The two are inseparable. All this under circumstances in which competition prevails. When a man's property rights are protected, he is able to retain and enjoy in peace the fruits of his labor. This security is his main incentive, if not his only incentive, to labor creatively. If anyone were free to confiscate what the farmer had sown, fertilized, cultivated and raised, he would no longer have any incentive to sow or to reap.
Profit is the life blood of a free economy.
And in guiding the economy to the satisfaction of society's needs, the profit system does what no central authority is capable of doing as well-even granting that the authority might be staffed by the most brilliant planners and the best able managers among us. It is said at times that many are willing to trade freedom for security. Even if they were to receive that for which they traded, it would be a bad bargain. But the sad and frightening fact is that when a people seek to obtain security by turning over power and responsibility to government, they lose both freedom and security. What we must recognize, of course, is that there simply is no real security in any form of society that rests upon centralized political and economic control.