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When Everybody Owns Something, Nobody Owns It, And Nobody Has A Direct Interest In Maintaining Or Improving Its Condition. That Is Why Buildings In The Soviet Union - Like Public Housing In The United States - Look Decrepit Within A Year Or Two Of Their Construction.

-Milton Friedman

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When Everybody Owns Something,

Milton Friedman

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When Everybody Owns Something, Nobody Owns It, And Nobody Has A Direct Interest In Maintaining Or Improving Its Condition. That Is Why Buildings In The Soviet Union - Like Public Housing In The United States - Look Decrepit Within A Year Or Two Of Their Construction.

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Political Leaders In Capitalist Countries Who Cheer The Collapse Of Socialism In Other Countries Continue To Favor Socialist Solutions In Their Own. They Know The Words, But They Have Not Learned The Tune.

We Have A Freer World Because Of The Collapse Of The Soviet Union And The Changes In China. Those Two Have Been The Main Contributors To Freedom In Our Time.

Higher Taxes Never Reduce The Deficit. Governments Spend Whatever They Take In And Then Whatever They Can Get Away With.

Thanks To Economists, All Of Us, From The Days Of Adam Smith And Before Right Down To The Present, Tariffs Are Perhaps One Tenth Of One Percent Lower Than They Otherwise Would Have Been. And Because Of Our Efforts, We Have Earned Our Salaries Ten-thousand Fold.

Most Of The Energy Of Political Work Is Devoted To Correcting The Effects Of Mismanagement Of Government.

On Aging Societies, There Is No Reason Why A Country That Has A Lot Of Old People Can't Be Prosperous If, During Their Working Lives, Individuals Provide For Their Retirement.

A Minimum-wage Law Is, In Reality, A Law That Makes It Illegal For An Employer To Hire A Person With Limited Skills.

Americans Know Very Little About Social Statistics, But I Am Not Sure That It's Important That Americans Know About Social Statistics.

No Central Banker Would Disagree With The Proposition That Inflation Is Primarily A Monetary Phenomenon. Not One Of Them Will Disagree That Every Inflation Has Been Accompanied By A Rapid Increase In The Quantity Of Money And Every Deflation By A Decline In The Quantity Of Money.

Anybody Who Was Easily Converted Was Not Worth Converting.

I Think There Is Universal Agreement Within The Economics Profession That The Decline - The Sharp Decline In The Quantity Of Money Played A Very Major Role In Producing The Great Depression.

The Problem Is That, In A World Of Floating Exchange Rates, As Italy Was Before The Euro, If One Country Is Subjected To A Shock Which Requires It To Cut Wages, It Cannot Do So With A Modern Kind Of Control And Regulation System. It Is Much Easier To Do It By Letting The Exchange Rate Change. Only One Price Has To Change, Instead Of Many.

The World Runs On Individuals Pursuing Their Self Interests. The Great Achievements Of Civilization Have Not Come From Government Bureaus. Einstein Didn't Construct His Theory Under Order From A Bureaucrat. Henry Ford Didn't Revolutionize The Automobile Industry That Way.

China Has Seen A Great Deal Of Economic Progress. It's Certainly Rather Of A Miracle. The Growing Role Of The Market In The Economy Will Force China To Open Up Its Political System Over Time And To Move Toward A More Democratic Society. So Taken As A Whole, The One Real Failure In This Whole Business Has Been Russia.

The Problem In This World Is To Avoid Concentration Of Power - We Must Have A Dispersion Of Power.

Now That I'm 60, Every Morning I Look In The Mirror And Say, "i Don't Know Who You Are, Stranger, But I'm Gonna Shave You Anyway".

Germany's Problem, In Part, Is That It Went Into The Euro At The Wrong Exchange Rate That Overvalued The Deutsche Mark.

Individual Price And Wage Changes Will Not Be Prevented. In The Main, Price Changes Will Simply Be Concealed By Taking The Form Of Changes In Discounts, Service, And Quality, And Wage Changes, In Overtime, Perquisites And So On…. But To Whatever Extent The Freeze Is Enforced, It Will Do Harm By Distorting Relative Prices.

The Difference Between Me And People Like Murray Rothbard Is That, Though I Want To Know What My Ideal Is, I Think I Also Have To Be Willing To Discuss Changes That Are Less Than Ideal So Long As They Point Me In That Direction.

I Am A Limited-government Libertarian.

Limited Government

The Preservation Of Liberty, Not The Promotion Of Efficiency, Is The Primary Justification For Private Property. Efficiency Is A Happy, Though Not Accidental, By-product - And A Most Important By-product Because Liberty Could Not Have Survived If It Had Not Also Produced Affluence.

Socialism, In The Traditional Sense, Meant Government Ownership And Operation Of The Means Of Production. Outside Of North Korea And A Couple Of Other Spots, No One In The World Today Would Define Socialism That Way. That Will Never Come Back.

There Is No Person, No Theorist So Reckless As He Who Says That The Facts Speak For Themselves.

There Is No Other Complex Field In Our Society In Which Do-it-yourself Beats Out Factory Production Or Market Production. Nobody Makes His Or Her Own Car. But It Is Still The Case That Parents Can Perform The Job Of Educating Their Children [homeschooling], In Many Cases Better Than Our Present Education System.

Prohibition Is An Attempted Cure That Makes Matters Worse - For Both The Addict And The Rest Of Us.

