&gt; Along with inestimable human livelihood and wealth, the free market creates various possibilities to foolishly harm oneself.<p>As opposed to the ability for the state to foolishly harm us? Sure, a free market allows humans to be human and make mistakes, but allowing others to take your freedom in the interest of self-preservation is a fool&#x27;s compromise.<p>Certainly, you raise great philosophical questions though. One of my favorite thought experiments is to imagine how many things done by the government today could be accomplished without the government. I don&#x27;t mean obvious things like the postal service, I mean fundamental services like road building and a court system. I plan to read David Friedman&#x27;s book soon on this topic, called &quot;Legal Systems Very Different From Ours&quot;:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.daviddfriedman.com&#x2F;Academic&#x2F;Course_Pages&#x2F;legal_systems_very_different_12&#x2F;LegalSystemsDraft.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.daviddfriedman.com&#x2F;Academic&#x2F;Course_Pages&#x2F;legal_sy...</a>