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Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 246-247 of Anthony de Jasay’s 1998 volume, The State [2] (original emphasis):

Behind every worthy cause there stretches a queue of other causes of comparable worthiness.  If cancer research deserves state support, should not the fight agains poliomyelitis also be assisted, as well as other vital areas of medical research?  And don’t the claims of medical research help to establish a case for supporting other valuable sciences, as well as the arts, and physical culture, and so on in ever-widening ripples?  It is easy to visualize the rise of successive pressure groups for research, culture, sport, while an avowedly anti-culture or anti-sport pressure group seems simply unthinkable.  Once again, the bias of the situation is such that its development will be onward and outward, to embrace more causes, to press home more claims, to redistribute more resources, hence stimulating more new demands – rather than the other way round, backward and inward, to a less pronounced group structure and a less redistributive, more “minimal” state.

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