Quotation of the Day

Something to keep in mind if you're heading to the polls tomorrow:

"For between the state, which is hugely generous with impossible promises, and the general public, which has conceived unattainable hopes, have come two classes of men, those with ambition and those with utopian dreams.  Their role is clearly laid out by the situation.  It is enough for these courtiers of popularity to shout into the people’s ears: “The authorities are misleading you; if we were in their place, we would shower you with benefits and relieve you of taxes.”

And the people believe this, and the people hope…."

That is from page 100 of of Volume 2 (“The Law,” “The State,” and Other Political Writings, 2012) of Liberty Fund’s The Collected Works of Frederic Bastiat; specifically, it’s a passage from Bastiat’s September 1848 essay “The State”.

Hat tip to Don Boudreaux.

Sentences I Could Have Written

"Those people who make their living by devising and offering better mousetraps to willing buyers are too often portrayed as villains, while those other people who promise to forcibly take the fruits of the mousetrap factories from their creators and ‘re-distribute’ those fruits to the masses are portrayed as heroes."

That is from Don Boudreaux commenting on an 1883 essay by William Graham Sumner.

Quotation of the Day...

From Don Boudreaux:

"… is from the abstract of Solomon Polachek’s and Carlos Seiglie’s important 2006 paper, “Trade, Peace and Democracy: An Analysis of Dyadic Dispute“:

At least since 1750 when Baron de Montesquieu declared peace is the natural effect of trade, a number of economists and political scientists espoused the notion that trade among nations leads to peace….  The greater two nations’ gain from trade the more costly is bilateral (dyadic) conflict.  This notion forms the basis of Baron de Montesquieu’s assertion regarding dyadic dispute.  This paper develops an analytical framework showing that higher gains from trade between two trading partners (dyads) lowers the level of conflict between them….  Crosssectional evidence using various data on political interactions confirms that trading nations cooperate more and fight less.  A doubling of trade leads to a 20% diminution of belligerence."

A slice from the rest of Prof. Boudreaux's post, which is well worth reading in it's entirety [emphasis added]:

"When people trade they must engage with others, mostly strangers; when people trade across political borders they must engage with greater numbers of strangers still.  This trade, though, makes the strangers less strange to each other, because each learns better what the other is like and what the other likes and dislikes.  Trade is peaceful, and so it reveals to each trader the other’s humanity; war reveals the other’s brutality.  Each party to every trade gains; with war, one party certainly losses, and even the ‘winner’ might well, in the end, have lost so much to have made the entire activity a losing proposition."

and to file under sentences I wish I'd written:

"The retaliation incited by war is negative-sum and stupid: “You killed someone whose passport is issued by the same agency as that issues my passport, so I’ll kill someone whose passport is issued by the same agency that issues your passport.  That’ll teach you!”"

Caplan & Boudreaux on Nationalism

Bryan Caplan has written an open letter to nationalism, which is posted here.

Don Boudreaux reflects on this at Cafe Hayek.  A slice from Don's post (do read the whole thing, it is full of Don's characteristic wisdom and insight):

"I reject also the superstition that that particular political institution... is a faithful representative of that multitudinous and extraordinarily complex and diverse group of individuals commonly called “the American people.”  Indeed, I go further and reject even the possibility that such a group of people can possibly ever have anything reasonably called “a representative” or an agent or agency that carries out its ‘will.’  (Groups of people have no ‘will.’  It is mistaken anthropomorphism to imagine otherwise.)"

"I feel no, I owe no, and I will never give any allegiance to any nation or any government as such.  My allegiance is to whatever peoples and institutions promote human freedom, flourishing, and peace."

Well said.  It is heartening to know that we share this world with such clear thinkers as Boudreaux and Caplan.