Russ Roberts with two quotes explaining
why politicians often scare me:Two quotes for would-be car czars and other experts to remember:
From Hayek's The Fatal Conceit: The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
From Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments: The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.
Russ Roberts with two quotes explaining why politicians often scare me:
1 comment:
No doubt we have to fear the 2 extremes: attempts at total top-down control, and also no intervention or control whatsoever, which is anarchy.
As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz writes of our current economic calamity:
The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal. Looking back at that belief during hearings this fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, "I have found a flaw." Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working." "Absolutely, precisely," Greenspan said. The embrace by America—and much of the rest of the world—of this flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually arrive at the place we are today.
--end of quote.
Too much power...whether in govt, or business, leads to problems.
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