“Nearly two decades ago, during dinner with the late Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, I asked him if he had the power to write one law that would get government out of our lives, what would that law be? Hayek replied he'd write a law that read: Whatever Congress does for one American it must do for all Americans. He elaborated: If Congress makes payments to one American for not raising pigs, every American not raising pigs should also receive payments. Obviously, were there to be such a law, there would be reduced capacity for privilege-granting by Congress and less influence-peddling.”

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“The most interesting among the courageous dissenters of the 1980s were the classical liberals, disciples of F. A. Hayek, from whom they had learned about the crucial importance of economic freedom and about the often-ignored conceptual difference between liberalism and democracy.”

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“It does tend to make Hayek a much more systematic thinker in this area than he was. I am not saying that Hayek thought of himself as a good economist but only a moderately good political scientist or philosopher, but that is the fact. […] To repeat what I said above, Hayek was only a moderately good political scientist or philosopher. (I should say that Hayek's view of my work was much the same: He thought I was a good economist but didn't like my political science.)”

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