6. government that provided only modest constraints, most of which were designed to protect us against other nations or to protect us against each other. Under this doctrine of "equality of opportunity" the United States created the highest standard of living for its people, provided them with a quantity of goods and services, leisure, freedom, and human dignity unsurpassed in any other society, and distributed this largesse more equitably than it had ever been done before. It is also true that the other nations which have pursued this market-organized economic system have fared far better than those who have followed another course, as witness the results obtained by Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, and Canada. All the evidence suggests that this system has been the best system in raising the levels of living and diffusing the results of progress more and more widely to those who lived under the system. Until very recently we stuck close to the system, making moderate changes and adjustments to cope with the problem of economic recessions or to achieve more equitable results on the social front. Only in wartime did we set the system aside and then only temporarily. At one point in my checkered career I found myself a reluctant bureaucrat, a young Naval officer assigned to the Petroleum Administration for War, the government agency assigned the responsibility for supplying the petroleum required to prosecute the Second World War. My position was not so important for my approving authority was non-existent. But I ended up as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Administrator and nothing reached his desk or that of the Petroleum Administrator until it had my initials on it signifying that it was ready for action. This gave me a wonderful view window to watch government in action, to measure its effectiveness in regulating a