Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on October 31, 2019
… is from pages 146-147 of the 1971 Augustus M. Kelley reprint of the 1880 Sixth American edition of Jean-Baptiste Say’s 1803 A Treatise on Political Economy (Traité d’économie politique):
But personal interest is no longer a safe criterion, if individual interests are not left to counteract and control each other. If one individual, or one class, can call in the aid of authority to ward off the effects of competition, it acquires a privilege to the prejudice and at the cost of the whole community; it can then make sure of profits not altogether due to the productive services rendered, but composed in part of an actual tax upon consumers for its private profit; which tax it commonly shares with the authority that thus unjustly lends its support.
DBx: Thus do producers, including workers, who are protected by tariffs from foreign competition maintain their faux dignity.
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