Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on November 24, 2018
… is from page 100 of Eamonn Butler’s 2018 monograph, An Introduction to Capitalism:
None of us (not even a regulator) can anticipate everything, so we buy products on the basis of the best information we have about them. Most people are perfectly capable of making their own choices on that basis. They also know their own needs far better than some distant official: regulators cannot know what particular motives prompt individuals to buy what they do – so what right or reason do they have to stop them? If we bail people out when they make mistakes, we merely encourage them to be careless; if we deny them the power to choose, we turn them into ciphers. It is more effective, and more moral, for people to accept the consequences of their choices.
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