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“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.”

Quote by Antony Davies

Book:Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
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Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics

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Antony Davies

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“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.”

GovernmentPoliticsSocietyEconomics
Book:Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
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“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.”

GovernmentPoliticsSocietyEconomics
Book:Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
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“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.”

GovernmentPoliticsSocietyEconomics
Book:Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
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“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.”

GovernmentPoliticsSocietyEconomics
Book:Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
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“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.”

GovernmentPoliticsSocietyEconomics
Book:Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
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“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.”

GovernmentPoliticsSocietyEconomics
Book:Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
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“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.”

GovernmentPoliticsSocietyEconomics
Book:Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
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“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.”

GovernmentPoliticsSocietyEconomics
Book:Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
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“As a result of creating a victimless crime, the United States has become, in some ways (and especially in some places and directed toward some people), a police state. Since 2003, more than 10,000 police officers nationwide have been assigned full time to various drug task forces. This is, coincidentally, the size of a military division, and it is approximately the same number of soldiers that the United States had stationed in Afghanistan in 2017.”

GovernmentPoliticsSocietyEconomics
Author:Davies
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