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Quote by Robert Penn Warren

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Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic. His works are known for their profound social insight and unique portrayal of Southern culture. Warren's poetry and novels have won numerous literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1947 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1955. more

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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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“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.”

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

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

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

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

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