Quote of the Day: 22 May 2026 #QotD

“No system in human history has allowed more people to sit in their garden making art than capitalism[.]” -Peter Hague
[It is what communists think they will be doing, and what capitalists actually make possible. It would be funny if the consequences weren't so intense.]

Quote of the Day: 22 January 2024 #QotD

“[W]hile it’s possible that IP can encourage creativity, it’s also possible that IP can stifle creativity.” -Peter Jacobsen
[There is a balance that needs to be struck here. A creator deserves to benefit from his creation, but there comes a time when the benefits to society need to start coming as well. Currently the balance is off, and copyright lasts far too long.]

Quote of the Day: 12 January 2024 #QotD

“The net result of inflationary price increases is that everyone’s money—regardless of their income— loses some of its value. It is the same as if a tax had been imposed on everybody, from the poorest to the richest, and with everyone paying the same tax rate on their money as ‘millionaires and billionaires’ pay.” -Thomas Sowell
[And despite how many times this is explained, folks still don't understand how inflation occurs, or hat entities are responsible for it. It gets pretty frustrating.]

Quote of the Day: 16 March 2023 #QotD

“[T]his is the primary issue with bank bailouts. If the government sets a precedent that all bank failures will be ameliorated by using taxpayer money, banks will engage in risky behavior which they otherwise would not.” -Peter Jacobsen
[This is just a specific case of a moral hazard. It's not a new phenomenon, but too few are willing to heed the warnings of past experience.]

Quote of the Day: 22 November 2022 #QotD

“Health and economics both require the nonnegotiable called freedom. May we never again experiment with the near abolition of freedom in the cause of mitigating disease.” -Jeffrey A. Tucker
[I doubt there won't be an attempt though. They've tasted the power, and they hunger for more.]

Quote of the Day: 22 October 2022 #QotD

“It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.” -P. J. O’Rourke
[And this was written decades ago. Just think what is required to handle the amounts thrown around today.]

Quote of the Day: 20 October 2022 #QotD

“When left to their own devices, prices tell us vital information about our economy. They pinpoint scarce resources, indicate consumers’ wants, and drive entrepreneurship and innovation. But when the government attempts to cap prices to ‘protect’ consumers, this information becomes distorted.” -Aadi Golchha
[As with all protectionist schemes, it merely distorts market forces in an attempt to favor one group over another. This only leads to bad outcomes for the vast majority, and a few folks who benefit.]

Quote of the Day: 20 September 2022 #QotD

“Create too much money and you get inflation. We are witnessing the proof of that right now.” -John Steele Gordon
[And yet I still keep seeing people blaming inflation on 'greedy' companies who insist on charging 'too much' for their products.]

Quote of the Day: 30 April 2022 #QotD

“It would be impossible, therefore, to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this—the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.” -Frédéric Bastiat
[This certainly has nothing to do with anything currently in the public discourse. Nothing at all.]

Quote of the Day: 22 April 2022 #QotD

“Because of the mistaken idea that governments can and must do something about climate, pressures are building that have the potential of distorting energy policies in a way that will severely damage national economies, decrease standards of living, and increase poverty.” -S. Fred Singer
[Clearly, the only solution arises from categorical thinking. There is only one way to address the problem, and that is to do everything, everything, in our power to arrest climate change in all forms.]

Quote of the Day: 18 April 2022 #QotD

“But, of course, the government couldn’t find $500 billion and ended up taking it from you and me.” -P. J. O’Rourke
[It's Tax Day. So I won't wish you a happy one. But it really ought to be placed closer to Election Day.]

Quote of the Day: 18 February 2022 #QotD

“Some people may think of investment as simply a transaction with money. But, more broadly and more fundamentally, it is the sacrificing of real things today in order to have more real things in the future.” -Thomas Sowell
[Especially true as money is simply a means of exchange, not something with intrinsic value. Even precious metals hold less intrinsic value than the value they trade for because they are used as a means of exchange.]

Quote of the Day: 1 December 2021 #QotD

“Prices perform three functions in organizing economic activity: first, they transmit information; second, they provide an incentive to adopt those methods of production that are least costly and thereby use available resources for the most highly valued purposes; third, they determine who gets how much of the product[.]” -Milton Friedman
[There seems to be q lot of confusion around prices by people who want the world to conform to their idealized views of things rather than conforming their thinking to observations about reality. I thought I'd share Mr. Friedman's words on prices to help inform them of their ignorance.]

Quote of the Day: 14 October 2021 #QotD

“The ‘known reserves’ of a natural resource depend on the cost of knowing.” -Thomas Sowell
[Certainly. And yet, most people just accept the known reserves as total reserves. I'm confused as to what they think happens when those known reserves increase.]

Quote of the Day: 23 September 2021 #QotD

“Literacy obviously opens up wider economic and other prospects denied to those who remain illiterate.” -Thomas Sowell
[The disruptions to education we have experienced in the course of the response to the Wuhan virus pandemic are going to exacerbate economic disparities. And I don't think it's entirely unintentional.]

Quote of the Day: 22 September 2021 #QotD

“Nothing can enter the public treasury, in favor of one citizen or one class, but what other citizens and other classes have been forced to send to it.” -Frédéric Bastiat
[This is largely true, but it does ignore the taxation of inflation. But Bastiat lived prior to the advent of Modern Monetary Theory. So, I think we can forgive him.]

Quote of the Day: 3 September 2021 #QotD

“The financial constraints may be less keenly felt by government officials when it is the taxpayers’ money, rather than their own, that is being spent.” -Thomas Sowell
[I assert that there is no 'may' about it. It is certainly less keenly felt. And sometimes callously so.]

Quote of the Day: 13 August 2021 #QotD

“The idea that an expanding economy implies that all industries must be simultaneously expanding is a profound error.” -Henry Hazlitt
[And one the current resident of the White House appears to adhere to.]

Quote of the Day: 22 July 2021 #QotD

“The problem is not that government is spending too little but that it is spending too much. The problem in schooling is that government is spending too much on the wrong things. The problem in health care is that government is spending too much on the wrong things. The end result has been that government has become a self-generating monstrosity.” -Milton Friedman
[I think my only quibble would be that the government is both spending too much and on the wrong things.]

Quote of the Day: 29 May 2021 #QotD

“Because in modern society it is through the limitation of our money incomes that we are made to feel the restrictions which our relative poverty still imposes upon us, many have come to hate money as the symbol of these restrictions.” -F. A. Hayek
[It has become so entrenched in our society that we develop emotional attachments to it. To the point that we experience sensations similar to pain when required to part with cash. But it is still just a means of exchange. It is not the element imposing the restrictions in the first place.]