Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

… is from page 70 of the late Anthony de Jasay‘s brilliant 1995 paper “Frogs‘ Legs, Shared Ends, and the Rationality of Politics,” as this paper is reprinted in the 1997 collection of some of de Jasay‘s writings, Against Politics:

Any political decision that, by invoking the common good, overrides the will and wishes of some to satisfy others, is the execution of a value judgment about individual wills and wishes. The more vulgar kinds of claims about the common good, of course, often masquerade as truth-claims.

DBx: Insofar as “common-good capitalism” is an economic system that differs from the liberal market order as championed by scholars such as Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, Armen Alchian, and James Buchanan, it is falsely labeled. It is not really “common-good capitalism”; it is, instead, “what-some-particular-individuals-arrogantly-think-is-good authoritarianism.”