Richard Grant's poem gave the film its title and its argument: that free markets build prosperity and government intervention breaks it. Released in 1975 by World Research, Inc., the film opens with an introduction from then-Treasury Secretary William E. Simon and builds its case through interviews with economist Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago and Walter Heller of the University of Minnesota, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers who argued the opposite side of the debate. Dr. Richard Rogge of Wabash College moderates the exchanges, and libertarian economist Murray Rothbard appears in a brief cameo. The film walks through familiar interventionist policies, price controls, subsidies, industry regulation, and traces each one to unintended consequences: shortages, overproduction, distorted incentives. Its case for limited government rests on the claim that markets self-correct when left alone and that regulation aimed at protecting consumers usually ends up protecting the businesses it was meant to restrain. Friedman and Heller's disagreement carries most of the film's actual argument.