… is from page 291 of the 1965 paperback edition of Jim Buchanan’s and Gordon Tullock’s justly celebrated 1962 classic, The Calculus of Consent; it’s especially germane to any discussions that take place today regarding Europe’s and America’s efforts at fundamental fiscal reform (emphasis added):
It seems sheer folly to expect that the interest groups will, unilaterally and independently, exercise sufficient self-restraint, given existing rules. To expect them to do so amounts to expecting them to act contrary to their raison d’être.
Or, as Milton Friedman said, “cats don’t bark.”
