Ice skating requires two things: smooth ice and gravity. Without a reliable foundation, you can’t move forward. And without the constraints and boundaries put on us by gravity, you can’t move at all.

The free market, the holy grail of some capitalists, is similar.

In a completely unbounded environment, markets can’t develop, investments won’t get made, nothing moves forward. You need clean air and water, a civil society, an educated workforce, a confident and trusting market and more. The very taxes that some whine about are the gravity that makes the system work.

There’s a reason that there are no libertarian utopias. Left to its own devices, the market will fall apart, as a few race to the bottom and the pain of incivility takes over.