It should be commonly understood that society can only exist if the people who live within it agree to live by the societal rules set out by society; if they do not, then societal breakdown happens. In short, society works because those of us in it agree to limit what we can do and agree to allow society (governments) to place those limits.

The obvious concepts of theft and murder immediately come to most peoples minds, but when one gets right down to it, the entire concept of *trade* is an agreed upon set of limitations in that one party in a transaction is not allowed to cheat or shortchange the other party in a transaction. We can call this "fairness," of course (and it is) but the fact that laws are made to enforce it indicates that it was at least once upon a time a problem, and we are now limiting the freedoms of merchants by ensuring that they act within specific parameters.

In a "six of one thing or half a dozen of another" analogy, this one is definitely pessimistic, yet it does not prevent it from also being true.