It can give to no one any special aid to competition; nor protect any one from competition.
Lysander Spooner
The Public Record
Lysander Spooner was an American abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, pamphleteer, political philosopher, and writer often associated with the Boston anarchist tradition.
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No honest government can go into business with any individuals, be they many, or few.
It also insures him the widest possible field for obtaining such capital as he needs for his industry, and the widest possible markets for the products of his labor.
By simply protecting every man in his rights, a government necessarily keeps open to every one the widest possible field, that he honestly can have, for such industry as he may choose to follow.
No government can have any right to grant them; because no government can have a right to take from one man any thing that is his, and give it to another.
If he desires any favors from any body, he must, I repeat, depend upon the voluntary kindness of such of his fellow men as may be willing to grant them.
It can give to one only what it takes from others; for it has nothing of its own to give to any one.
If it does more than that to any,--that is, if it gives monopolies, privileges, exemptions, bounties, or favors to any,--it can do so only by doing injustice to more or less others.
It insists that every man shall give up all his rights unreservedly into its custody, and then hold it wholly irresponsible for any disposal it may make of them.
Leave him in full possession of his limbs, and of all his powers, and he will do more for his own protection than he otherwise could, and will have less need of protection from a government, or any other source.
It might just as well be said that a man must consent to be bound hand and foot, in order to enable a government, or his friends, to protect him against an enemy.
And yet our government says a man must give up all his rights, in order that it may protect him.