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James M. Buchanan

James M. Buchanan Quotes

Economist

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Famous James M. Buchanan Quotes

“If you create an artificial scarcity through public policy, artificial rent so to speak - setting up a new import quota or giving out a particular office that is very beneficial - people are going to invest money, time and resources in trying to secure that opportunity. If the value is created independently of the search for it, the search for it is wasted.”

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“Imagine that Queen Elizabeth I, in her time, had the opportunity to give out a monopoly for playing cards within the kingdom. She knew she was going to give it to one of her courtiers. These courtiers would then all try to curry her favour. Meanwhile, they would not contribute anything to the product of the kingdom, in fact, they were wasting resources trying to secure a single prize. That, more or less, is rent seeking.”

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“If you have an area where high-income receivers concentrate, you have a higher fiscal capacity. That fiscal capacity is a valuable resource and will create rent-seeking. People will trying to get that resource one way or the other, including immigration. It is very much like the medieval peasants putting their sheep on the commons pasture. It is better than the open range, and if you let them have open access they will, in fact, put too many sheep on the pasture and waste the value that the pasture has.”

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“You can get a coalition of senators from particular states in America, for example, who want to construct highways or dams or ports which may well be very inefficient. The taxes would be paid by the people over the whole country, but the benefits would go to the few people in those particular locations. This type of spending is a rather gross waste of resources that worsened over the years as the government has been allowed to do more particularized things.”

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“Politically, sometimes you get situations where rent control will go through. It is especially true in an emergency, where there is a sudden, sharp increase in demand for housing or a cut back in supply. People will simply not allow the marketplace to allocate housing resources and so you get pressures for rent control. Once you have it, it is hard to eliminate.”

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