Back then, the Friedmans made three powerful factual claims about how the world works – claims that seemed true or maybe true or at least arguably true at the time, but that now seem to be pretty clearly false. Their case for small-government libertarianism rested largely on those claims, and has now largely crumbled, because the world, it turned out, disagreed with them about how it works.
1979年时，弗里德曼夫妇给出了世界如何运转的三个有力的实证结论——从当时的情况看，这三个结论是对的，或者似乎是对的，或者至少很有道理；但如今，这三个结论看上去显而易见是错的。弗氏夫妇的小政府自由主义基本上便以这三个结论作为基础，故而从今天看也早已站不住脚，因为世界似乎并不赞同他们关于自己如何运转的结论。