Pithy Quotables That Caught My Eye
So pithy they stand on their own . . . but follow the links nevertheless.
Steve Stewart-Williams offers many good Hitchens quotes to choose from:
Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay. —Christopher Hitchens
This post from Greg Kukianoff is a great rundown of all the many recent challenges to the principle and right of free speech:
Rejecting European speech codes doesn’t leave Americans defenseless against the worst harms. Laws already exist against threats, stalking, harassment, discrimination and violence. A new category that turns moral disgust into police action is not needed. Disgust is a tribal instinct, and tribalism fuels the fire that reason is meant to extinguish.
Three from Scott Sumner in his post on systemic analysis, which is filled with pithy quotables including the third one in this group itself a quote originally from Alex Nowrasteh & Ilya Somin.
Systemic analysis is all about looking beyond the surface. Most people respond to a bad experience in a business by blaming the business. I do that on some occasions, but more often I blame government regulation. Today, I had a bad experience at CVS. I blame the government regulation that prevents me from buying medication without a prescription. In my view, bad regulations and a bad tort law system explain more than 90% of my bad experiences with the private sector. The other 10% are customer service phone lines.
and:
Environmentalists often oppose solar, wind, hydro and nuclear. Anti-trust advocates often oppose low prices. Immigration advocates often (unintentionally) create a public backlash against immigration. Affordable housing advocates tend to make housing less affordable. Labor advocates enact policies that lower real wages and raise unemployment. Safety advocates make the world less safe by making the perfect the enemy of the good. Civil rights advocates enact discriminatory policies. Peace advocates often give aid and comfort to aggressors. Medical ethics advocates enact policies that kill tens of thousands of people. Education reformers usually make kids dumber.
and the requote:
Nationalism’s failures in the 20th century, from starting two world wars to genocide to jingoistic economic policies that have immiserated millions, rank it as a horrific failed ideology, second only to communism. Conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians rightly mock leftists who claim that “real communism hasn’t been tried” or that “the Soviet Union wasn’t really communist” when confronted with the disastrous effects of their policies. Those who make similar excuses for nationalism are on no firmer ground.
Bryan Caplan uses the “F” label (note that this was from before the homicides of Renee Good and Alex Pretti):
The world is a confusing place, and major events occasionally help us attain clarity. Almost anyone with a conscience has been troubled by stories about the brutality of recent immigration enforcement. But as long as you accept the idea that it’s morally acceptable for government to arrest and expel someone simply because “he’s not one of us,” the methods ICE has been using make sense. They’re treating the people they call criminals as if they’re criminals. Yes, brutally enforcing fascist laws is worse than enforcing them laxly. But the primary evil is not the methods of enforcement, but the laws themselves.
Alex Tabarrok checks in on the department of unintended consequences:
To let Americans buy smaller cars, Trump had to weaken fuel-efficiency standards. Does that sound crazy? Small cars, of course, have much higher fuel efficiency. Yet this is exactly how the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards work.
One goal I have in sharing these is to get you to click through to read the entire piece. Another is to invite you to follow these brilliant thinkers.
Substacks referenced: