so that we cannot even conceive of a deviation, man seeks to satisfy his desires with the least expenditure of labor, we can put that down as a natural law of human behavior. A second requirement of a natural law is that it enables us to predict what will happen in the future, and the rule above qualifies on that score. We invent and make household appliances because we know that every housewife is interested in saving labor; we offer bribes to officials because we are ever on the lookout for "something for nothing," and if the officials accept the bribes it is because they prefer to get their satisfactions without an expenditure of labor. Our entire price structure is based on that "law of parsimony." In fact, every economic theory must take it into account, and social doctrines that leave it out of consideration prove impracticable; when, for instance, it is proposed that men sell their products for less than the cost of production, or for less than other men are willing to pay for them, we have what is called a "black market." Our immediate reaction to the socialistic notion that men will put out labor with abandon and with little regard for returns is that it is nonsensical; humans don't act that way.
Now, Society, Government, and the State are institutions that men make, and it must be taken for granted that these too are expressions of this law of human behavior. If in all his other undertakings he is invariably motivated by this aversion to labor, why should we assume that it plays no part in his social and political organization? He does not undergo a mutation when he socializes and politicalizes; he is still the same man. Perhaps, after all, his institutions are, in one way or another, analogous to labor-saving devices. It makes better sense to approach an inquiry into his institutions with such a hypothesis than to begin by positing the idea that
