"Who Protects the Consumer? "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regar… - Milton Friedman

Those of us who believe in freedom must believe also in the freedom of individuals to make their own mistakes. If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do we prevent him from doing so?

The family, rather than the individual, has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society, though its hold has clearly been weakening — one of the most unfortunate consequences of the growth of government paternalism. Yet the assignment of responsibility for children to their parents is largely a matter of expediency rather than principle. We believe, and with good reason, that parents have more interest in their children than anyone else and can be relied on to protect them and to assure their development into responsible adults. However, we do not believe in the right of the parents to do whatever they will with their children — to beat them, murder them, or sell them into slavery. Children are responsible individuals in embryo. They have ultimate rights of their own and are not simply the playthings of their parents.

Only people have incomes and they derive them through the market from the resources they own, whether these be in the form of corporate stock, or of bonds, or of land, or of their personal capacity.