Fiat Tragedy

The true tragedy of a fiat money regime is that bogus economic growth by way of monetary and fiscal stimulus can go on only until either the collapse of hyperinflation brings an end to the artificial boom or the amount of accumulated debt makes state bankruptcy inevitable.

Antony P. Mueller (March 12, 2010)

Racism

Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.

... Rather than looking to government to correct our sins, we should understand that racism will endure until we stop thinking in terms of groups and begin thinking in terms of individual liberty.

Ron Paul  (April 16th, 2007)

Ethics and Economics

I tell my students that economics as such cannot tell you which values to have, but I would argue that endeavoring to understand what careful economic reasoning can say about the world is an important part of being an ethical person because the unintended consequences of policies that fly in the face of basic economic reasoning have been tragic.

Art Carden (4/21/2010 in an article titled Why Economics Is Crucial for Ethics )

Human Choice and Chess

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

Adam Smith (1759, Theory of Moral Sentiments, paragraph VI.II.42)

Noble Self Interest

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?

Milton Friedman (1979, in an interview with Phil Donahue)

Releasing Productive Activities

So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people, that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by free enterprise systems.

Milton Friedman (1979, in an interview with Phil Donahue)