Bobs Rants

by Don Boudreaux on May 26

DBx: "Rapists, thugs, and thieves improve their lives by using coercion or threats of coercion to reduce the range of options available to others.  Civilized, peaceful, and productive people improve their lives by using commerce to expand the range of options available to others.  Neither the raw facts of the matter nor the ethics of these alternative courses of action are altered one bit if the rapists, thugs, and thieves hire well-dressed agents to carry out their schemes and rename these plunderous schemes “trade policy.”"

“Consensus: “The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus?” -Margaret Thatcher