from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:
“The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.” Paul Johnson.
There is no point in setting anything in motion without understanding the “Calculus of Incentives”. All must revolve on this axis, no system involving government workers can ever be reformed because the essential problem of no economic responsibility will never change.
“Politicians can do more funny things naturally than I can think of to do on purpose." Will Rogers.
“They have the usual socialist disease; they have run out of other people’s money.” Margaret Thatcher.
Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning economist said: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." (emphasis added).
“It would be hard to think of a more ridiculous way to make decisions than to transfer those decisions to third parties who pay no price for being wrong.” Thomas Sowell.
Socialism, like all man-made disasters begins with a reasonable, humanistic intent to better the lives of others. Once the intent is there, it becomes easy to assume the method is secondary because intense sincerity is an integral part of the philosophy and the socialist analysis, like most analyses of human behavior seems so logical that facts are unnecessary. Translated into the IS, this reasonable, humanistic intent produces a regal, inefficient bureaucracy protected by the State and surrounded by a slick, relentless public relations apparatus. Socialism’s assumptive conceit is that those who believe they know the desired result know how to achieve it.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C. S. Lewis.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
