There was a time, long ago, when the average American could go about his daily business hardly aware of the government – especially the federal government.

As a farmer, merchant, or manufacturer, he could decide what, how, when, and where to produce and sell his goods, constrained by little more than market forces. Just think: no farm subsidies, price supports, or acreage controls; no Federal Trade Commission; no antitrust laws; no Interstate Commerce Commission.

As an employer, employee, consumer, investor, lender, borrower, student, or teacher, he could proceed largely according to his own lights. Just think: no National Labor Relations Board; no federal consumer ”protection” laws; no Security and Exchange Commission; no Equal Employment Opportunity Commisson; no Department of Health and Human Services.

Lacking a central bank to issue paper currency, people commonly used gold coins to make purchases. There were no general sales taxes, no Social Security taxes, no income taxes.

Though government officials were as corrupt then as now – maybe even more – they had vastly less to be corrupt with. Private citizens spent about fifteen times more than all government combined. – Those days, alas, are long gone.

– Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Criticial Episodes in the Growth of American Government, 1987.