With Respect To Teachers' Salaries .... Poor Teachers Are Grossly Overpaid And Good Teachers Grossly Underpaid. Salary Schedules Tend To Be Uniform And Determined Far More By Seniority.

The Long-range Sloution To High Unemployment Is To Increase The Incentive For Ordinary People To Save, Invest, Work, And Employ Others. We Make It Costly For Employers To Employ People; We Subsidize People Not To Go To Work We Have A System That Increasingly Taxes Work And Subsidizes Nonwork.

The Depression, Which Started In 1929 Was Rather Mild From 1929 To 1930. And, Indeed, In My Opinion Would Have Been Over In 1931 At The Latest Had It Not Been That The Federal Reserve Followed A Policy Which Led To Bank Failures, Widespread Bank Failures, And Led To A Reduction In The Quantity Of Money.

Federal Reserve

The Invisible Hand In Politics Operates In The Opposite Direction To The Invisible Hand In The Market.

The Collapse Of Communism In Essence Added Tens And Tens Of Millions Of People To The World Labor Supply, And The People Who Were Added Had Previously Been Getting Very Low Income, But They Were Not Unskilled. Many Of Them Were Fairly Well Educated.

My Monetary Studies Have Led Me To The Conclusion That Central Banks Could Profitably Be Replaced By Computers Geared To Provide A Steady Rate Of Growth In The Quantity Of Money. Fortunately For Me Personally, And For A Select Group Of Fellow Economists, That Conclusion Has Had No Practical Impact… Else There Would Have Been No Central Bank Of Sweden To Have Established The Award [nobel Prize] I Am Honoured To Receive.

In The Current World, With The Skills Needed, Dropouts [like No Secondary Education] Are Condemned To Being Members Of The Underclass. In My View, This Is A Fault Of The American School System, Which Is A Government Monopoly.

Government Is A Way By Which Every Individual Believes He Can Live At The Expense Of Everybody Else.

A Society Based On The Freedom To Choose Is Better Than A Society Based On The Principles Of Socialism, Communism And Coercion.

History Suggests That Capitalism Is A Necessary Condition For Political Freedom. Clearly It Is Not A Sufficient Condition.

I Do Not Believe That The Solution To Our Problem Is Simply To Elect The Right People. The Important Thing Is To Establish A Political Climate Of Opinion Which Will Make It Politically Profitable For The Wrong People To Do The Right Thing. Unless It Is Politically Profitable For The Wrong People To Do The Right Thing, The Right People Will Not Do The Right Thing Either, Or It They Try, They Will Shortly Be Out Of Office.

I Am A Libertarian With A Small "l" And A Republican With A Capital "r". And I Am A Republican With A Capital "r" On Grounds Of Expediency, Not On Principle.

I Am In Favor Of Cutting Taxes Under Any Circumstances And For Any Excuse, For Any Reason, Whenever It's Possible. ... Because I Believe The Big Problem Is Not Taxes, The Big Problem Is Spending.

There's A Smokestack On The Back Of Every Government Program.

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Hell Hath No Fury Like A Bureaucrat Scorned.

. . . It Is Worth Discussing Radical Changes, Not In The Expectation That They Will Be Adopted Promptly But For Two Other Reasons. One Is To Construct An Ideal Goal, So That Incremental Changes Can Be Judged By Whether They Move The Institutional Structure Toward Or Away From That Ideal. The Other Reason Is Very Different. It Is So That If A Crisis Requiring Or Facilitating Radical Change Does Arise, Alternatives Will Be Available That Have Been Carefully Developed And Fully Explored.

How Did We Make The Transition From Using Wood To Using Coal, From Using Coal To Using Oil, From Using Oil To Using Natural Gas? How In God's Name Did We Make That Transition Without A Federal Energy Agency?

A Society That Puts Equality - In The Sense Of Equality Of Outcome - Ahead Of Freedom Will End Up With Neither Equality Or Freedom. The Use Of Force To Achieve Equality Will Destroy Freedom. On The Other Hand, A Society That Puts Freedom First Will, As A Happy By-product, End Up With Both Greater Freedom And Greater Equality. Freedom Means Diversity But Also Mobility. It Preserves The Opportunity For Today's Less Well Off To Become Tomorrow's Rich, And In The Process, Enables Almost Everyone, From Top To Bottom, To Enjoy A Richer And Fuller Life.

The True Test Of Any Scholar's Work Is Not What His Contemporaries Say, But What Happens To His Work In The Next 25 Or 50 Years. And The Thing That I Will Really Be Proud Of Is If Some Of The Work I Have Done Is Still Cited In The Text Books Long After I Am Gone.

The Key Insight Of Adam Smith's Wealth Of Nations Is Misleadingly Simple: If An Exchange Between Two Parties Is Voluntary, It Will Not Take Place Unless Both Believe They Will Benefit From It. Most Economic Fallacies Derive From The Neglect Of This Simple Insight, From The Tendency To Assume That There Is A Fixed Pie, That One Party Can Gain Only At The Expense Of Another.

Self-interest Is Not Myopic Selfishness. It Is Whatever It Is That Interests The Participants, Whatever They Value, Whatever Goals They Pursue. The Scientist Seeking To Advance The Frontiers Of His Discipline, The Missionary Seeking To Convert Infidels To The True Faith, The Philanthropist Seeking To Bring Comfort To The Needy - All Are Pursuing Their Interests, As They See Them, As They Judge Them By Their Own Values.

