Parole Board chairman: You're not just telling us what we want to hear?
H.I.: No, sir, no way.
Parole Board member: 'Cause we just want to hear the truth.
H.I.: Well, then I guess I am telling you what you want to hear.
Parole Board chairman: Boy, didn't we just tell you not to do that?
H.I.: Yes, sir.
Parole Board chairman: Okay, then.
Lisa: Dad, don't you see you're abusing your power like all vigilantes? I mean, if you're the police, who will police the police?The Simpsons 1994: episode 92
Homer: I dunno. Coast Guard?
“I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or “incentives” for skill.”
"Hvilke kriterier som ble lagt til grunn da datteren til den tidligere viselandbruksministeren i Bulgaria mottok 700 000 euro i landbruksstøtte, vites ikke. Kvinnen skal eie et par selskaper, men landbruksstøtten mottok hun som enkeltperson, noe som gjør henne til den største individuelle mottakeren av landbruksstøtte i Bulgaria[...]Andre som mottok store beløp over landbruksbudsjettet i fjor inkluderer en svensk trekkspillklubb, en dansk biljardklubb, en nederlandsk kunstløpklubb og Nederlands hovedflyplass Schiphol."
"Who should be surprised that 60-year-olds have higher incomes and more wealth than 30-year-olds? Moreover, that was also true 30 years ago, when today’s 60-year-olds were just 30. But these are not different classes of people. They are the same people at different stages of their lives."
"There was a time when the poor stole bread to feed their children. You could understand that. But today, when riots and looting sweep through some slum, food is left unmolested while the looters—supposedly “enraged” by some injustice— can be seen happily carrying off TV sets, fancy clothes and the like."
"Som understreket i denne så vel som tidligere studier av fattigdom fra Statistisk sentralbyrå finnes det ikke klart etablerte og allment aksepterte definisjoner av hva som menes med fattigdom og hvordan den best kan måles."
No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).Frédéric Bastiat, The Law,1850.
Det er stadig viktig å motvirke venstresidens trang til politisk styring også der hvor individer, uavhengige institusjoner eller kontrollerte markeder løser oppgavene best. Samtidig må man stanse populistiske krav som betyr større offentlige utgifter kombinert med mindre offentlige inntekter. Og man må hindre at populister skaper stemninger som hindrer den miljøpolitikk som verden trenger for å avverge miljøkatastrofe.
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"Does the brain control you or are you controlling the brain? I don't know if I'm in charge of mine."
"Uansett hvor selvisk mennesket synes å være, så finnes det utvilsomt i dets natur noen grunnleggende prinsipp som får det til å interessere seg for andres skjebne. Noe som får andres lykke til å fremstå som viktig for oss, selv om vår personlige vinning kun ligger i gleden over å være vitne til slik tilstand."
Clement Atlee was standing at a urinal. Winston Churchill came in, goes to the opposite end of a long row of urinals.
Atlee: "Feeling a bit standoffish, Winnie?"
Churchill: "Why, no, Atlee. Its just when you see something large and in private hands, you try to nationalise it".
“large piles of snow at the sides of the roads, and lower speeds on roads with wintry condition[...]the winter has also meant that fewer two-wheeled vehicles, and their unprotected riders, have been on the roads.”
Varje gång någon börjar tala om "rättvis konkurrens" ska du hålla koll på din plånbok, för den är på väg att länsas. Det rådet från en amerikansk ekonom tycker jag är tillämpligt på diskussionen om statsstöd till industrin.
Som ekonomhistorikern Eli Heckscher en gång konstaterade: Antingen lönar sig ett företag och då behöver det inte något statsstöd, eller också lönar det sig inte, och då förtjänar det inte statsstöd.
"logging contributes only modestly to [tropical] deforestation[...]9 out of 10 tropical trees are felled for agriculture or cattle ranching. Most trees cut for their wood are used locally for timber; only 4 per cent are taken for timber, and less than a third of that material ever enters international market"
[...]av alternativene i spørreundersøkelsen er det bare saksbehandler i offentlig sektor og butikkmedarbeider som kommer dårligere ut på statusoppfatning.
«Slitsomt», «dårlig lønn», «kjedelig», «stress og bråk» er de mest framtredende, negative nøkkelordene nevnt.
