… is from Mark Pennington’s December 19th blog post over at Pileus (original emphasis):
The OWS brigade along with the more mainstream left believe that greater regulation, more political control of markets and higher taxes on the wealthy will rebalance the system, breaking up the existing power structure. They fail miserably however to explain why the wealthy won’t use their current power to find ways of manipulating this increased intervention via continuous rent seeking. Adding yet more interventions and taxes which discourage the formation of new fortunes will simply provide additional opportunities for the current elite to avoid the ‘creative destruction’ characteristic of unfettered market competition.
May 2012 be filled with less cronyism and more capitalism; fewer special privileges and more competition; fewer Big Plans imposed from above and more extensive emergent orders bubbling up from – and out of – peaceful and creative responses to quotidian opportunities and ‘disequilibria,’ responses fueled by bourgeois virtues and dignity; less Man of System hubris and more regard for (to quote Thomas Sowell) the need for “elbow room” for men and women who, if peaceful, are entitled to “a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of their ‘betters.'”
Happy 2012 everyone.
