Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Capitalism is cool. Spontaneous order is cool. Yet it is easy to ignore the fact that capitalism, as we know it, is not mostly made of spontaneous order. It is not a sea of self-employing economic atoms.

Capitalism is a sea of economic molecules. Some of these molecules are single atoms. Some are giant megacorporations. Between the molecules, all order is spontaneous. Within the molecules—raisins in the bread—all order is directed and monarchical.