A free market is a gentle market

Since one of the topics I touch upon often is related to the free market place, this speech written by Sharon Harris, titled, The Invisible Hand Is a Gentle Hand is a recommended read for those of you trying to learn more about Libertarian ways of looking at things. While I am more identified as a "left leaning Libertarian", I still find some of the issues discussed to be important, such as:

In truth, the marketplace has a civilizing, humanizing effect. If honesty didn't exist, the marketplace would invent it, because it's the most successful way to do business. In the free market we see, not a survival of the fittest, but a survival of the kindest. Survival of the most cooperative. Survival of the friendliest. A gentle Darwinism, if you will.

To libertarians, the role of government is at most to protect us from violence, theft, and fraud. Yet government, directly or indirectly, causes most of the violence, theft, and fraud in our society.