all the trouble in the world

I have been reading P.J. O'Rourke's 1994 book: All the Trouble in the World. Like other books of his, it is both entertaining and insightful. There have been many quotable passages. The most recent couple being:

Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.

Government is not in the business of producing results. Government is in the business of producing government: passing laws, changing rules, setting up bureaucracies. This is why government is always more interested in problems than solutions.