Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 109 of University of Notre Dame philosopher James Otteson’s hot-off-the-Cambridge-University-Press book, Seven Deadly Economic Sins (2021):

The impulse to trust experts and to give them authority over us is a venerable one, perhaps indeed having evolutionary roots in our development as a small-group species whose survival in evolutionary times might well have depended on our willingness to submit to and follow a single leader…. A dispassionate look at the actual historical results of obedience to such all-too-human leaders, however, should temper our enthusiasm. History is replete with atrocities committed by people following such leaders….