Quotation of the Day…
Posted By Don Boudreaux On April 16, 2012 @ 8:41 am In Law,Politics,Seen and Unseen | Comments Disabled
… is from page 214 of the 1978 Arlington House edition of David Friedman’s 1973 book The Machinery of Freedom [1] (link added); (I take Friedman here to mean “statutes” or “legislation” when he uses the word “law” or “laws”):
Since laws apply to everyone in their jurisdiction, whether or not he has worked or voted for them, good laws under governmental institutions are a public good [2] and are consequently underproduced. Worse still, bad law is often less of a public “good” than good law. The result is that the laws of a government are worse, not better, than its citizens, in terms of their individual values and beliefs, “deserve.”
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[1] The Machinery of Freedom: http://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690680/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311198833&sr=1-1
[2] public good: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicGoods.html
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