The Argument For Collectivism Is Simple If False; It Is An Immediate Emotional Argument. The Argument For Individualism Is Subtle And Sophisticated; It Is An Indirect Rational Argument. And The Emotional Faculties Are More Highly Developed In Most Men Than The Rational, Paradoxically Or Especially Even In Those Who Regard Themselves As Intellectuals.

I Believe That The Monetary Stability Is An Absolutely Critical Element In The Satisfactory Operation Of A System.

Drugs Are A Tragedy For Addicts. But Criminalizing Their Use Converts That Tragedy Into A Disaster For Society, For Users And Non-users Alike. Our Experience With The Prohibition Of Drugs Is A Replay Of Our Experience With The Prohibition Of Alcoholic Beverages.

When Something Goes Wrong, The Natural Tendency Is To Say, "by God, We Need To Pass A Law And Do Something."

The Fall Of The Berlin Wall Did More For The Progress Of Freedom Than All Of The Books Written By Myself Or Friedrich Hayek Or Others.

You Cannot Simultaneously Have Free Immigration And A Welfare State.

Anything That Government Can Do, Private Enterprise Can Do For Half The Cost.

If The Government Is To Try And Ban Private Consumption Of Alcohol And Tobacco, It Must Surely Ban Such Activities As Hang-gliding, Skiing, Rock-climbing And So On. Where Should It Stop? Rugby? American Football? Ice Hockey? Insofar As The Government Has Information Not Generally Available About The Merits Or Demerits Of The Items We Ingest Or The Activities We Engage In, Let It Give Us The Information. But Let It Leave Us Free To Choose What Chances We Want To Take With Our Own Lives.

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Now Here's Somebody Who Wants To Smoke A Marijuana Cigarette. If He's Caught, He Goes To Jail. Now Is That Moral? Is That Proper? I Think It's Absolutely Disgraceful That Our Government, Supposed To Be Our Government, Should Be In The Position Of Converting People Who Are Not Harming Others Into Criminals, Of Destroying Their Lives, Putting Them In Jail. That's The Issue To Me. The Economic Issue Comes In Only For Explaining Why It Has Those Effects. But The Economic Reasons Are Not The Reasons.

Germany Cannot Get Out Of The Euro. What It Has To Do, Therefore, Is Make The Economy More Flexible - To Eliminate The Restrictions On Prices, On Wages And On Employment; In Short, The Regulations That Keep 10 Percent Of The German Workforce Unemployed.

The Euro Is Good For Europe. But Only If There Is Flexibility All Around.

Our Emphasis Here Is Based Not Only On The Growing Seriousness Of Drug-related Crimes, But Also On The Belief That Relieving Our Police And Our Courts From Having To Fight Losing Battles Against Drug Use Will Enable Their Energies And Facilities To Be Devoted More Fully To Combating Other Forms Of Crime.

We Had Much Freer Trade In The 19th Century. We Have Much Less Globalization Now Than We Did Then.

What's The Difference? How Can People Be So Inconsistent? Why Is It That Free Immigration Was A Good Thing Before 1914 And Free Immigration Is A Bad Thing Today? Well, There Is A Sense In Which That Answer Is Right. There's A Sense In Which Free Immigration, In The Same Sense As We Had It Before 1914 Is Not Possible Today. Why Not?

The State Of Our Educational System Is A Disgrace To Our Country. We Have An Elementary And Secondary School System In Which Close To Half Of The Youngsters Never Graduate Properly. It's A Disgrace That There Is More Illiteracy Today Than There Was 100 Years Ago.

There Have Been Unions Based On Gold Or Silver, But Not On Fiat Money - Money Tempted To Inflate - Put Out By Politically Independent Entities.

[t]he Burden Of Government Is Not Measured By How Much It Taxes, But By How Much It Spends.

Corruption Is Government Intrusion Into Market Efficiencies In The Form Of Regulations.

Market Efficiency

Viewed As A Means To The End Of Political Freedom, Economic Arrangements Are Important Because Of Their Effect On The Concentration Or Dispersion Of Power. The Kind Of Economic Organization That Provides Economic Freedom Directly, Namely, Competitive Capitalism, Also Promotes Political Freedom Because It Separates Economic Power From Political Power And In This Way Enables The One To Offset The Other

Speeches By Businessmen On Social Responsibility...may Gain Them Kudos In The Short Run. But It Helps To Strengthen The Already Too Prevalent View That The Pursuit Of Profits Is Wicked.... There Is One And Only One Social Responsibility Of Business-to...engage In Open And Free Competition Without Deception Or Fraud.

So The Question Is, Do Corporate Executives, Provided They Stay Within The Law, Have Responsibilities In Their Business Activities Other Than To Make As Much Money For Their Stockholders As Possible? And My Answer To That Is, No They Do Not.

Rapid Increases In The Quantity Of Money Produce Inflation. Sharp Decreases Produce Depression.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon In The Sense That It Is And Can Be Produced Only By A More Rapid Increase In The Quantity Of Money Than In Output... A Steady Rate Of Monetary Growth At A Moderate Level Can Provide A Framework Under Which A Country Can Have Little Inflation And Much Growth. It Will Not Produce Perfect Stability; It Will Not Produce Heaven On Earth; But It Can Make An Important Contribution To A Stable Economic Society.

