Bauer attacked foreign aid, even when it was dedicated to improvement of the infrastructure. Developing countries, he wrote, did not need elaborate infrastructures to enjoy rapid development, though he mostly feared "the propensity of many governments not only to try to finance roads and harbor developments, but at the same time to finance, and indeed own, all kinds of manufacturing enterprises from steel mills to chemical plants" (Bauer 1958a, 195). He presented resulting budgetary and foreign exchange difficulties as the real causes for the request of foreign aid. Although aid could initially be useful to set a process in motion, Bauer objected to supplying aid to countries that subsequently failed to severely limit the sphere of government activity. Bauer also attacked "forced savings" through taxation, because taxation would only lead to the growth of government bureaucracy.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1319