A political value or end is one that can be achieved only through the use or threat of force. Governments are political institutions in the sense that they achieve their ends, at least in part, through such force. A few individuals may regard power over others, in such forms as censorship and compulsory prayer, as a desirable end in itself. For them such power may provide subjective values that can only be created by government. Such power does not, however, provide objective values. On the other hand, freedom and justice, as we have defined them in a political context, are objective values, which occasionally require the use of protective or retaliatory force. By creating these values, therefore, governments can serve a positive function.

A nonpolitical value or end can potentially be provided in the free marketplace, if that end is feasible at all and if it is desired by a sufficient number of persons to justify its cost. Because such ends can be obtained by economic means (cf. pp. 5.2:6), we may also call them economic ends. When government is directed toward these ends, it must (through taxation or other forms of initiated force) draw the resources for those projects away from other ends chosen by individuals in the market. Praxeologically, the ends thus achieved through initiated force are necessarily of lower subjective value to the victims of that force than the ends that they would have chosen in the peaceful marketplace. Consequently, to the extent that government is diverted to economic ends, it functions essentially as a destroyer of values rather than as a creator of them.