For all of these reasons, together with the law of displacement, private assistance efforts are far less effective in our present mixed economy than in a free society. In fact, generosity toward the truly unfortunate has plummeted with the rise of statism. Generations ago, it is said, a farmer who suffered a fire would receive such an outpouring of assistance from his neighbors that he would find himself richer than he was before his misfortune. Welfare statism leaves scant room for such munificence.

How would population growth be dealt with in a free society?

Implicit in the wording of this oft-posed question is a dubious hidden premise: that population growth is always and inherently a "problem" with adverse consequences. That such is not the case is clear if we remember the great benefits that accrued to Crusoe when he met Friday (Subsection 4.5)—an event which for practical purposes amounted to a doubling of the population of his "society." So how can we distinguish between beneficial and harmful population growth?

Many factors affect population growth. Here we shall deal only with the most basic historical trends, ignoring such secondary factors as the effects of age distribution on fertility rates, religious attitudes toward birth control and family size, wars, and population "echo" effects.

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