Measured against the size of the economy, the Federal Government is 12 times as large as it was at the turn of the century. The corrupting influence of government One of the most serious distortions that government power introduces into personal relations is to increase the likelihood of conflict and corruption far beyond what it would be in the context of non-coercive voluntary interaction. By forcibly taking wealth from those who created it and giving it to those who did not, government causes not only harm of the purely economic sort, but also injects a social poison into the human condition. The core problem is government can't give one person something without ripping it off from someone else. Neither can government confer a special privilege for one American without creating a disadvantage for another.
Racial preferences are an example of the latter.
Walter Williams, syndicated columnist, Nov. 19, 1995. Free enterprise, on the other hand, promotes social relations of the most positive sort because transactions in a market economy, being voluntary, tend to encourage virtues such as trust and charity. In a free society, he argues, people must deal with each other only on a voluntary basis. When individuals in a capitalist society complete a transaction, the two may reach a mutually satisfactory result. If either is dissatisfied, the transaction does not occur.