Cooperation and Coercion Quotes

“Finally, the money to pay for an increased minimum wage must come from somewhere, and there are only four places from which it can come: other minimum wage workers, in the form of layoffs and reduced hours; higher wage workers, in the form of static or reduced compensation; investors, in the form of lower profits; or customers, in the form of higher prices. How much each of the groups pays for the minimum wage hike depends on how competitive the various marketplaces are.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“Consider how the minimum wage impacts workers with different educations. Over the past 30 years (on average) each ten-percentage point increase in the federal minimum wage as a fraction of the average U.S. wage rate has been associated with no increase in unemployment among workers with college degrees, a one and a half percentage point increase in unemployment among workers with high school diplomas, and a three and a half percentage point increase in unemployment among workers without high school diplomas. Politicians are picking winners and losers, but they are lying about whom they’ve picked.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“In both the public and the private sectors, one can find people who are altruistic, selfish, smart, stupid, capable, incompetent, and just about every other description. They are all drawn from the same mass of people in roughly the same proportions. What is true of all of these people is that they pursue what they believe will make them happy, and they respond to the incentives that surround them. When those incentives are tied directly to their job performance, people’s quest for happiness encourages them to behave in ways that satisfy the people for whom they perform their jobs. But when people’s incentives are tied to something else, like voters avoiding the cost of becoming informed, or politicians attracting more voters, or bureaucrats making their jobs less difficult, the outcomes that emerge can be very different from the outcomes people had in mind when they empowered government to pursue those outcomes in the first place. Consider the typical experiences with the Post Office versus FedEx, Amtrak versus Southwest, applying for a driver’s license versus applying for a credit card, or applying for federal financial aid versus applying for a bank loan.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“When politicians talk about raising the minimum wage, they talk about the single working mother who is holding down two jobs to support her family. The reality is that the average minimum wage worker is part time and lives in a household with a family income of more than $53,000, which is about the United States median household income.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“Compare Socrates then, one of the smartest men who ever lived, to just about every member of the political class today. Political orientation scarcely matters. Nearly everyone, Republican, Democrat, or Independent, who aspires to any sort of political office from small town mayor to President of the United States, begins his political journey with the belief that he knows best how other people should live. And it is the goal of every politician to inflict his knowledge on the rest of us. And why wouldn’t it be? If they really know how people should live, why wouldn’t they try to impose their ideas on the rest of us?”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“In addition to the nation’s twelve wars, both declared like World War II and undeclared like the Korean conflict, the United States has fought three others beginning in the 20th century. They have all been declared, in a way, but they ultimately share more in common with the Vietnam War than with any other. Enemies are ill defined, victory is indescribable (or indeed, impossible), strategies and tactics seem to change with the political winds, and resolve, on the part of both those who fight and those who endure, has been replaced with a form of tired resignation. For all of these reasons, these wars, the wars on poverty, drugs, and terror, are unwinnable. And because they are unwinnable, they will also tend to be perpetual.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“In the end, when voters are criticized they are criticized on only two grounds: they are ignorant, or they are unconcerned. What voters are is rationally ignorant. There are any number of things that they do not know, and given the various sorts of voting and information costs they face, it is perfectly reasonable that they remain ignorant of these things. After all, they have more important things to do, things like mowing the lawn, picking up their children from soccer practice, making dinner, and worrying about paying bills. The problem is that, in our idealized way of looking at the political process, we generally assume that voters are something that they are not: concerned with all things in equal measure, and ready, willing, and able to act on that concern.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“Government is a powerful tool, but not a magic one. And once people realize that unintended outcomes are the rule rather than the exception, they can begin to temper their expectations as to what government can actually achieve. Because while government cannot accomplish all things, the belief and expectation that it can are probably the most dangerous beliefs and expectations that we have as members of a political body. Every sentence that begins with, “the government should…” implies the use of coercion. And the coercion that follows is not always worth what it costs, in terms of money, time, emotional distress, or human dignity. The trick is in knowing under what circumstances the reality of what coercion can achieve is more desirable than the reality of what cooperation can achieve.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“Bureaucrats work for government, and government faces no competition. People who work at the post office - as kind and thoughtful as they may be - have less incentive than do workers at the local grocery store to be concerned with customers having a good experience and coming back. If the post office cannot earn enough money from customers who use its service (as it hasn’t for more than the last decade), it can turn to the federal government for increased funding. The government, in turn, will coerce the funding from taxpayers. By contrast, a grocery store would just go out of business to be replaced with one that served its customers better.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“Natural rights are rights people have by virtue of their humanity. Because natural rights arise from our nature as humans, they precede governments and they render humans fundamentally equal. When governments enact laws to treat people equally under the law, they are not bestowing equality. They are protecting the innate equality that exists regardless of whether particular governments choose to respect it.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“The federal government started requiring seat belts as standard equipment in automobiles in 1968, and in the years that followed, 49 states have mandated seat belt use for all or some of the occupants of moving automobiles. During that period, motor vehicle fatalities have, in fact, decreased, and it seems pretty clear that seatbelt use is responsible at least for some of the decline.