My Interest In Political Philosophy Was Rather Casual Until I Met Hayek.

Adam Smith's Key Insight Was That Both Parties To An Exchange Can Benefit And That, So Long As Cooperation Is Strictly Voluntary, No Exchange Can Take Place Unless Both Parties Do Benefit.

Every Person Shall Be Free To Do Good ' At His Own Expense.

There's No Way To Avoid A Burden On Your Freedom. The Costs Themselves Are A Burden On Your Freedom. The Restrictions That Are Necessary In Order To Get Rid Of The Terrorists Are A Burden To Your Freedom. So There's No Way In The Short Run To Avoid A Restriction On Your Freedom.

There Is No Logical Basis For The Prohibition Of Marijuana. $7.7 Billion Is A Lot Of Money, But That Is One Of The Lesser Evils. Our Failure To Successfully Enforce These Laws Is Responsible For The Deaths Of Thousands Of People In Colombia. I Haven't Even Included The Harm To Young People. It's Absolutely Disgraceful To Think Of Picking Up A 22-year-old For Smoking Pot. More Disgraceful Is The Denial Of Marijuana For Medical Purposes.

The Major Basis For My Opposition To Marijuana Prohibition Has Not Been How Badly It's Worked, The Fact That It's Produced Much More Harm Than Good - It Has Been Primarily A Moral Reason: I Don't Think The State Has Any More Right To Tell Me What To Put Into My Mouth Than It Has To Tell Me What Can Come Out Of My Mouth.

Humility Is The Distinguishing Virtue Of The Believer In Freedom; Arrogance, Of The Paternalist.

Money Is A Very Powerful Thing, Which You Hardly Notice When It Goes Right, But Which Can Create Havoc When It Goes Wrong.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon In The Sense That It Is And Can Be Produced Only By A More Rapid Increase In The Quantity Of Money Than In Output.

See, If You Look At The Drug War From A Purely Economic Point Of View, The Role Of The Government Is To Protect The Drug Cartel. That's Literally True.

To The Free Man, The Country Is The Collection Of Individuals Who Compose It, Not Something Over And Above Them.

Business Corporations In General Are Not Defenders Of Free Enterprise. On The Contrary, They Are One Of The Chief Sources Of Danger....every Businessman Is In Favor Of Freedom For Everybody Else, But When It Comes To Himself That's A Different Question. We Have To Have That Tariff To Protect Us Against Competition From Abroad. We Have To Have That Special Provision In The Tax Code. We Have To Have That Subsidy.

Concentrated Power Is Not Rendered Harmless By The Good Intentions Of Those Who Create It.

A Society That Puts Equality Before Freedom Will Get Neither. A Society That Puts Freedom Before Equality Will Get A High Degree Of Both.

The Only Relevant Test Of The Validity Of A Hypothesis Is Comparison Of Prediction With Experience.

The Essential Notion Of A Capitalist Society ... Is Voluntary Cooperation, Voluntary Exchange. The Essential Notion Of A Socialist Society Is Force.

Nobody Spends Somebody Else's Money As Carefully As He Spends His Own.

Economy And Economics

The Only Way That Has Ever Been Discovered To Have A Lot Of People Cooperate Together Voluntarily Is Through The Free Market. And That's Why It's So Essential To Preserving Individual Freedom.

Look, For Example, At The Obvious, Immediate, Practical Example Of Illegal Mexican Immigration. Now, That Mexican Immigration, Over The Border, Is A Good Thing. It's A Good Thing For The Illegal Immigrants. It's A Good Thing For The United States. It's A Good Thing For The Citizens Of The Country. But, It's Only Good So Long As Its Illegal....

The Federal Reserve The Privately Owned U.s. Central Bank Definitely Caused The Great Depression By Contracting The Amount Of Currency In Circulation By One Third From 1929 To 1933.

Great Depression

Federal Reserve

Governments Never Learn. Only People Learn.

If Freedom Were Not So Economically Efficient It Certainly Wouldn't Stand A Chance.

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.

The Future Of Private Enterprise Capitalism Is Also The Future Of A Free Society. There Is No Possibility Of Having A Politically Free Society Unless The Major Part Of Its Economic Resources Are Operated Under A Capitalistic Private Enterprise System.

Economists May Not Know Much. But We Know One Thing Very Well: How To Produce Surpluses And Shortages. Do You Want A Surplus? Have The Government Legislate A Minimum Price That Is Above The Price That Would Otherwise Prevail. That Is What We Have Done At One Time Or Another To Produce Surpluses Of Wheat, Of Sugar, Of Butter, Of Many Other Commodities. Do You Want A Shortage? Have The Government Legislate A Maximum Price That Is Below The Price That Would Otherwise Prevail.

The Rule Of Law Does Not Guarantee Freedom, Since General Law As Well As Personal Edicts Can Be Tyrannical. But Increasing Reliance On The Rule Of Law Clearly Played A Major Role In Transforming Western Society From A World In Which The Ordinary Citizen Was Literally Subject To The Arbitrary Will Of His Master To A World In Which The Ordinary Citizen Could Regard Himself As His Own Master

Most Economic Fallacies Derive From The Tendency To Assume That There Is A Fixed Pie, That One Party Can Gain Only At The Expense Of Another.

