The most obvious rule of social science is that people will abuse any
free good. The price of "free" evokes unbounded demand while choking off
supply. In the perverse feedback loops of "free," free health care
comes to mean hypochondria, illness caused by needless exams and
treatments, queues for an ever-expanding portfolio of mediocre services,
and ultimately euthanasia under government bureaucracy. Free drugs mean
widespread addiction to existing medications and an end to medical
innovation. Free money, manifested in the near zero-interest-rate policy
of the Federal Reserve, diverts the wealth of savers to favored
governments and crony capitalists while creating shortages for everyone
else.
-George Gilder, a founding fellow of the Discovery Institute in today's WSJ. (His
books, according to the WSJ, include Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century.)
No comments:
Post a Comment