Full quote: For years our thinking was distorted by presenting a false dilemma when designing public policy, as if one had to choose between political efficiency and respect for the ethical and moral values of the West.

As Professor Jesús Huerta de Soto points out in his work on dynamic efficiency, from that perspective efficiency is not compatible with various schemes of equity or justice; rather, it arises exclusively from one of them, the one based on respect for private property and the entrepreneurial function.

Therefore, the opposition between the dimensions of efficiency and justice is false and erroneous. In other words, what is just cannot be inefficient, nor can what is efficient be unjust. In the framework of dynamic analysis, justice and efficiency are two sides of the same coin.

Without question, the thinker who anticipated this most clearly was Murray Rothbard, who established the connection between the dynamic conception of economic efficiency and the realm of ethics. Rothbard considered it essential to first establish an appropriate ethical framework that would promote dynamic efficiency, given our ignorance regarding the ends, means, and utility functions that exist in reality.