“Any transaction freely entered into must benefit both parties. Any transaction that does not would surely be rejected by the party whom it disadvantages.”

Mike Harris and Preston Manning, Building Prosperity in a Canada Strong and Free

In my latest National Post column I say the “Gilets jaunes” in France have legitimate grievances. But unfortunately not legitimate solutions.

“We economists always worry about getting our counterfactual scenarios right; without a yardstick, we are paralyzed. There is an apocryphal story about an economist who, when asked ‘How is your wife?,’ replied: ‘Compared to what?’”

Jagdish Bhagwati, Protectionism

“We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but also with nature and, above all, with those Higher Powers which have made nature and have made us; for, assuredly, we have not come about by accident and certainly have not made ourselves.”

E.F. Schumacher Small Is Beautiful

“Wealth as a whole consists in using things rather than in owning them; it is really the activity - that is, the use - of property that constitutes wealth.”

Aristotle Rhetoric Book I

In my latest National Post column I say the idea of a government cartel to reduce oil production in Alberta is at least as bad as it sounds.