But there is more to the story. Seatbelt use protects people inside the cars. But it does little for people outside the cars. As seatbelt use rose, driving became safer. As driving became safer, the cost to drivers of being inattentive fell. And as the cost of being inattentive fell, drivers could afford to exercise less care.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“The faith that people unthinkingly place in government and its ability to accomplish any number of important goals is at the same time a faith in the people who work in government, so-called public servants. If we contend that only government can accomplish certain things, then we are, by definition, asserting that the people who work in government are somehow more knowledgeable, more capable, more well-intentioned, or more motivated than their counterparts outside of government.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“These mass shootings resulted in 547 deaths over 27 years, for an average of 20 per year. You would never know this by watching television. While these sorts of mass shootings have remained remarkably constant over the years, media coverage of them has skyrocketed. Why? Because the media sells advertising, not news. And violence sells. We don’t have an epidemic of mass shootings, we have an epidemic of opportunism. How do you know? Because statistics on gun violence tend to get less attention than do anecdotes about gun violence.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“To put mass shootings in perspective, 1,600 times the number of Americans are killed annually on roads as in mass shootings. Of course, one is often the result of human error or inattention, while the other is almost always the result of a deranged mind. But in the end, a life lost is just that: a life lost. Further, the number of gun-related suicides dwarfs the number of gun-related mass killings. There were almost 300,000 gun-related suicides from 2000 through 2015, for an average of more than 18,500 per year. This might well be a problem, but it is surely not the problem that anyone is talking about when they refer to the “epidemic of gun violence.” We react to sensationalistic media coverage of the events that claim the fewest lives, by definition diverting our attention from those that claim the most.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“People attribute almost magical powers to government because they clearly see the outcomes they want to attain - more jobs, less crime, better education - and they clearly see that government has the power to coerce. People imagine that, to achieve X or to prevent Y, all one need do is to pass a law requiring people to do X or prohibiting them from doing Y. The false assumption is that people respond to laws. They don’t. They respond to incentives. And all the people involved - from the voters who elect politicians, to the politicians who craft laws, to the bureaucrats who implement the laws - seek to maximize their happiness.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“When government limits its force only to preventing people from imposing harm on each other, people have the maximum ability to cooperate. It is from cooperation, not coercion, that human society flourishes.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“What we can be sure of is that the gun debate is a boon for politicians on both sides of the aisle. Whether they are pro- or anti-gun, politicians get to use this emotionally charged issue in their bids for office. And they need never fear that the issue will go away because data suggest that the solution they debate – restricting access to guns – has no effect one way or the other.

The short, but real lesson here is that even when we commit to using the powerful tool of coercion, even when we are convinced its use is utterly warranted, we might not get anything resembling the results we intended. Coercion is not a magic wand, it is simply a tool. If there is actually no effect one way or the other, as the data indicate here, the only effect coercion achieves is to limit people’s freedom. Where gun violence is concerned, coercion is simply not the correct tool for the job, and emotive posturing will never change that.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that most workers move out of minimum wage jobs quickly, and that they are very unlikely to return to them. Of workers who start out at the minimum wage, 46 percent move on to earn more than the minimum within one year. Of workers still earning the minimum wage in their second year of work, 55 percent graduate to higher wages by their third year. This pattern continues, so that for every 100 workers who start their careers at the minimum wage, five years later only three are still earning the minimum wage – the other 97 have moved on to higher paying jobs. And this accounts for the few workers who slip back into the minimum wage after earning more.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“From 1792 until 1928, federal government spending remained relatively stable at about two-and-a-half percent of all spending in the economy. But when Franklin Roosevelt became President in the early 1930s, the data reveal a fundamental change in the size and scope of government. Government spending, which had remained steady for more than 130 years, began to grow from less than 3 percent of the economy prior to 1928, to 10 percent in the 1930s, to 17 percent in the 1950s, then to 22 percent today.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“Making it harder to obtain guns makes it harder for criminals to commit crimes. But making it harder to obtain guns also makes it harder for victims to defend themselves, and makes it easier for criminals to commit crimes.