Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Two Quotes I Like

In the United States we like to believe we are a capitalist society based on individual responsibility. But we are what we do. Not what we say we are. Not what we wish to be. But what we do. And what we do is make it easy to gamble with other people's money -- particularly borrowed money -- by making sure that almost everybody who makes bad loans gets his money back anyway. The financial crisis of 2008 was a natural result of these perverse incentives.
--Russell Roberts in Gambling With Other People's Money: How Perverted Incentives Caused the Financial Crisis.

Libertarians and socialists are motivated by the same problem: corruption. Because corruption generally requires political pull, libertarians believe you battle corruption by limiting government. Socialists believe political pull is mitigated by a better government, which for some reason is always a larger government.
--Bailey Norwood