Quotes about "Politics & Government"

It is impossible to objectively define how free a market is. This is a political definition. Government is always involved, and those free marketers are as politically motivated as anyone. ”

What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy itself. When they say we need to insulate economic policies from politics, they are in effect advocating the castration of democracy. ”

Indeed, willingness to challenge professional economists and other experts is a foundation stone of democracy. If all we have to do is to listen to the experts, what is the point of having democracy? ”

Democracy, despite its limitations, is in the end the only way to ensure that policies do not simply benefit the privileged few. ”

Sometimes people with strong ideology, whether left-wing or right-wing, refuse to do something simply because they believe it is wrong, when doing it actually benefits them. For some people, it's not just about money and political power. ”

Contrary to what professional economists will typically tell you, economics is not a science. All economic theories have underlying political and ethical assumptions, which make it impossible to prove them right or wrong in the way we can with theories in physics or chemistry. ”

A lot of things that we cannot buy and sell in markets used to be totally legal objects of market exchange - human beings when we had slavery, child labour, human organs, and so on. So there is no economic theory that actually says that you shouldn't have slavery or child labour because all these are political, ethical judgments. ”

I think this notion that public enterprises do not work and therefore nationalization will be a disaster, I mean, it's not supported by evidence. ”

By liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionised the structure of society. ”

If you challenge the constitution and if you challenge the borders of Iraq and the borders of the region, this is a public invitation to the countries in the region to violate Iraqi borders as well, which is a very dangerous escalation. ”