The great advances of civilization ... have never come from centralized government

The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. Columbus did not set out to seek a new route to China in response to a majority directive of a parliament, though he was partly financed by an absolute monarch. Newton and Leibnitz; Einstein and Bohr; Shakespeare, Milton, and Pasternak; Whitney, McCormick, Edison, and Ford; Jane Addams, Florence Nightingale, and Albert Schweitzer; no one of these opened new frontiers in human knowledge and understanding, in literature, in technical possibilities, or in the relief of human misery in response to governmental directives. Their achievements were the product of individual genius, of strongly held minority views, of a social climate permitting variety and diversity.

M. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), loc. 403

In my view, this analysis of history, though exhilaratingly written, is nonsense, and in some cases factually wrong. This is not because free markets aren't good, they're just not the only way good things happen.

I know some artists struggle with the idea of being relevant, [but] I stopped buying that a long time ago

In 1993, Billy Joel released his last album, River of Dreams, and aside from one further album of classical piano pieces, has felt no compulsion to write anything else. He still enjoys playing his catalogue live, he's sold hundreds of millions of records, and he's proved his worth. What else is there to say?

'I know some artists struggle with the idea of being relevant, [but] I stopped buying that a long time ago,' Joel told Billboard magazine in 2019.

N. Duerden, Exit stage left: the curious afterlife of popstars (2022), 14