Samizdata

“So promoting wealth creation – at home and abroad – means changing the climate of opinion so that politicians and bureaucrats who argue for measures that damage business and economic competitiveness are less likely to succeed. In short, we need to campaign for capitalism. To promote profit. To fight for free trade. To remind, indeed to educate our citizens about the facts of economic life. The message is simple – you cannot win the battle against red tape unless you win the intellectual and cultural battle for open markets.”

– David Cameron MP

With hindsight it can be stated that the outcome of the Industrial Revolution was that human beings no longer needed to go out and grab other people’s possessions by force, but merely to settle down, work hard and exchange the considerable surplus they produced for something they wanted from the surplus someone else produced. How simple it all seems! Yet how hard to put into practice.

– Findlay Dunachie (1928-2005 – his funeral is today) in The Success of the Industrial Revolution and the Failure of Political Revolutions: How Britain Got Lucky, page 6, published in 1996 by the Libertarian Alliance.

“When government does, occasionally, work, it it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don’t need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

P.J. O’Rourke, All the Trouble in the World (page 199).

I love the punchline.

“IPN is the bastard child of the Institute of Economic Affairs.”

– Indymedia

Against the Government’s position, I can see no purpose in disputing that our helping to overthrow Saddam Hussein has inflamed Islamist totalitarian groups. Why deny what we should take pride in?
– Oliver Kamm