David R. Henderson Quotes

Milton Friedman and I had our differences about foreign policy. I tried, in vain, to persuade him to be against the first Gulf war. Even there, though, he publicly supported, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, my economic argument against the war. He stated, ‘Henderson’s analysis is correct. There is no justification for intervention on grounds of oil.’

Our oil supply is secure, not because our government threatens to use force against those who would make it insecure, but because the world’s oil suppliers want to make money.

People often criticize government schools in the United States for teaching little and doing it in boring ways, yet many advocate increasing the amount of time that children are in school. This reminds me of the old joke about two people complaining about the food at a restaurant. ‘The food tastes awful,’ says one. The other replies, ‘And the portions are so small.’ Given the amount of oppression and simple boredom that goes on in government schools today, thank goodness the portions are so small.

The efficacy regulations on drugs, economists have found in countless studies, have delayed the introduction of new drugs by years and added hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of developing a typical new drug.

Why did all these people—Lady Godiva, the barons of England, William Tell, the Founding Fathers of the United States, and Henry David Thoreau—oppose taxes? Because they understood that taxation is, in essence, legalized theft. When a government taxes you, it takes something you own without your consent. That’s exactly what a thief does. The main difference is that the thief is breaking the law, whereas the government is (usually) taking your money legally.

It is not always easy to define property rights. What is striking, though, is how often government legislation and court rulings have prevented the common law system from handling pollution problems even when common law seemed to be working well toward resolving them.

British author Thomas Carlyle called economics ‘the dismal science’ because the free-market economists around him were strongly opposed to slavery.

West points out that early in the nineteenth century, the British government was quite upset about the number of working-class people who were reading political literature. The government, writes West, took ‘fiscal and legal action against the spread of newspapers, especially those critical of government.’

The bottom line is that in a free market, any employer who discriminates on grounds that have nothing to do with productivity will pay a cost for doing so. The economic system that removes the props from racism is free markets.

Throughout history, governments have generally been much less tolerant of racial difference than private employers have been. This is because the government officials who discriminate incur no cost for doing so, as long as discrimination is politically acceptable…

I noted that one reason we buy so much health care is that the price to us is artificially low; if we paid the full price for health care, we would make better life-style decisions on exercise, smoking, and foods and would need less health care.

Early in the twentieth century, the railroad business was highly unionized. Just as in South Africa, employers often wanted to hire black people. But unions run by white people excluded blacks from membership and often committed acts of violence against black workers who tried to get such jobs.

The history of economic growth is the history of people making more with less and shifting into new jobs that were unheard of in the previous generation.

The worst discrimination against black people in the United States was the introduction of slavery. Short of murder and torture, slavery is the greatest possible violation of people’s rights. It is essentially legalized kidnapping.

Barbara Walters asked Ronald Reagan, what do you think about the Soviet Union and how much of a threat they are to us and to our freedom. And he said, ‘They’re a threat, but the biggest threat to our freedom is our own governments.’ And I agree with him. It’s governments at every level in the United States right now and in most of the world that are assaulting freedom daily.