Laissez faire does not mean: Let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: Let each individual choose how he wants to cooperate in the social division of labor; let the consumers determine what the entrepreneurs should produce. Planning means: Let the government alone choose and enforce its rulings by the apparatus of coercion and compulsion.

Ludwig von Mises

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

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Citation

Von Mises, Ludwig. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Yale University Press, 1949, ch. 27.