Bonus Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on March 25, 2019
… is from page 203 of David Henderson’s 2002 book, The Joy of Freedom:
Consider this scenario: Say a million of us have gardens; instead of spending our money to maintain our gardens, we are forced to give that money to the government so that it can decide how the money should be spent on our gardens. Ridiculous, right? We know that most of our gardens would be less well maintained and that the tax cost to many of us would be higher than the cost of simply maintaining our own gardens. But somehow, many of us think differently when it comes to health care or education or any of the hundreds of other things that government does.
DBx: Yes.
A widespread belief is this: to oppose government supplying – or at least paying for – X is to oppose X. That this belief is nonsense is nicely illustrated by David’s example of gardens. Gardens are many in number and very often very high in quality, yet government is not involved in gardening. And to oppose government involvement in gardening clearly is not to oppose gardens.
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