Through such detailed analyses we shall discover that a mixed-economy system is inherently unstable, tending to become more and more autocratic and also more and more interventionist. The initial "mix" of free-market and statist principles becomes less and less balanced over a period of time, leaning more and more toward statism. Socialist systems, on the other hand, are relatively stable, yet they lead to natural consequences far removed from the benevolence that socialists imagine and from what is objectively good for real-life human beings. A free society, we shall find, generates certain internal forces, which tend to strengthen it in its intended form and which are also consonant with the good as defined and investigated in Section 3.

In the last part of Section 5, we shall therefore look more closely at the free society, seeing how free men and women would deal with practical matters such as poverty, population growth, drug abuse, the natural environment, patents and copyrights, protection of children, protection of the mentally incompetent, criminal justice, and government finance. Optional pages will also examine a frequently asked question: whether government is needed at all. Finally, we shall develop a general approach to the practical problem of bringing such an ideal society into actual existence.