If You Continue To Use Monetary Policy To Attempt To Promote Full Employment The Result Would Be That You Would Have Higher Inflation, And That You Would Not Have Lower Unemployment.

And What Does Reward Virtue? You Think The Communist Commissar Rewards Virtue? You Think A Hitler Rewards Virtue? You Think, Excuse Me, If You'll Pardon Me, American Presidents Reward Virtue? Do They Choose Their Appointees On The Basis Of The Virtue Of The People Appointed Or On The Basis Of Their Political Clout?

China's Productive System Draws Upon The Other East Asian Countries To A Great Extent. The Volume Of Trade Is Much Larger Than The Net Amount Being Exported From China. China Needs Substantial Reserves To Finance All That.

The Only Reason Free Markets Have A Ghost Of A Chance Is That They Are So Much More Efficient Than Any Other Form Of Organization.

A Society That Aims For Equality Before Liberty Will End Up With Neither Equality Nor Liberty. And A Society That Aims First For Liberty Will Not End Up With Equality, But It Will End Up With A Closer Approach To Equality Than Any Other Kind Of System That Has Ever Been Developed.

The Economic Miracle That Has Been The United States Was Not Produced By Socialized Enterprises, By Government-unon-industry Cartels Or By Centralized Economic Planning. It Was Produced By Private Enterprises In A Profit-and-loss System. And Losses Were At Least As Important In Weeding Out Failures, As Profits In Fostering Successes. Let Government Succor Failures, And We Shall Be Headed For Stagnation And Decline.

The True Test Of Any Scholar's Work Is Not What His Contemporaries Say, But What Happens To His Work In The Next 25 Or 50 Years.

The Most Important Single Central Fact About A Free Market Is That No Exchange Takes Place Unless Both Parties Benefit.

The Lesson For Asia Is; If You Have A Central Bank, Have A Floating Exchange Rate; If You Want To Have A Fixed Exchange Rate, Abolish Your Central Bank And Adopt A Currency Board Instead. Either Extreme; A Fixed Exchange Rate Through A Currency Board, But No Central Bank, Or A Central Bank Plus Truly Floating Exchange Rates; Either Of Those Is A Tenable Arrangement. But A Pegged Exchange Rate With A Central Bank Is A Recipe For Trouble.

In A Bureaucratic System, Useless Work Drives Out Useful Work.

For One Thing, There Are Many "inventions" That Are Not Patentable. The "inventor" Of The Supermarket, For Example, Conferred Great Benefits On His Fellowmen For Which He Could Not Charge Them. Insofar As The Same Kind Of Ability Is Required For The One Kind Of Invention As For The Other, The Existence Of Patents Tends To Divert Activity To Patentable Inventions.

Economic Freedom Is ... An Indispensable Means Toward The Achievement Of Political Freedom.

I Do Not Believe There Is A Natural Resource Economics. I Believe There Is Good Economics And Bad Economics.

The Soviet Experience Was Much Worse Than Experts In The West Had Thought. That Discovery Had A Tremendous Impact Both On The Intellectual Community And On The Public At Large.

You Had A Flood Of Immigrants, Millions Of Them, Coming To This Country. What Brought Them Here? It Was The Hope For A Better Life For Them And Their Children. And, In The Main, They Succeeded. It Is Hard To Find Any Century In History, In Which So Large A Number Of People Experience So Great An Improvement In The Conditions Of Their Life, In The Opportunities Open To Them, As In The Period Of The 19th And Early 20th Century.

The Government Solution To A Problem Is Usually As Bad As The Problem.

Only A Crisis - Actual Or Perceived - Produces Real Change. When That Crisis Occurs, The Actions That Are Taken Depend On The Ideas That Are Lying Around. That, I Believe, Is Our Basic Function: To Develop Alternatives To Existing Policies, To Keep Them Alive And Available Until The Politically Impossible Becomes The Politically Inevitable.

John Lott Documents How Far 'politically Correct' Vested Interests Are Willing To Go To Denigrate Anyone Who Dares Disagree With Them. Lott Has Done Us All A Service By His Thorough, Thoughtful Scholarly Approach To A Highly Controversial Issue.

And Where Are You Going To Get These Angels Who Are Going To Run Society For Us?

If A Tax Cut Increases Government Revenues, You Haven't Cut Taxes Enough.

I Say Thank God For Government Waste. If Government Is Doing Bad Things, It's Only The Waste That Prevents The Harm From Being Greater.

Economic Freedom Is An Essential Requisite For Political Freedom. By Enabling People To Cooperate With One Another Without Coercion Or Central Direction, It Reduces The Area Over Which Political Power Is Exercised.

The Price Works So Well, So Efficiently, That We Are Not Aware Of It Most Of The Time.

How Can Thinking People Believe That A Government That Cannot Deliver The Mail Can Deliver Gas Better Than Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, And The Rest?

The Use Of Quantity Of Money As A Target Has Not Been A Success. I'm Not Sure That I Would As Of Today Push It As Hard As I Once Did.

If You Put The Federal Government In Charge Of The Sahara Desert, In 5 Years There'd Be A Shortage Of Sand.

