Category: Thought

“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”

There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.

Misattributed to John Adams.

But it is in the spirit of President Adams’s thought:

The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.

John Adams, First Address to Congress (November 23, 1797).

The fundamental purpose of property rights, and their fundamental accomplishment, is that they eliminate destructive competition for control of economic resources. Well-defined and well-protected property rights replace competition by violence with competition by peaceful means.

Armen Alchian, “Property Rights,” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

See a recent article on Alchian by Peter J. Boettke, “Why Did Armen Alchian Have to Teach Economists About Property Rights?”

Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing.

In all of my years, one thing does not change, 
However you disguise it, this thing does not change: 
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

TV-watchers have no doubt noted so often that they are no longer aware of how often the interchangeable TV hosts handle anyone who tries to explain why something happened. “Are you suggesting that there was a conspiracy?” A twinkle starts in a pair of bright contact lenses. No matter what the answer, there is a wriggling of the body, followed by a tiny snort and a significant glance into the camera to show that the guest has just been delivered to the studio by flying saucer. This is one way for the public never to understand what actual conspirators — whether in the F.B.I. or on the Supreme Court or toiling for Big Tobacco — are up to.

Price-regulation by State authority (through State purchase, like our Farm Board) was tried in China about 350 B.c. It did not work. It was tried again, with State distribution, in the first century A.D., and did not work. Private trading was suppressed in the second century B.C., and regional planning was tried a little later. They did not work; the costs were too high. In the eleventh century A.D., a plan like the R.F.C. was tried, but again cost too much. State monopolies are very old; there were two in China in the seventh century B.C. I suppose there is not a single item on the modern politician’s agenda that was not tried and found wanting ages ago

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.

W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915) Ch. 23