The great achievements of private enterprise endured by and large for the benefit of the underprivileged have created a situation where life means very much more for most individuals than it did in the feudal era. The developments of the last two centuries up to the 1960s took place as a consequence of the evolved set of values and institutions referred to above. Individual effort and initiative within a known framework of legal rules and institutions and extra legal values and institutions, made possible the change. Gradual changes in the rules and the values and institutions themselves will permit further progress so long as the changes are evolutionary and come from a ground-swell of popular feeling. However, frequent tampering with the rules by over-ambitious reformers threatens to put an end to the whole development that began with the Renaissance and received a new lease of life from the industrial revolution.
Government regulation affects every aspect of life.
Government regulations are drafted by human beings and administered by human beings with their imperfections and fallibilities. This deliberate tampering with the rules by short sighted reformists has put the system into reverse by strangling the relative freedom which was responsible for steady growth and development. A detailed examination of the great breakthroughs and inventions provides interesting data. It is significant that during the past one hundred and fifty years almost all of them have taken place in liberal societies. The reference is to the pioneering inventions which involved exponential advancement in science and technology.