17 quotes
The government’s monopoly is what has allowed it to produce so bad a product for so long.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
The history of economic growth is the history of people making more with less and shifting into new jobs that were unheard of in the previous generation.
One thing we know from centuries of history is that if the government has revenue to spend, it will spend it.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
Unfortunately, not content to enforce its monopoly power over what new drugs get produced, the FDA also seeks to limit doctor’s uses of legal drugs for uses not specified on the label.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
British author Thomas Carlyle called economics ‘the dismal science’ because the free-market economists around him were strongly opposed to slavery.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
Our oil supply is secure, not because our government threatens to use force against those who would make it insecure, but because the world’s oil suppliers want to make money.
The worst discrimination against black people in the United States was the introduction of slavery. Short of murder and torture, slavery is the greatest possible violation of people’s rights. It is essentially legalized kidnapping.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
The bottom line is that in a free market, any employer who discriminates on grounds that have nothing to do with productivity will pay a cost for doing so. The economic system that removes the props from racism is free markets.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
It is not always easy to define property rights. What is striking, though, is how often government legislation and court rulings have prevented the common law system from handling pollution problems even when common law seemed to be working well toward resolving them.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
The efficacy regulations on drugs, economists have found in countless studies, have delayed the introduction of new drugs by years and added hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of developing a typical new drug.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
Health care costs so darn much because we pay so darn little for it… So we have almost no incentive to care about how much it cost… Most of what we spend on health care is other people’s money. We never spend other people’s money as carefully as we spend our own.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
When a government taxes you, it takes something you own without your consent. That’s exactly what a thief does. The main difference is that the thief is breaking the law, whereas the government is (usually) taking your money legally.
I noted that one reason we buy so much health care is that the price to us is artificially low; if we paid the full price for health care, we would make better life-style decisions on exercise, smoking, and foods and would need less health care.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
There are two main differences between Ponzi’s original scam and the Social Security system. The first difference is that Social Security is run by the government and, whatever its constitutionality and its questionable ethics, is legal. The second difference follows from the first: Whereas Ponzi had to rely on suckers, the government can and does use force.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
Barbara Walters asked Ronald Reagan, what do you think about the Soviet Union and how much of a threat they are to us and to our freedom. And he said, ‘They’re a threat, but the biggest threat to our freedom is our own governments.’ And I agree with him. It’s governments at every level in the United States right now and in most of the world that are assaulting freedom daily.
Throughout history, governments have generally been much less tolerant of racial difference than private employers have been. This is because the government officials who discriminate incur no cost for doing so, as long as discrimination is politically acceptable…
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)
Early in the twentieth century, the railroad business was highly unionized. Just as in South Africa, employers often wanted to hire black people. But unions run by white people excluded blacks from membership and often committed acts of violence against black workers who tried to get such jobs.
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002)