Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 169 of my GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan’s excellent forthcoming – in April 2027, from the University of Chicago Press – book, Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets [footnote deleted]:

This “slippery slope argument” is rooted not in paranoia, but history. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. In the past, when governments received the power to cheaply remedy glaring market failures at low cost, they could have done so and declared victory. They almost never did. Indeed, governments spurned streamlined textbook fixes – like taxing negative externalities and subsidizing positive externalities – from the get-go. Issuing edicts – “command and control” – has far more demagogic appeal. Once governments start issuing edicts, they keep issuing. Angry complaints and shocking incidents organically arise – and the crowd-pleasing response is not cost-benefit analysis, but “decisive action” against malefactors of great wealth and alien lands.