“What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government powers to do something that appears to need doing.”
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
— Robert Anson Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1965)
Government programs are driven by greed, not altruism.
It is the selfish who demand that politicians take money from others, and redistribute it to themselves.
— KAZ Vorpal, But Now You Know (2011)
There is a recent push to censor political speech like the above picture, ban guns, et cetera, to "protect politicians"...but crazed maniacs aside, their fear is healthy for liberty
Where the people fear the government you have tyranny.
Where the government fears the people you have liberty.
— John Basil Barnhill, Indictment of Socialism (#3), transcript of Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism (1914)
Makework "stimulus" jobs are welfare, not employment
A private job pays for itself and more, a form of wealth creation that is self-sustaining;
But a government job only sucks at taxes, burdening the economy, until the money runs out.
The hundreds of billions wasted on foreign aid go straight into the pockets of the tyrants
That’s where all the foreign aid (which might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries) went as well.
The U.S. government still squanders about $20 billion a year this way, and European governments spend proportionally even more; it’s all gone straight down a giant rathole.
— Douglas Casey, Opportunity in Mozambique
It is beyond belief that we know so little about how people get rich or poor, about how it is they come to dwell in comfort and health or die in penury and disease.
Financial markets are the machines in which much of human welfare is decided; yet we know more about how our car engines work than about how our global financial system functions. We lurch from crisis to crisis. In a networked world, mayhem in one market spreads instantaneously to all others—and we have only the vaguest of notions how this happens, or how to regulate it.
So limited is our knowledge that we resort, not to science, but to shamans. We place control of the world’s largest economy in the hands of a few elderly men, the central bankers.
— Benoît Mandelbrot, The (Mis)Behavior of Markets (2004)
Mandelbrot was also a brilliant mathematician, the father of Fractal Geometry
Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All too Human
Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food.
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1785)
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.
– Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already…What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”
— Adolf Hitler, on Public Education, speech in November 1933
The government that seems the most unwise,
Oft goodness to the people best supplies;
That which is meddling, touching everything,
Will work but ill, and disappointment bring.
– Tao Te Ching
The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society’s advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung.
— Albert Jay Nock “Our Enemy, the State“
Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920’s until the 1960’s they warned of global warming. From the 1950’s until the 1970’s they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.
– Senator James Inhofe, Monday, September 25, 2006, See the pattern of ice age/warming claims here
This chart shows the alternating claims of coming ice age and global warming, overlaid with NOAA's own current claims of climate change. Note that they not only turn every minor change into a major disaster, but sometimes they actually get it completely wrong.
I want people to be able to get what they need to live: enough food, a place to live, and an education for their children. Government does not provide these as well as private charities and businesses.
—Colonel David Crockett, member of Congress 1827-32, 1832-35
But Now You Know
Words of the Sentient 