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“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.”

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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“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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