7. “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”
Here, Friedman decries the ineptitude of government. No matter what simple service is tasked to the state, it appears all too obvious that bureaucrats will perform that task in a manner much more expensively and much less efficiently than do private actors. There are a number of reasons why this happens, but perhaps most importantly, government does not have find itself with the same necessity to adapt in order to survive.