Milton Friedman once said (1982: xxvii):

“There is an enormous inertia–a tyranny of the status quo–in private and particularly governmental arrangements. Only a crisis-actual or perceived-produces real change. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

I remembered this quotation when Michael Giberson, a classical liberal caught in an interventionist web, stated:

Bradley: I answered your question about what a free market in electricity is. I’m still waiting for yours….

Giberson: I must have missed it. In your comments referencing your econlib posts on Texas you list some laws to be repealed to help get the industry headed more to a free market, but that’s a discussion of means rather than ends.…