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Legal rules are to be judged by the structure of incentives they establish and the consequences of people altering their behavior in response to those incentives (p.11)

— David Friedman

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More quotes by David Friedman

"Democratic" decision making is a means for finding and implementing the will of the majority; it has no other function. It serves, not to encourage diversity, but to prevent it.

The Machinery of Freedom (1973)

Economics is that way of understanding behavior that starts from the assumption that people have objectives and tend to choose the correct way to achieve them.

The tendency to be rational is the consistent and hence predictable element in human behavior. (p.4)

I predict that, if anarcho-capitalist institutions appeared in this country tomorrow, heroin would be legal in New York and illegal in most other places. (p.128)

The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations. (p.4)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David Friedman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.