In my latest National Post column I say the Liberal ban on (some) single-use plastics is a classic illustration of policy made without any attention to incentives and consequences.
“A charitable view is that [Alan] Greenspan is what Karl Popper called a ‘historicist’ – one who believes the way people respond to incentives changes, so that economic models true last year are no longer true today…. But, what looks like an open and forward-looking mind may be, as Popper suggested, nothing more than a mind without bearings.”
Filip Palda in Ottawa Citizen March 17, 2000
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the ongoing Canadian faith in government despite its incompetence on everything from navy caps to inflation brings its own punishment.
“As to fighting, keep out of it if you can, by all means. When the time comes, if it ever should, that you have to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to a challenge to fight, say ‘No’ if you can – only take care you make it clear to yourselves why you say ‘No.’ It’s a proof of the highest courage, if done from true Christian motives. It’s quite right and justifiable, if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger. But don’t say ‘No’ because you fear a licking, and say or think it’s because you fear God, for that’s neither Christian nor honest. And if you do fight, fight it out; and don’t give in while you can stand and see.”
Thomas Hughes Tom Brown’s Schooldays
“Human beings can control their own acts, but not the consequences of their acts to themselves or to others. Society can subject the distribution of wealth to whatever rules it thinks best: but what practical results will flow from the operation of those rules, must be discovered, like any other physical or mental truths, by observation and reasoning.”
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, quoted in Thomas Sowell, Classical Economics Reconsidered
In my latest Epoch Times column I say Patrick Brown’s claim to be a “pragmatic” conservative actually means voters have no idea what he would do if elected and neither does he… like an amazingly long line of political figure prone to boasting of their mental and moral hollowness..
“You have not come back from hell with empty hands.”
A handwritten note from André Malraux to Whittaker Chambers about his book Witness, quoted by William F. Buckley Jr. in National Review August 6, 2001 (adding “I remembered the gratitude Chambers felt” on receiving it.
“Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation.”
Charles Mackay Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds