Jane Galt on Consistency

by Don Boudreaux on February 20, 2007

in Politics

Jane Galt eloquently describes one of the most critical and persistent logical errors made by those who see (or imagine) a problem and immediately call on government to solve it:

Tyler Cowen points out that Medicare was twenty years behind private industry in covering prescription drugs.  Ezra responds
that that’s just because the insurers and drug companies wanted it that
way. Which brings up one of my perennial peeves about people advocating
national health insurance or any other big programme: they point out
all the ways in which public choice problems make the current system
suck, and then proceed to outline their future plans as if those
problems will somehow magically fall away in their system.

Comments

{ 1 comment }

Sam Grove February 20, 2007 at 12:50 pm

What it boils down to is that whoever controls the money has the power. Having government control our money does not empower us, but rather empowers the politicians (and bureaucrats) and those that are able to influence same.

When we get on the government bus, we don't get to choose the destination, how we get there, whether we get there, or when we can get off.

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