"People behave as if their need for individual initiative and individual decision were almost completely satisfied by the fact of their personal acces to the benefits of scientific and technological achievements. Strangely enough, their corresponding needs for individual initiative and individual decision in the political and legal spheres seem to be met by ceremonial and almost magical procedures such as elections of "representatives" who are supposed to know by some mysterious inspiration what their constituents really want and to be able to decide accordingly. True, individuals still have, at least in the Western world, the possibility of deciding and acting as individuals in many respects: in trading (at least to a great extent), in speaking, in personal relations, and in many other kinds of social intercourse. However, they seem also to have accepted in principle once and for all a system whereby a handful of people whom they rarely know personally are able to decide what everybody must do, and this within very vaguely defined limits or practically without limits at all.
That the legislators, at least in the West, still refrain from interfering in such fields of individual activity as speaking or choosing one's marriage partner or wearing a particular style of clothing or traveling usually conceals the raw fact that they actually do have the power to interfere in every one of these fields[o livro é de 1961, não estranhem]. But other countries, while already offering a completely different kind of picture, reveal at the same time how much farther the legislators can go in this respect. On the other hand, fewer and fewer people now seem to realize that just as language and fashion are the products of the convergence of spontaneous actions and decisions on the part of a vast number of individuals, so the law too can, in theory, just as well be a product of a similar convergence in other fields."
[aqui o link para o .pdf na página do Mises Institute: (página 17 do .pdf e 7 na numeração do livro); aliás, o texto continua interessantíssimo por mais umas 2 ou 3 páginas[ou mais; o livro TODO deve ser muito bom, comecei a ler agora], então sugiro que se dê uma olhada no original.]
Continuando [página 11 do livro, 21 do .pdf]: "[L]egislation has undergone a very peculiar development. It has come to resemble more and more a sort of diktat that the winning majorities in the legislative assemblies impose upon the minorities, often with the result of overturning long-established individual expectations and creating completely unprecedented ones. The succumbing minorities, in their turn, adjust themselves to their defeat only because they hope to become sooner or later a winning majority and be in the position of treating in a similar way the people belonging to the contingent majority of today. In fact, majorities may be built and pulled down within legislatures according to a regular procedure that is now being methodically analyzed by certain American scholars - a procedure that American politicians call "log-rolling" and that we should call "vote-trading." Whenever groups are insufficiently represented in the legislature to impose their own will on some other dissenting group, they resort to vote-trading with as many neutral groups as possible within the legislature in order to place their intended "victim" in a minority position. Each of the "neutral" groups bribed today is in its turn prepared to bribe other groups in order to impose its own will on other intended "victims" tomorrow. In this way, majorities change within the legislature, but there are always "victims," as there are always beneficiaries of the sacrifice of these "victims." "
Continuando [página 11 do livro, 21 do .pdf]: "[L]egislation has undergone a very peculiar development. It has come to resemble more and more a sort of diktat that the winning majorities in the legislative assemblies impose upon the minorities, often with the result of overturning long-established individual expectations and creating completely unprecedented ones. The succumbing minorities, in their turn, adjust themselves to their defeat only because they hope to become sooner or later a winning majority and be in the position of treating in a similar way the people belonging to the contingent majority of today. In fact, majorities may be built and pulled down within legislatures according to a regular procedure that is now being methodically analyzed by certain American scholars - a procedure that American politicians call "log-rolling" and that we should call "vote-trading." Whenever groups are insufficiently represented in the legislature to impose their own will on some other dissenting group, they resort to vote-trading with as many neutral groups as possible within the legislature in order to place their intended "victim" in a minority position. Each of the "neutral" groups bribed today is in its turn prepared to bribe other groups in order to impose its own will on other intended "victims" tomorrow. In this way, majorities change within the legislature, but there are always "victims," as there are always beneficiaries of the sacrifice of these "victims." "
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