Interesting article by Ben Stein. After singing the praises of capitalism and all it’s done for him and his family, he says:

It’s built on man’s notion that he can trust his neighbor with his money, and that if the neighbor misbehaves, the law will chase him and catch him, and that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom, that even the nobles get properly handled (Bob Dylan again) once they have been caught.

Everybody’s Business: The Hard Rain That’s Falling on Capitalism, By BEN STEIN, New York Times, January 28, 2007

Or, in other words, you can say laissez faire as much as you like, but if you don’t also have contracts, judges to enforce them, and a culture of respecting them, you don’t have capitalism.