Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 365 of Robert Higgs’s Spring 2000 Independent Review article, “The So-Called Third Way,” as this article is reprinted in the superb 2004 collection of some of Bob’s essays, Against Leviathan (link original):

The age-old dream of politicians is to starve and pluck the goose while making off with an ever larger gathering of golden eggs. As for the fluff about government’s promoting the public interest, [Anthony] Giddens needs to take a course in public choice, or at least to review Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Governments are good at many things – for example, the surveillance of unoffending citizens at home and the bombing of hapless men, women, and children abroad – but promoting the public interest is not one of those things.