In the last dozen years or so, my philosophical writings have had two main themes: (1) political philosophers who have different philosophical principles actually are closer on institutional matters than they realize and (2) one cannot really make a sound or decisive argument for institutional change unless one has made a comparative institutional analysis of different, feasible alternative institutions. I think this view originated, in part, in my late teenage years, when I changed from what would be roughly described as a liberal view – in the modern American sense of the term, wherein one favors individual freedom and distrusts the government on “personal” or on civil liberties matters but favors a vigorous role for the government in restricting or regulating free markets and providing for the unfortunate – to a libertarian view that the government's sole role should be to protect the right to life, liberty, and property and keep its hands off the free market, which operates just fine if the government gets out of the way. When I looked back at this change, I thought that in one sense I had not changed at all. Once I realized how free markets really worked, and how government programs that were supposed to realize their seemingly compassionate or just goals didn't really do so, I realized that the attitude of distrust I had toward government power or the view I had about the value of individual freedom really applied to economic as well as personal matters.