Quotes from “A Plea to Economists who Favor Liberty”

By Daniel Klein (2001)

• Kirzner’s pupil Sanford Ikeda has usefully distinguished two interpretations of bad policy: the deception theses, in which posturing politicians and rent-seekers laugh all the way to the bank, and the error thesis, in which decent and good-willed human beings blunder inexpertly through the complex realms of political economy and trap themselves in a cul-de-sac.#
  Politics

Frank Knight, “AEA Presidential Address” (1950)

• The serious fact is that the bulk of the really important things that economics has to teach are things that people would see for themselves if they were willing to see.#
  Economics

Thomas Szasz, Heresies (1976)

• The more politicians protect people from harming themselves, the more they fail to protect them from being harmed by others.#
  ProverbPolitics