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are employed by the factories in Nevada that are denied coal will feel that the decision was unjust; they should get the coal, not the people in Michigan. But they have no choice in the matter.

"This may be true," you might be thinking, "but I don't really have free choice in a free market either. All options may be open to me if I can afford them, but I can't." Well, strictly speaking you are correct of course, but let's consider the matter further. Certainly in a free market we may see our fortunes rise or fall, we may be rich or poor. But through it all, we decide what is most important in our lives; we have our own scale of values. We can decide that our health is most important, or good food, or our model train hobby. If our salaries fall, then we can cut back on what we think is less important, and maintain what we think is more important.

But in a socialist system, it is not our scale of values that matters, but the government's. If the government has decided that the limited amount of health care that is available must currently be reserved for others, then we cannot have it at any price. If it has ordered the toy manufacturers to focus on teddy bears, there will be no model trains for us to buy. The government, by controlling the economy, thereby controls almost our entire lives.

In contrast to all this stands the free market system. The economic freedom of the free market system matches perfectly with freedom in the rest of our lives. We have almost total freedom of choice; if model trains are the center of our life, surely we can purchase one at some price, even if we must sacrifice to afford it. Because there is no collective system of values the populace must agree to, everyone is free to make their own choice, and to publish them in a newspaper, or attend a church that preaches them, without causing any threat to the government that it may feel impelled to respond to. We can live in a liberty that a socialist state cannot allow.

Learn more about this author, David Shane.
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