Tuesday, October 26, 2010

I think this is especially true of politics

From Dan Galvin's Thought For The Day mailing list:

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
-G. K. Chesterton

There is a great rush by many politicans to pass new laws and get rid of old laws, without having any real understanding of what the changes will have on society.

3 comments:

Luke Holzmann said...

...that Chesterton guy had some good ways of putting things. [smile]

~Luke

Abe said...

Based on the number of laws we now have, they clearly prefer adding new laws to getting rid of old ones.

Abe said...

Of course, this brings up a few questions: Is it possible for legislators to know the ultimate impact of the laws they create? And even if it were, is the proper role of government to steer society toward desired outcomes?

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." - F. A. Hayek