Abstract:
Could anarchy be good for Somalia’s development? If state predation goes unchecked government may not only fail to add to social welfare, but can actually reduce welfare below its level under statelessness. Such was the case with Somalia’s government, which did more harm to its citizens than good. The government’s collapse and subsequent emergence of statelessness opened the opportunity for Somali progress. This paper uses an “event study” to investigate the impact of anarchy on Somali development. The data suggest that while the state of this development remains low, on nearly all of 18 key indicators that allow pre- and post-stateless welfare comparisons, Somalis are better off under anarchy than they were under government. Renewed vibrancy in critical sectors of Somalia’s economy and public goods in the absence of a predatory state are responsible for this improvement.
"Spørsmålet blir hvordan vi kan endre OECD fra å komme med høyrepolitiske anbefalinger som ikke virker - til å komme med venstrepolitiske anbefalinger som faktisk virker? Her er det et meget spennede lerret å bleke framover."
Det eneste som virkelig kunne gjort vei i vellinga, hadde vært en ny, non-profitt matkjede.
Det kunne betydd mer utvalg og bedre kvalitet, men først og fremst at prisdifferansen mellom produksjonskostnader for produsentene og salgspris ut til kundene hadde vært mye mindre enn de er i dag.
Sannsynligvis burde den vært offentlig eid, av hensyn til målet, og av hensyn til å gi kjeden en finansiell sikkerhet i ryggen.
"Hverken Kolstad, Mikael Rahmanian, Simon Haveland eller Magnus Kock fikk dispensasjon fra kravene da de kom inn på skolen. De går i tredje klasse, mens det var i fjor at skolen begynte å gi mange dispensasjoner. Totalt ble 67 av 552 studenter tatt opp på særskilt grunnlag i fjor. Kock peker på at det ikke bare er personer med minoritetsbakgrunn blant disse, men også kvinner og personer fra distriktene".
"Learning from other countries is always useful[...]But straightforward borrowing[...]of policies without a full understanding of the context that enabled them to be successful[...]is a recipe for disaster."
"Market socialism requires a shift in the discipline of economics from understanding the workings of the economy to attempting to plan the economy[...]Economists are no longer students of economy but become active players—engineers who plan economic activity."
"Hayek’s reasoning for why planning cannot work is not limited to the problem that the information required for the task of coordinating the plans of a multitude of individuals is too vast to organize effectively. The knowledge utilized within the market by entrepreneurs does not exist outside that local context and thus cannot even be organized in principle. It is not that planners would face a complex computational task; it is that they face an impossible task because the knowledge required is not accessible to them no matter what technological developments may come along to ease the computational task."
For a man, when he gets up in the morning, to be able to put on a suit of clothes, a piece of land has had to be enclosed, fertilized, drained, cultivated, planted with a certain kind of vegetation; flocks of sheep have had to feed on it; they have had to give their wool; this wool has had to be spun, woven, dyed, and converted into cloth; this cloth has had to be cut, sewn, and fashioned into a garment. And this series of operations implies a host of others; for it presupposes the use of farming implements, of sheepfolds, of factories, of coal, of machines, of carriages, etc.
[...]thanks to that readiness to associate which is the distinctive characteristic of our species, these operations have been distributed among a multitude of workers, and they keep subdividing themselves more and more for the common good to the point where, as consumption increases, a single specialized operation can support a new industry. Then comes the distribution of the proceeds, according to the portion of value each one has contributed to the total work. If this is not association, I should like to know what is.
Note that, since not one of the workers has produced the smallest particle of raw material from nothing, they are confined to rendering each other mutual services, to aiding each other for a common end; and that all can be considered, each group in relation to the others, as middlemen.
Do we, then, need a socialist, under the pretext of planning, to come and despotically destroy our voluntary arrangements, put an end to the division of labor, substitute isolated efforts for co-operative efforts, and reverse the progress of civilization?
It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murraysier en av de som kjente "Murray" i boken. Han mener det bokstavelig. Det kostet samfunnet mange millioner å ikke gjøre noe med denne Murray. Budskapet er at det "lønner seg" å sette inn mange ressurser for å gjøre noe med problemet snarere enn å kun håndtere det. Fascinerende stoff.
Norske selskaper har mye å bidra med. Tenk på planleggingen av jobbene i et helt samfunn, tilføyer Brende.