There Is Likely To Be A Lag Between The Need For Action And Government ["an Individual's" Or "a Team's"] Recognition Of The Need; A Further Lag Between Recognition Of The Need For Action And The Taking Of Action; And A Still Further Lag Between The Action And Its Effects

I Know Of No Severe Depression, In Any Country Or Any Time, That Was Not Accompanied By A Sharp Decline In The Stock Of Money, And Equally Of No Sharp Decline In The Stock Of Money That Was Not Accompanied By A Severe Depression.

In The 1960s, The National Education Association Changed Its Character. The Nea Changed Into A Union. And From That Point On You Can See Deterioration In The Quality Of Schooling In The United States.

I Cannot Disagree With You That Having Something Like 500 Economists Is Extremely Unhealthy. As You Say, It Is Not Conducive To Independent, Objective Research. You And I Know There Has Been Censorship Of The Material Published. Equally Important, The Location Of The Economists In The Federal Reserve Has Had A Significant Influence On The Kind Of Research They Do, Biasing That Research Toward Noncontroversial Technical Papers On Method As Opposed To Substantive Papers On Policy And Results

Plato Assumes Somehow That Government Is A Way In Which You Put Unselfish And Ungreedy Men In Charge Of Selfish And Greedy Men. But Government Is An Institution Whereby The People Who Have The Greatest Drive To Get Power Over Their Fellow Men, Get In A Position Of Controlling Them. Look At The Record Of Government. Where Are These Philosopher Kings That Plato Supposedly Was Trying To Develop?

How Do You Hold Down Government Spending?

Government Spending

If A Country Is An Attractive Place For Foreigners To Invest Their Funds, Then That Country Will Have A Relatively High Exchange Rate. If It's An Unattractive Place, It Will Have A Relatively Low Exchange Rate. Those Are The Fundamentals That Determine The Exchange Rate In A Floating Exchange Rate System.

Keynes Was A Great Economist. In Every Discipline, Progress Comes From People Who Make Hypotheses, Most Of Which Turn Out To Be Wrong, But All Of Which Ultimately Point To The Right Answer. Now Keynes, In 'the General Theory Of Employment, Interest And Money,' Set Forth A Hypothesis Which Was A Beautiful One, And It Really Altered The Shape Of Economics. But It Turned Out That It Was A Wrong Hypothesis. That Doesn't Mean That He Wasn't A Great Man!

Nobody Spends Somebody Else's Money As Carefully As He Spends His Own. Nobody Uses Somebody Else's Resources As Carefully As He Uses His Own. So If You Want Efficiency And Effectiveness, If You Want Knowledge To Be Properly Utilized, You Have To Do It Through The Means Of Private Property.

To The Free Man, The Country Is The Collection Of Individuals Who Compose It, Not Something Over And Above Them. He Is Proud Of A Common Heritage And Loyal To Common Traditions. But He Regards Government As A Means, An Instrumentality, Neither A Grantor Of Favors And Gifts, Nor A Master Or God To Be Blindly Worshipped And Served.

The Great Depression, Like Most Other Periods Of Severe Unemployment, Was Produced By Government Mismanagement Rather Than By Any Inherent Instability Of The Private Economy.

Theories Can Be Based On Any Assumptions, However Bizarre.

The Stock Market And Economy Are Two Different Things.

The Power To Do Good Is Also The Power To Do Harm.

When You Start Paying People To Be Poor, You Wind Up With An Awful Lot Of Poor People.

Society Doesn't Have Values. People Have Values.

The Internet Moves Us Closer To "perfect Information" On Markets. Individuals And Companies Alike Can Buy And Sell Across Borders And Jurisdictions Wherever They Find The Best Match Of Supply And Demand.

I Think That The Internet Is Going To Be One Of The Major Forces For Reducing The Role Of Government.

There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Ecological Crisis

It Is Taken For Granted That Workers Should Receive Their Pay Partly In Kind, In The Form Of Medical Care Provided By The Employer. How Come? Why Single Out Medical Care? Surely Food Is No Less Essential To Life Than Medical Care. Why Is It Not At Least As Logical For Workers To Be Required To Buy Their Food At The Company Store As To Be Required To Buy Their Medical Care At The Company Store?

If You Look At The Balance Sheet, The Us Is Heavily In Debt. If You Look At The Income Account - The Amount Of Interest The Us Pays Abroad - It Is Almost Exactly Equal To The Amount Of Interest That It Receives From Abroad. American Assets Held Abroad Are Earning A Higher Rate Of Return Than Foreign Assets Held Here.

So That The Record Of History Is Absolutely Crystal Clear That There Is No Alternative Way, So Far Discovered, Of Improving The Lot Of The Ordinary People That Can Hold A Candle To The Productive Activities That Are Unleashed By A Free-enterprise System.

There's Nothing That Does So Much Harm As Good Intentions.

The Same Thing Will Happen In China That Happened In Chile. Political Freedom Will Ultimately Break Out Of Its Shackles. Tiananmen Square Was Only The First Episode. It Is Headed For A Series Of Tiananmen Squares. It Cannot Continue To Develop Privately And At The Same Time Maintain Its Authoritarian Character Politically. It Is Headed For A Clash. Sooner Or Later, One Or The Other Will Give.

"free Markets" Is A Very General Term. There Are All Sorts Of Problems That Will Emerge. Free Markets Work Best When The Transaction Between Two Individuals Affects Only Those Individuals. Most Often, A Transaction Between You And Me Affects A Third Party. That Is The Source Of All Problems For Government. That Is The Source Of All Pollution Problems, Of The Inequality Problem. This Reality Ensures That The End Of History Will Never Come.

