What really mattered was ensuring that the provision of a vital minimum did not interfere with the moral and subjective qualities underpinning a competitive market order. In his contribution to the Princeton MPS panel, Röpke told his colleagues that, if they did not want to leave the individual entirely alone to face the 'vicissitudes of life', they must develop rules, principles and distinctions to ensure that concessions to state provision did not legitimise the welfare state, which 'we are all convinced, is the ruin of a free and prosperous society and of the dignity of the self-respecting individual'. A compatible policy had to avoid the weakening of the family, individual responsibility and the will to work for a living.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 206