Guy Verhofstadt is geen liberaal maar een mercantilist

Guy Verhofstadt zegt voorstander te zijn van een vrije markt, maar dan wel een streng gereguleerde vrije markt. Daarmee geeft hij dus eigenlijk toe dat hij helemaal geen voorstander is van een vrije markt. Verhofstadt geeft dus toe eigenlijk mercantilist te zijn.

Gary North schreef het volgende over mercantilisten in de 17e eeuw:

Mercantilists in the 17th century said that they believed in markets, but only regulated markets. They believed in monopolies granted by the state. They believed in exchange, but only when regulated by the state. What they really believed in was the expansion of the power of the state. They believed that the wisdom given to state bureaucrats is greater than the wisdom given to society as a whole by means of knowledge possessed by individuals. They believed that centralized knowledge, based on coercive statistics, is better than, meaning superior to, meaning more productive than, information possessed by all of the members of society. The information that all the members of society bring to bear on individual cases is considered inferior knowledge.

Klinkt bekend in de oren? De voorstanders van de Europese Staat denken het inderdaad allemaal beter te weten dan de burgers.

North:

Henry Hazlitt's classic little book, Economics in One Lesson, so completely destroys the arguments of the tariff supporters (*) that there is nothing left of their position; still they keep coming. For two centuries their position has been intellectually bankrupt; still they keep coming.

(*) In dit geval de mercantilisten.