In my latest National Post column I say major problems with British socialized medicine would offer important lessons for Canada if we could just get over our fixation with our health system being above reproach. If you agree, please join us for the EEA’s “Freedom School” on “Meeting the Healthcare Challenge” on Oct. 22 and 23.
“If persons do not behave in accordance with their own economic self-interest, objectively defined and measured, on what basis do they act?... The economist is well-equipped to recognize mush for what it is, and when noneconomists hypothesize that persons want to ‘do good,’ he quickly detects the absence of predictive content.”
“Is Constitutional Revolution Possible in Democracy?” in Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy
“Spouses stay with their mates with Alzheimer’s, not because there is any hope for pay back or even appreciation, but because of a keen sense of duty, and so on.”
Amitai Etzioni, “Libertarian Follies,” World and I, May 1995
In my latest Epoch Times column I use Neil Winokur’s book The Grumpy Accountant to lament that Canada’s tax system has been outrageously and needlessly complicated and harsh for many decades. Why do we let them do it to us?
“‘The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please,’ wrote Edmund Burke, the hero of American conservatives, ‘we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.’”
David Frum Dead Right
“Surely what matters in a dogma – religious, political or any other kind – is not the motive of those who advance it, but whether it is true or false.”
Ted and Virginia Byfield in “Orthodoxy” in British Columbia Report August 18, 1997
“Saying the problem with a major government intervention wasn’t socialism but bad pricing decisions is like saying the Hindenburg was a success except for the fire.”
Here I quote myself from June 3, 2002 in reaction to former Energy Minister Marc Lalonde making some such excuse about the National Energy Program
In my latest National Post column I say nobody won the election and things won’t improve until the parties admit it and accept their share of the blame.