Quotes About Government

What if, for instance, every Briton were also entitled to a free, unlimited, lifetime supply of transportation? That is, what if everyone were allowed to go down to the car dealership whenever they wanted and pick out any new model, free of charge, and drive it home?

In a typical election period that includes campaigns for the Presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives, about one billion dollars is spent per year, which sounds like a lot of money, unless you care to measure it against something seemingly less important than Democratic elections.It is the same amount, for instance, that Americans spend every year on chewing gum.

it is the public sector I find more interesting, because governments and other non-market institutions have long suffered from the innovation malaise of top-heavy bureaucracies. Today, these institutions have an opportunity to fundamentally alter the way they cultivate and promote good ideas. The more the government thinks of itself as an open platform instead of a centralized bureaucracy, the better it will be for all of us, citizens and activists, and entrepreneurs alike.

regulatory impact analysis

countries that combine free markets with more taxation, social spending, and regulation than the United States (such as Canada, New Zealand, and Western Europe) turn out to be not grim dystopias but rather pleasant places to live, and they trounce the United States in every measure of human flourishing, including crime, life expectancy, infant mortality, education, and happiness

Some are products of the misconception that the benefits of democracy come from elections, whereas they depend more on having a government that is constrained in its powers, responsive to its citizens, and attentive to the results of its policies (chapter

I suggested that a better understanding of human nature in the light of modern science can point the way to an approach to politics that is more sophisticated.

Eisner, together with the historian Randolph Roth, notes that crime often shoots up in decades in which people question their society and government, including the American Civil War, the 1960s, and post-Soviet Russia.33

Parker Brothers tried to introduce a German version of Risk, the board game in which players try to dominate a map of the world, the German government tried to censor it. (Eventually the rules were rewritten so that players were "liberating" rather than conquering their opponents' territories.)

nonstate conflicts kill far fewer people than conflicts that involve a government, perhaps a quarter as many. Again, this is not surprising, since goverments almost by definition are in the violence business.

In 18th-century England this cronyism gave way to open economies in which anyone could sell anything to anyone, and their transactions were protected by the rule of law, property rights, enforceable contracts, and institutions like banks, corporations, and government agencies that run by fiduciary duties rather than personal connections.

A good rule of thumb is that any country that has the word "democratic" in its official name, like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (a.k.a. North Korea) or the German Democratic Republic (a.k.a. East Germany), isn't one.

they say that the government spends too much on "welfare" but too little on "assistance to the poor," and that it should "use military force" but not "go to war.

These conflicts usually occur in failed states, almost by definition. A war that doesn't even bother to invite the government represents the ultimate failure of the state's monopoly on violence.

Today the campaign for world government lives on mainly among kooks and science fiction fans.

The most decisive repudiation of eugenics invokes classical liberal and libertarian principles: government is not an omnipotent ruler over human existence but an institution with circumscribed powers, and perfecting the genetic makeup of the species is not among them.

As for government euphemism, it is contemptible not because it is a form of mind control but because it is a form of lying.

In this way of thinking, government is not a divine fiat to reign, a synonym for "society," or an avatar of the national, religious, or racial soul.

The freedom to complain rests on an assurance that the government won't punish or silence the complainer. The front line in democratization, then, is constraining the government from abusing its monopoly on force to brutalize its uppity citizens.

As wages rise, or when governments pay parents to send their children to school, child labor plummets, which suggests that poor parents send their children to work out of desperation rather than greed.54

Indeed, social spending in the United States is even higher than it appears, because many Americans are forced to pay for health, retirement, and disability benefits through their employers rather than the government. When this privately administered social spending is added to the public portion, the United States vaults from twenty-fourth into second place among the thirty-five OECD countries, just behind France.

Archer found that countries in which women are better represented in government and the professions, and in which they earn a larger proportion of earned income, are less likely to have women at the receiving end of spousal abuse.

As an Auyana man living in New Guinea under the Pax Australiana put it, "Life was better since the government came" because "a man could now eat without looking over his shoulder and could leave his house in the morning to urinate without fear of being shot.

The recoognition of a right to life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the mandate of government to secure the rights are too tepid for a morally viable society.