One of the best cases for limited government ever made.

This Nobel Prize winner puts it pretty straightforwardly. To paraphrase: Government is not a way to put unselfish and ungreedy persons in charge of the greedy and selfish. History and experience show that government instead provides people with the greatest drive to get power over others a means to prove that "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Friedman is very practical. On numerous subjects he admits that involving government starts with motives that are good, but the implementation fails badly. He notes that sometimes the motives are pure, other times they are simply spin, but in most cases he advocates learning from how things actually work, rather how people hope they could work.