Lue C Fur
Evil member
"I met a couple conservatives, and I realized I never met any conservatives in my life. ... (O)ne started sending me books. His books ...made more sense than my books."
Mamet was suddenly exposed to ideas he had never encountered before.
"Shelby Steele's 'White Guilt,'" he said, "led me to the works of Tom Sowell and through them (friend.A.) Hayek and Milton Friedman."
Two things hit him especially hard: the benefits of economic competition and the limits of leaders' ability to plan society.
"If you stop licensing taxi cabs, tomorrow you will see guys and women on every street corner saying, 'Who wants to go to XYZ address?' (The cabbie) will put five people in the car and drive them to that address.
When the guy drops them off, if he's smart, he'll say: 'Tomorrow -- same thing, right? What do you guys want to drink for breakfast?' There will be cappuccino and ice tea and glass of milk. After X months, he will have three cars; after X months, he will have a fleet. And everyone will be competing to meet the needs of the commuters, which also is going to reduce traffic.
Why are they allowed to compete? Because the government got the hell out of the business."
Mamet also read Hayek's last book, "The Fatal Conceit."
"What Hayek is talking about is that we have to have a constrained vision of the universe. The unconstrained vision, the liberal vision, is that everything can be done, everything is accomplishable," he said. "We don't have the knowledge. ... There is only so much that government can do. ... It would be nice if giving all of our money to the goverment could cure poverty. Maybe, but giving money to the government causes slavery."
For Hayek, the "fatal conceit" is the premise that politicians and bureaucrats can make the world better -- not by leaving people free to coordinate their private individual plans in the marketplace -- but by overall social and economic planning.
Imagine trying to plan an economy, Mamet said, when we barely know enough to raise our kids. " The guy in government can't know everything."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011...eral-converted-to-conservatism/#ixzz1S0VZOIcY
Mamet was suddenly exposed to ideas he had never encountered before.
"Shelby Steele's 'White Guilt,'" he said, "led me to the works of Tom Sowell and through them (friend.A.) Hayek and Milton Friedman."
Two things hit him especially hard: the benefits of economic competition and the limits of leaders' ability to plan society.
"If you stop licensing taxi cabs, tomorrow you will see guys and women on every street corner saying, 'Who wants to go to XYZ address?' (The cabbie) will put five people in the car and drive them to that address.
When the guy drops them off, if he's smart, he'll say: 'Tomorrow -- same thing, right? What do you guys want to drink for breakfast?' There will be cappuccino and ice tea and glass of milk. After X months, he will have three cars; after X months, he will have a fleet. And everyone will be competing to meet the needs of the commuters, which also is going to reduce traffic.
Why are they allowed to compete? Because the government got the hell out of the business."
Mamet also read Hayek's last book, "The Fatal Conceit."
"What Hayek is talking about is that we have to have a constrained vision of the universe. The unconstrained vision, the liberal vision, is that everything can be done, everything is accomplishable," he said. "We don't have the knowledge. ... There is only so much that government can do. ... It would be nice if giving all of our money to the goverment could cure poverty. Maybe, but giving money to the government causes slavery."
For Hayek, the "fatal conceit" is the premise that politicians and bureaucrats can make the world better -- not by leaving people free to coordinate their private individual plans in the marketplace -- but by overall social and economic planning.
Imagine trying to plan an economy, Mamet said, when we barely know enough to raise our kids. " The guy in government can't know everything."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011...eral-converted-to-conservatism/#ixzz1S0VZOIcY
