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Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty

09/30/2015

Four-time summer fellow at the Mises Institute, Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski, emails: "Over the last two years I wrote over 600 liberty-themed aphorisms, which I have recently published as a book, entitled The Pith of Life: Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty."

In the volume you'll find wisdom such as:

A bad economist believes that pay can be legislated. A good economist believes that legislation can be paid for.

A bad economist believes that prices should be policed by the state. A good economist believes that police should be priced by the market.

A businessman calls himself boss, but his goal is to serve others. A politician calls himself servant, but his goal is to boss others.

A fool believes in designing markets. A person of reason believes in marketing designs.

A fool believes that the market makes profits corrupting. A person of reason knows that it makes corruption unprofitable.

A fool deplores the fact that automation destroys jobs. A person of reason delights in the fact that it makes jobs less automatic.

A good economist believes that his role is to improve the public’s understanding of the market. A bad economist believes that his role is to improve the market’s understanding of the public.

A good economist believes that the ones best suited to deal with the problem of scarcity are entrepreneurs. A bad economist believes that it’s the economists.

A “guaranteed profit” is something akin to a riskless danger.

Plus nearly 600 more.

Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is executive editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in public policy, finance, and international relations from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

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