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… is from page 230 of Robert Higgs’s September 1986 Freeman essay, “To Deal With A Crisis: Governmental Program or Free Market? [2]” as this essay is reprinted and slightly revised in the superb 2004 collection of some of Bob’s essays, Against Leviathan [3] (original emphasis):
Emergency government programs, then, offer exceptional opportunities for those who would substitute their own values for those ordinarily guiding the allocation of resources in the market. When the cry of “Emergency!” goes up, the public’s resistance to government takeovers comes down. Hence, aspiring redistributors of income, collectivist planners, and do-gooders at other people’s expense rush in to exploit the unusual opportunity for replacing market processes with government controls. Whatever one may think about the immediate desirability of an emergency government program, however, one must recognize that the program is almost certainly only a beginning; and what follows in its train may be far less desirable.