… is from page 235 of the Appendix to the 1991 Liberty Press edition of Bruno Leoni’s 1961 volume, Freedom and the Law; specifically, it’s from an updated version – entitled “Voting Versus the Market” – of Leoni’s 1960 Il Politico essay “Political Decisions and Majority Rule”:
Only voters ranking in winning majorities (if for instance the voting rule is by majority) are comparable to people who operate on the market. Those people ranking in losing minorities are not comparable with even the weakest operators on the market, who at least under the divisibility of goods (which is the most frequent case) can always find something to choose and to get, provided that they pay its price. Legislation is a result of an all-or-nothing decision. Either you win and get exactly what you want, or you lose and get exactly nothing. Even worse, you get something that you do not want and you have to pay for it just as if you had wanted it.
Insightful words (although even Leoni is here too optimistic about what those in winning majorities get; for a variety of now well-known reasons, they almost surely do not get exactly what they want).
