Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life that can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means also determines which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower - in short, what men should believe and strive for.
-Friedrich Hayek, as quoted in Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball's column "Notes and Comments" under the subheading Freedom Imperilled in the December issue of The New Criterion.
That column also quotes from an article entitled The Loss of Individual Liberty in last month's Forbes. The Forbes article chronicles the ongoing nationalization of our economic life during the Bush Administration, what is happening at this moment, and what we can expect during Obama's reign.
But the ultimate economic truth is reflected in Psalms 50:10, and I take comfort in it:
[F]or every animal of the forest is mine,
and the cattle on a thousand hills.
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