In this 1971 lecture delivered at Boston’s Ford Hall Forum, Ayn Rand examines President Nixon’s imposition of a nationwide wage and price freeze aimed at curbing rapid inflation. Drawing her title from a chapter in Atlas Shrugged, Rand outlines the perils of policies that stifle innovation and the contradiction of trying to revive a nation’s economy by strait-jacketing the only people who can revive it.

An edited version of this talk is available in The Ayn Rand Letter, a biweekly newsletter published by Rand between 1971 and 1976. This lecture is 52 minutes long.