“If everything possible is done to prevent the market from fulfilling its function of bringing supply and demand into balance, it should come as no surprise that a serious disproportionality between supply and demand persists, that commodities remain unsold, factories stand idle, millions are unemployed, destitution and misery are growing and that finally, in the wake of all these, destructive radicalism is rampant in politics … With the economic crisis, the breakdown of interventionist policy — the policy being followed today by all governments, irrespective of whether they are responsible to parliaments or rule openly as dictatorhsips — becomes apparent. Hampering the functions of the market and the formation of prices does not create order. Instead it leads to chaos, to economic crisis.”
“Socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state.”
“All this passionate praise of the supereminence of government action is but a poor disguise for the individual interventionist’s self-deification. The great god State is a great god only because it is expected to do exclusively what the individual advocate of interventionism wants to see achieved.”
“An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole system of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off: The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself.”
“It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process.”
“Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps.”
“The essence of the interventionist policy is to take from one group to give to another. It is confiscation and distribution.”
“Therefore nothing is more important today than to enlighten public opinion about the basic differences between genuine Liberalism, which advocates the free market economy, and the various interventionist parties which are advocating government interference.”
There are limitations to the powers of governments and of peoples that inhere in the constitution of things, and that neither despotisms nor democracies can overcome.
Legislatures are as powerless to abrogate moral and economic laws as they are to abrogate physical laws. They cannot convert wrong into right or divorce effect from cause, either by parliamentary majorities, or by unity of supporting public opinion. The penalties of such legislative folly will always be exacted by inexorable time. While these propositions may be regarded as mere commonplaces, and while they are acknowledged in a general way, they are in effect denied by many of the legislative experiments and the tendencies of public opinion of the present day.
John Mackay
Toronto General Trusts Building,
Toronto, 31st March, 1914
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
Mark Twain
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.”
Woodrow Wilson.
This, along with several other great related quotes, come from a
Sean Johnson post.
“When John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” we heard his words with ears that had been conditioned to receive this message and hearts that did not resist it. We heard it surrounded by fellow citizens who had known lives of sacrifice and hardships from war, the Great Depression and segregation. All around us seemed to ingest and echo his sentiment and his words. Our country and our principles were more important than our individual wants, and by discharging our responsibilities as citizens, neighbors, and students we would make our country better. It all made sense.
Today, we live in a far different environment. My generation, the self-indulgent “me” generation, has had a profound effect on much around us. Rarely do we hear a message of sacrifice — unless it is a justification for more taxation and transfers of wealth to others. Nor do we hear from leaders or politicians the message that there is something larger and more important than the government providing for all of our needs and wants — large and small. The message today seems more like: Ask not what you can do for yourselves or your country, but what your country must do for you.
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“[T]here are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution — try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up.”
