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Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 186-187 of Jim Buchanan [2]‘s 1990 essay “Socialism Is Dead but Leviathan Lives On [3],” as this essay is reprinted in volume 1 of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan: The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty [4]:

The selfsame barriers that Adam Smith sought to abolish are everywhere resurging, as if from the depths of history. And the selfsame arguments are heard in the land, both in support and in opposition. The arguments for Leviathan’s extensions are not versions of the socialist’s dream; they are, instead, simple efforts to claim a public interest in a single sector’s private profit.

There will be no escape from the protectionist-mercantilist regime that now threatens to be characteristic of the post-socialist politics in both Western and Eastern countries so long as we allow the ordinary or natural outcomes of majoritarian democratic processes to operate without adequate constitutional constraints.

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