In searching: elbow and ribs (and two sentences)

Your elbow's freedom leaves off where my ribs begin.

.... Paul Samuelson, “The Case Against Goldwater's Economics,”

The New York Times, October 25, 1964

One man's laissez-faire was another man's intervention.

... Arthur J. Taylor, Laissez-faire and State Intervention in

Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Macmillan, 1972). quoted in I. Wallerstein

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These two sentences give me some similar image, but the descriptive meaning of the first is still elusive for me. I'm searching for that. ...


I came to imagine that two or more people are walking, swinging their elbows. Swaying elbows is natural movement in walking, and it must be free and not be restricted by any coercion. But that freedom of elbows should not touch somebody else's ribs.