Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2016-12-20 Dec 20, 2016In a free market, consumer sovereignty and competition tend to create instability when sellers learn to game the system too well... In a technocratic system, it is more difficult for consumers to exercise countervailing power. Innovative competitors are often precluded by regulation. Suppliers tend to apply concentrated lobbying power to protect their interests, while the diffuse interests of the consumer are poorly represented in the political process. ... Centralized, regulated systems look good on paper, and they may be effective as they start. However, market systems learn faster, because competitive innovation prevents a market from getting captured by the incumbents who have learned how to game the system.~ Arnold Kling[Socialism] is a creed even more denigrating than Catholicism, but it offers more tangible bribes for its acceptance.~ Auberon HerbertMake no mistake about it -- and tell it to your Republican friends: capitalism and altruism cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society. Tell it to anyone who attempts to justify capitalism on the ground of the "public good" or the "general welfare" or "service to society" or the benefit it brings to the poor. All these things are true, but they are the by-products, the secondary consequences of capitalism -- not its goal, purpose or moral justification. The moral justification of capitalism is man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; it is the recognition that man -- every man -- is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others, not a sacrificial animal serving anyone's need.~ Ayn Rand Dec 19, 2016The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.~ Gilbert Keith ChestertonBeing a politician means never having to say you're sorry. You don't have to say, 'I never should have voted to subsidize that ridiculous Enron project in India.' ... After all, they're greedy businessmen and you're a selfless public servant.~ Harry BrowneWhen will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?~ Henry David Thoreau Dec 16, 2016To be able to think freely, a man must be certain that no consequence will follow whatever he writes.~ Ernest RenanCivil libertarians must often remind government officials (and others) that if the First Amendment only protected the expression of popular and agreeable ideas, it would be totally unnecessary since those ideas would never be threatened by our democratic form of government. Our society's commitment to free speech is tested when we encounter the expression of ideas that are disagreeable -- or even offensive.~ Timothy LynchIf a single writer in a country is in chains, then there are some links of that chain that binds us all.~ Vaclav Havel Dec 15, 2016Give them a corrupt House of Lords, give them a venal House of Commons, give they a tyrannical Prince, give them a truckling court, and let me have but an unfettered press. I will defy them to encroach a hair’s breadth upon the liberties of England.~ Richard Brinsley SheridanTo your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.~ Thomas JeffersonWhere men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure.~ William Earnest Hocking Dec 14, 2016You don't have to scratch liberalism very deeply to find socialism underneath, nor socialism to find authoritarianism underneath.~ Don LuskinIt has been well said that really up-to-date liberals do not care what people do, as long as it is compulsory.~ George WillThe Radical Centre seem to have the same obsession with control that the fascists and communists had, but unlike them, it is control for control's sake rather than in the service of some clear ideology ... They do not seek the triumph of Volk or the dictatorship of the proletariat, they just seek to replace all social interactions with politically mediated interactions. They seek to regulate everything via a total state that ... just wants a world in which nothing whatsoever is private, everything is political. Their symbol is not the Hammer and Sickle or the Swastika, it is the CCTV camera.~ Perry de Havilland Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print