Quote of the Day
During the period that Occupy Wall Street was making the news, I often said that I agreed with many of their problem diagnoses but absolutely disagreed with their proposed solutions. They, like I, decried the abuse of government power via Cronyism by private parties, e.g. protection and bailout of Wall Street bankers. Their solution, though, to increase government power never made any sense to me.
Here is Michael Huemer via Don Boudreaux:
Predatory behavior does not occur merely because human beings are selfish. It occurs because human beings are selfish and some human beings are much more powerful than others. Powerful, selfish people use their positions to exploit and abuse those much weaker than themselves. The standard solutions to the problem of human predation all start by cementing the very condition most likely to cause predatory behavior – the concentration of power – and only then do they try to steer away from its natural consequences. The alternative is to begin with an extreme decentralization of coercive power.
