General affluence, a dramatic increase in state revenues during wartime, the need to secure political stability in the face of boom-and-slump cycles in the economy, the growing bargaining power of previously disenfranchised groups. These and many other factors played a decisive role in the emergence of contemporary economic rights. The semantic trajectory of the word security is obviously germane to any study of the transition from classical liberal rights, such as habeas corpus or protection from arbitrary search and seizure, to modern welfare rights, such as legal aid to the poor or public housing and rent subsidies. In his fanciful re-descriptions of liberal thought, Milton Friedman routinely slights the importance of state power not only for the establishment of security but also for the enforcement of the norms of fairness and impartiality. Strict non-interference in social life by the state would produce not wholesome competition but an outcropping of brutal monopolies.