What Would a Free Society Look Like?

What Would a Free Society Look Like? : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

The linked essay is a good honest summary and highlights our dilemma. The bad guys have a clear, seductive vision of a "better society". We, being either more honest or less delusional, don't. We can point to previous "better societies" that turned out rather worse than their promoters promised; Nazi Germany, the USSR, Cuba, North Korea and so forth. "Ah but", say today's visionaries, "they did not have us to lead them". If the vision is seductive enough (life, without effort; equality, without poverty) and the visionary is neither bald of pate nor crude of expression and manages to keep most of his ugliness on the inside, the people will tend to go for it.

For those who are prepared to apply themselves, some clarity is clearly possible. But this is a democracy and, let's face it, most of our fellow citizens are not applying themselves at all.

h/t Cafe Hayek