Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 137 of the 2010 Revised Edition of Thomas Sowell’s 2009 book, The Housing Boom and Bust (original emphasis):

Those who are saying today that better regulation could lead to better results are voicing an attractive truism that is very misleading in the real world. Similarly, when Professor Richard A. Posner, in his book A Failure of Capitalism, says “we need a more active and intelligent government to keep our model of a capitalist economy from running off the rails.” The desirability of such a government says nothing about its likelihood – and says nothing about the enormous damage that can be done by a government which is active and whose intelligence is devoted to serving its own political purposes, rather than the well-being of the economy. Conjuring up hypothetical governments to deal with real world problems can be a dangerous indulgence, especially in a world where so many are eager to cite “market failure” as a reason for government intervention, as if government is unfailing.