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“Finally, the gun homicide and murder data leave out an extremely important point. To contribute to the homicide data, a gun must be fired and kill someone. Guns can be fired without killing, and they can be used to threaten without being fired. The Bureau of Justice maintains records on instances in which crime victims protect themselves with a gun, either by firing the gun or threatening to fire the gun. Over the five years from 2007 through 2011, there were 235,700 instances in which a potential victims of violent crime defended themselves with a gun in the U.S. Over the same period, there were 64,695 gun deaths (excluding suicides) – and some of those deaths include deaths in which the potential victim killed the criminal. In other words, from 2007 through 2011, potential victims used guns (either by firing or threatening to fire) in defense against violent crime well over three times as often as someone used a gun to kill another. And this ignores gun use in defense against property crime. From 2007 through 2011, potential victims either fired or threatened to fire guns in defense of property crime 103,000 times. In total, guns were used defensively more than five times as often as someone used a gun to kill another.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“In the end, government exists to protect the rights of individuals. It does not exist to protect society, least of all from itself. This is because society is not something that can be protected. Society emerges from the interactions of its members over time. “Protecting society” has no real meaning, precisely because society is always a work in progress. It is constantly refining itself. To “protect society” would be to freeze it, or some aspect of it, in place. And this would destroy society by contradicting its very nature as an emergent phenomenon. So when we use coercive methods in an attempt to “protect society” rather than the individuals who comprise it, we end up with things like the Salem Witch Trials, the Trail of Tears, black chattel slavery, Japanese internment, and numerous other offenses.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“Voluntary association is the tool society uses when its members are free to behave as they will. Government is the tool society uses to force its members to behave in certain ways. Cloaking the tool in the civility of democracy does not change its essence, as a democratically elected government only appears non-threatening to the majority. This is not to say that government is not a necessary and useful tool. It is to say that it is an extremely dangerous one.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“We imagine that the voters’ goal is to advocate laws they think will be beneficial to society as a whole, or to meaningful smaller constituencies who need assistance in some way. Voters accomplish this goal by voting for politicians who support the sorts of legislation they favor. We imagine that the politicians’ goal is to do what’s in the best interest of society, and that the way they do this is to design and vote for effective laws of the type the voters want. Finally, we imagine that the bureaucrats’ goal is to serve the public, and the way they do this is by executing the laws passed by legislators to the ends that the legislators intended. This is the way people typically imagine that government works. But none of this comports with what we understand about human behavior.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“Politicians seek to win elections not by offering sound public policy that will yield good results, but by appealing to 50 percent plus one of the voters. The way they appeal to that many voters is by appealing to the median voter. But the median voter often wants something very different than do people with strong opinions on either side of an issue. Removing the rose-colored glasses that have us romanticizing what politics is is the first step to understanding politicians. Politicians seek first to maximize their own happiness, because that’s what all humans do. Understanding this sweeps away the 1950s civics class vision of the political process in favor of a vision that is a lot more realistic.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“The first steps toward gun control in the United States, though, were doubtlessly rooted in racism. The first gun control measures in this country were designed to keep firearms out of the hands of newly freed slaves upon conclusion of the Civil War.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“It turns out that it is easier for an employer to prove that it did not hire a disabled worker for a reason unrelated to the worker’s disability than it is to prove that it fired the worker for such a reason. Consequently, the Americans with Disabilities Act actually led to a decrease in employment rates for the disabled. The law had exactly the opposite effect that lawmakers intended.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“The minimum wage is an example of coercion. Many people believe that it is an acceptable application of coercion because the minimum wage protects workers. It guarantees an hourly income, and many people have benefitted over the years from this federal wage floor. Many people have earned higher wages than they would have without minimum wage legislation. The dirty secret of the minimum wage, though, is that it doesn’t help everyone. Any number of people are hurt, and many of them are the same workers the minimum wage was intended to benefit.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“At some point in our history we decided that the coercive power of government should be used as a force for attaining good rather than merely a force for preventing bad. This point of view replaced the previous view, which held that government is a necessary though dangerous thing. In short, we traded in Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson for FDR.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

“At some point enough voters decided that government was less a thing to be frightened of than it was a tool with which they could accomplish all manner of good. In short, people decided that they wanted a good deal more in terms of positive rights than the minimal version they had previously experienced. In exchange, the negative rights they had possessed to that point had to give way to some degree in favor of the positive rights they sought. This necessarily meant that some of the potential for cooperation among them had to give way to a greater level of coercion.”
― Antony Davies, Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics