‘The State jealously guards the power over Society which it has acquired during a climate of fear .. the State (which was feared and despised in 1789) .. the “protective” service rendered by the State is paid for not only with taxes but also with subservience. Society is much poorer for it.’
– Frank Chodorov, Does the State Protect Us?, 1959
‘And, as Hayek said, “the worst get on top,” for the act of controlling requires tough individuals who are willing to use the club, the knout, and the jail sentence to get their way.’
– John Chamberlain, Economic Enlightenment from Ballve, January 05, 2010
‘Second, they support their theory with charts and diagrams that make it look scientific and exact. They use technical terms and mathematical formulas, as a professional magician uses his stage props, to produce conclusions that disbelieving laymen are unable to refute. They make liberal use of government statistics on national income, savings, investment, consumer spending, and the like. Many people regard these figures as precise and highly significant, so that the proposal to use them as guides for “compensatory fiscal and monetary policy” appears simple and practicable.’
– Vernon Orval Watts, Keynesianism and Socialism, 1952
‘We must hope that those in the Western world who seem to be ready to sacrifice intellectual freedom because it does not mean the same economic opportunity for all will yet realize what is at stake.
The great danger comes from the fact that we take so much of the inheritance of the liberal age for granted — have come to regard it as the inalienable property of our civilization — that we cannot fully conceive what it would mean if we lost it. Yet freedom and democracy are not free gifts which will remain with us if we only wish.
The time seems to have come when it is once again necessary to become fully conscious of the conditions which make them possible, and to defend these conditions even if they seem to block the path to the achievement of other ideals.’
– F.A. Hayek, What Price a Planned Economy? April 1938
‘Utility is the importance that we attach to things. We make choices on the basis of this importance. Indeed, in economic terms, “utility,” “importance,” and “value” are synonyms. We choose what is more important to us and give up what is less important. Utility is subjective.
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..there is no need to construct an artificial, ad hoc thought process that would supposedly predict human behavior. Human action, not prediction, is the centre..’
– Predrag Rajsic, What’s Wrong with the Utility Function?, December 29, 2009
‘..Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social workshops, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their gratuitous or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun — reject all systems, and make trial of liberty — of liberty, which is an act of faith in God and in His work.’
– Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (Stirling Translation, 1874)