I Think In Some Ways It Would Make More Sense To Have As A Poverty Level A Relative Concept And Say, The Level Of Poverty Is That Level Of Income Or That Level Of Consumption Below Which 10 Percent Of The People Now Are.

Statistics Do Not Speak For Themselves.

It Is A Mark Of How Far We Have Gone On The Road To Serfdom That Government Allocation And Rationing Of Oil Is The Automatic Response To The Oil Crisis.

Universities Exist To Transmit Knowledge And Understanding Of Ideas And Values To Students Not To Provide Entertainment For Spectators Or Employment For Athletes.

The Growing Role That The Government Has Played In Financing And Administering Schooling Has Led Not Only The Enormous Waste Of Taxpayers Money But Also To A Far Poorer Educational System.

If You Spend Your Own Money On Yourself, You Care How Much You Spend And How Well You Spend It. If You Spend Your Own Money On Someone Else, You Care How Much You Spend, But You Don't Care How Well It Is Spent. If You Spend Someone Else's Money On Yourself, You Don't Care How Much You Spend, But You Do Care How Well It Is Spent. And Finally, If You Spend Someone Else's Money On Someone Else, You Don't Care How Much You Spend, And You Don't Care How Well It Is Spent. That Is Government.

Everywhere, And At All Times, Economic Progress Has Meant Far More To The Poor Than To The Rich.

We Do Not Influence The Course Of Events By Persuading People That We Are Right When We Make What They Regard As Radical Proposals. Rather, We Exert Influence By Keeping Options Available When Something Has To Be Done At A Time Of Crisis.

Times Of Crisis

It All Would Have Been Much Better If Individuals Saved For Their Own Old Age.

...theories Should Be Judged By Their Ability To Predict Events Rather Than By The Realism Of Their Assumptions.

I Think It's A Scandal What Has Been Happening In The School System So Far As Lower Income Classes. The Dropout Rates, The Illiteracy Rate, You Know Literacy In The United States Was A Lot Higher In 1890 Than It Is Now.

Pick At Random Any Three Letters From The Alphabet, Put Them In Any Order, And You Will Have An Acronym Designating A Federal Agency We Can Do Without.

You Will Find That Hardly A Soul Who Will Say That It Was A Bad Thing. Almost Everybody Will Say It Was A Good Thing. 'but What About Today? Do You Think We Should Have Free Immigration?' 'oh, No,' They'll Say, 'we Couldn't Possibly Have Free Immigration Today. Why, That Would Flood Us With Immigrants From India, And God Knows Where. We'd Be Driven Down To A Bare Subsistence Level.'

Legalizing Drugs Would Simultaneously Reduce The Amount Of Crime And Raise The Quality Of Law Enforcement. Can You Conceive Of Any Other Measure That Would Accomplish So Much To Promote Law And Order?

[u]nemployment Is ... A Side Effect Of The Cure For Inflation.

The Big Issue Is Whether The United States Will Succeed In Its Venture Of Reshaping The Middle East. It Is Not Clear To Me That Using Military Force Is The Way To Do It. We Should Not Have Gone Into Iraq. But We Have.

What Works For Sweden Wouldn't Work For France Or Germany Or Italy. In A Small State, You Can Reach Outside For Many Of Your Activities. In A Homogeneous Culture, They Are Willing To Pay Higher Taxes In Order To Achieve Commonly Held Goals. But "common Goals" Are Much Harder To Come By In Larger, More Heterogeneous Populations.

I Can Spend Somebody Else's Money On Somebody Else. And If I Spend Somebody Else's Money On Somebody Else, I'm Not Concerned About How Much It Is, And I'm Not Concerned About What I Get. And That's Government. And That's Close To 40 Percent Of Our National Income.

Making Prohibition Work Is Like Making Water Run Uphill; It's Against Nature.

I Would Say That In This World, The Greatest Source Of Inequality Has Been Special Privileges Granted By Government.

The Great Depression In The United States, Far From Being A Sign Of The Inherent Instability Of The Private Enterprise System, Is A Testament To How Much Harm Can Be Done By Mistakes On The Part Of A Few Men When They Wield Vast Power Over The Monetary System Of The Country.

If You Have Free Immigration, In The Way We Had It Before 1914, Everybody Benefited. The People Who Were Here Benefited. The People Who Came Benefited. Because Nobody Would Come Unless He, Or His Family, Thought He Would Do Better Here Than He Would Elsewhere. And, The New Immigrants Provided Additional Resources, Provided Additional Possibilities For The People Already Here. So Everybody Can Mutually Benefit.

The Central Banks Cannot Control Interest Rates. That's A Mistake. They Can Control A Particular Rate, Such As The Federal Funds Rate, If They Want To, But They Can't Control Interest Rates.

Not All Schooling Is Education Nor All Education, Schooling.

Many People Want The Government To Protect The Consumer. A Much More Urgent Problem Is To Protect The Consumer From The Government.

. . I Think The Adam Smith Role Was Played In This Cycle I.e. The Late Twentieth Century Collapse Of Socialism In Which The Idea Of Free-markets Succeeded First, And Then Special Events Catalyzed A Complete Change Of Socio-political Policy In Countries Around The World By Friedrich Hayek's The Road To Serfdom.

