Look, this private institution is better than that government institution. Therefore, private solutions are better.”

Rather, we say: “Let’s compare systems. Yours is based on coercive taxation, monopoly privilege, and forced participation. Ours is based on the freedom to use our own resources to try to solve people’s problems. In our system we don’t claim to have the solution for this or that problem, because we know that in a competitive market, trial and error will soon bring forth better solutions. We let each consumer decide for himself which solution is best for his needs. We don’t impose our values on anyone.”