"Residual claims set in motion different behavior patterns from fixed claims. Whoever has the legal title to the residual claim has an incentive to make that residual-the difference between production costs and consumer value-as great as possible. The same thing, from a social point of view, is that the residual claimant has an incentive to supply what is desired by consumers at the least sacrifice of inputs used for things desired by other consumers. To the residual claimant, these social consequences of his behavior are secondary at best. But from the point of view of the economy at large, this behavior pattern that grows out of the attempt to maximize residual claims is crucial, and whether the residual claim turns out in fact to be large or small, or even positive or negative, is secondary."

"Merely a failure to use the ever-growing list of "politically correct" terms for all sorts of things can have serious repercussions. Moreover, more than a passive imposition of taboos is involved. Very often, these taboos are accompanied by militant promotions of new social visions throughout educational, religious, and other institutions. The instruments of intimidation include vaguely-worded speech codes under which students may be punished or expelled from many colleges, insulting harangues by "diversity consultants" employed by corporations, colleges, and other institutions, and threats to the careers of military officers, civilian officials, and corporate executives who do not march in step with the new orthodoxies."

"Plain and commonsensical as this approach may seem, it goes directly counter to the way many of the issues of the day are discussed. Much of the literature on racial or sexual prejudices and their discriminatory economic effects, for example, proceeds in utter disregard of knowledge-validation processes, such as competition in the marketplace."

"One striking fact illustrates the success of socialist ideas: namely, that we have grown accustomed to designating as Socialism only that policy which aims to enact the socialist programme immediately and completely, while we call by other names all the movements directed towards the same goal with more moderation and reserve, and even describe these as the enemies of Socialism. This can only have come about because few real opponents of Socialism are Ieft."