“If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, 'What would I do if I were a horse?'"

"[E]conomist Ely Devons via economist Ronald Coase via economist Hernado de Soto" according to William Watson in National Post December 29, 2001

NB this interview was done before the government said it would pay Admiral Norman’s legal bills. But I stand by my claim that the ordeal he went through, including having to fund the case himself while it was in progress and with no reasonable expectation that his bills would be covered, constitutes a powerful deterrent to anyone rocking the boat or, in this case, the supply ship..

In my latest National Post column I say the real crisis in Canadian public health care is that we aren’t willing to consider that it’s working badly because we’re doing it wrong.

“Everything Milton [Friedman] touches has the feel of his optimism…”

William F. Buckley, Jr. in National Review July 18, 2005 [at which point Friedman was 93]

In a piece in C2C Journal that I forgot to post at the time, I argue that social licence sounds good, or did until we discovered you couldn’t get one. But in fact it’s just another way of saying “tyranny of the majority” which is bad in principle and worse in practice because it means mob rule by a fanatical minority