Freedom Is A Rare And Delicate Plant. Our Minds Tell Us, And History Confirms, That The Great Threat To Freedom Is The Concentration Of Power.

The Great Depression In The United States Was Caused - I Won't Say Caused, Was Enormously Intensified And Made Far Worse Than It Would Have Been By Bad Monetary Policy.

Great Depression

The Big Problem For A Democratic Government - Democrat With A Small "d" - Is How To Hold Down Government Spending.

The Great Depression Was Not A Sign Of The Failure Of Monetary Policy Or A Result Of The Failure Of The Market System As Was Widely Interpreted. It Was Instead A Consequence Of A Very Serious Government Failure, In Particular A Failure In The Monetary Authorities To Do What They'd Initially Been Set Up To Do.

Great Depression

The Unions Might Be Good For The People Who Are In The Unions But It Doesn't Do A Thing For The People Who Are Unemployed. Because The Union Keeps Down The Number Of Jobs, It Doesn't Do A Thing For Them.

The Euro Is Going To Be A Big Source Of Problems, Not A Source Of Help.

What Makes It [economics] Most Fascinating Is That Its Fundamental Principles Are So Simple That They Can Be Written On One Page, That Anyone Can Understand Them, And Yet Very Few Do.

The Black Market Was A Way Of Getting Around Government Controls. It Was A Way Of Enabling The Free Market To Work. It Was A Way Of Opening Up, Enabling People.

The Combination Of Economic And Political Power In The Same Hands Is A Sure Recipe For Tyranny.

Fundamentally, There Are Only Two Ways Of Coordinating The Economic Activities Of Millions. One Is Central Direction Involving The Use Of Coercion - The Technique Of The Army And Of The Modern Totalitarian State. The Other Is Voluntary Cooperation Of Individuals - The Technique Of The Marketplace.

Economics Has Become Increasingly An Arcane Branch Of Mathematics Rather Than Dealing With Real Economic Problems.

The History Of Mankind Is The History Of Money Losing Value.

Because We Live In A Largely Free Society, We Tend To Forget How Limited Is The Span Of Time And The Part Of The Globe For Which There Has Ever Been Anything Like Political Freedom: The Typical State Of Mankind Is Tyranny, Servitude, And Misery.

Every Economist Knows That Minimum Wages Either Do Nothing Or Cause Inflation And Unemployment. That's Not A Statement, It's A Definition.

What Central Banks Can Control Is A Base And One Way They Can Control The Base Is Via Manipulating A Particular Interest Rate, Such As A Federal Funds Rate, The Overnight Rate At Which Banks Lend To One Another. But They Use That Control To Control What Happens To The Quantity Of Money. There Is No Disagreement.

The Internet Is The Most Effective Instrument We Have For Globalization.

Only A Crisis, Actual Or Perceived, Produces Real Change.

I Start ... From A Belief In Individual Freedom And That Derives Fundamentally From A Belief In The Limitations Of Our Knowledge, From A Belief ... That Nobody Can Be Sure That What He Believes Is Right, Is Really Right ... I'm An Imperfect Human Being Who Cannot Be Certain Of Anything, So What Position ... Involved The Least Intolerance On My Part? ... The Most Attractive Position ... Is Putting Individual Freedom First.

We Measure Poverty By What I Believe Is A Very, Very Crude Concept. We Actually Measure Poverty By Trying To Get Some Kind Of An Estimate Of The Minimum Expenditures On Food That Are Required To Maintain Health, Multiplying That Number By Three, And Saying That's The Level Of Poverty. And It's A Very Crude, Inaccurate Arrangement.

In The Us, The Problem Is Primary And Secondary Education. We've Had Such An Increase In Inequality Because A Quarter Of American Kids Don't Finish High School!

Government Has Three Primary Functions. It Should Provide For Military Defense Of The Nation. It Should Enforce Contracts Between Individuals. It Should Protect Citizens From Crimes Against Themselves Or Their Property. When Government-- In Pursuit Of Good Intentions Tries To Rearrange The Economy, Legislate Morality, Or Help Special Interests, The Cost Come In Inefficiency, Lack Of Motivation, And Loss Of Freedom. Government Should Be A Referee, Not An Active Player.

Whenever You Try To Do Good With Someone Else's Money, You Are Committed To Using Force. How Can You Do Good With Somebody Else's Money, Unless You First Take It Away From Them? The Only Way You Can Take It Away From Them Is The Threat Of Force: You Have A Policeman, Tax Collector, Who Comes And Takes It From Them.

I Want People To Take Thought About Their Condition And To Recognize That The Maintainence Of A Free Society Is A Very Difficult And Complicated Thing And It Requires A Self-denying Ordinance Of The Most Extreme Kind. It Requires A Willingness To Put Up With Temporary Evils On The Basis Of The Subtle And Sophisticated Understanding That If You Step In To Do Something About Them You Not Only May Make Them Worse, You Will Spread Your Tenticles And Get Bad Results Elsewhere.

You Mustn't Judge A Politician By Talk. You Have To Judge Them By Performance.

Is It Really True That Political Self-interest Is Nobler Somehow Than Economic Self-interest?

No Major Institution In The Us Has So Poor A Record Of Performance Over So Long A Period As The Federal Reserve, Yet So High A Public Reputation.

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