A Quote by Thomas Sowell
When government takes away options, it is bound to make some people worse off, even with intrinsicallly good intentions behind that government intervention.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
But on the other hand government takes away a certain amount of liberty and in some countries it takes away all of liberty. And it will, everywhere, if people who fight government do not fight government any longer.
Can I say one other thing that`s very important? I`m indebted to Donald Trump for a long time, we`ve had this problem that people disliked government. And the health care bill has shown reminded people and Donald Trump has shown people there is something a lot worse than government. It`s not government. That as bad as they might have thought the government was on health care, it`s now created people that the absence of government healthcare is even worse.
If, for example, existing government intervention is minor, we shall attach a smaller weight to the negative effect of additional government intervention. This is an important reason why many earlier liberals, like Henry Simons, writing at a time when government was small by today's standards, were willing to have government undertake activities that today's liberals would not accept now that government has become so overgrown.
It has become fashionable to rail against government intervention in the economy, and the FHA is a favorite example by those trying to show the government's overreach. In reality, the FHA shows how government action during the Great Recession forestalled a much worse economic fate.
Cutting corners no doubt makes the job easier for the government, but making the government's job easier is rarely a priority. Preserving the Constitution, fighting off the nibblers and chippers, even nibblers and chippers with good intentions, was once regarded by conservatives as the first duty of the citizen. It still is.
I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse.
P.J. O'Rourke says that conservatives really hate government and every couple of years we put them in charge and then we're reminded how much we really hate government. We're not always necessarily great at the task of running government. We're the anti-government party. It actually makes some sense we're not so good at that. But you got to have basic competence in how you run the government, even in how you reduce its effectiveness in people's lives.
When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Freedom is the default position. Everything the government does takes away some of our freedom... That's why we have a constitution, to restrain the government.
The idea that the largest banks in the world would simultaneously fail, need government support, government guarantees, and/or government intervention to survive was not in my range of realistic scenarios.
I mean those people who are interested in good government will certainly contribute in order to make certain there's some counter-balance to those whose interests in good government is less.
In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect. I may add that the French Government have authorized me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter.
Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a "free market", we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. They had no quarrel with "big government" when it served their needs.
That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention.
We need better options for securing the Internet. Instead of looking primarily for top-down government intervention, we can enlist the operators and users themselves.
The mindset of legislating for the betterment of society guarantees the growth of the beast. ... Politicians see government as a solution but the people see government as part of the problem. Beastly bureaucracy is born out of good intentions married to poor solutions. Only when politicians realize what constituents already know will the true problem even be addressed much less solved.
Related Authors
Adam Smith Quotes
Scottish
Economist
Alan Greenspan Quotes
American
Economist
Benjamin Graham Quotes
American
Economist
Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes
Austrian
Economist
John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
American
Economist
John Maynard Keynes Quotes
English
Economist
Joseph Stiglitz Quotes
American
Economist
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
Austrian
Economist
Milton Friedman Quotes
American
Economist
Muhammad Yunus Quotes
Bangladeshi
Economist
Murray Rothbard Quotes
American
Economist
Paul Craig Roberts Quotes
American
Economist
Paul Krugman Quotes
American
Economist
Richard Thaler Quotes
American
Economist
Robert Reich Quotes
American
Economist
Walter E. Williams Quotes
American
Economist