Tracing consequences both seen and unseen.
Eric D. DixonGovernment Is a Broker in Pillage
Posted at 4:20 pm on March 5, 2011, by Eric D. Dixon

H.L. Mencken summed up public choice theory in 1936:

The state—or, to make the matter more concrete, the government—consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

[Cross-posted at Shrubbloggers.]


Filed under: Economic Theory, Politics, Public Choice
Comments: 1 Comment
 

Henry Hazlitt"[T]he whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
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