In this AIER article, economics professor Don Boudreaux observes that humanity is the poorer because Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died so young. Imagine the musical wonders he might have created had he lived to, say, 70 rather than 35.
So?
Boudreaux then points out that humanity is similarly made poorer when government policies impede economic creativity, such as taxes that divert resources from innovators and into the maw of the government, which often squanders them. He writes, “Perhaps it seems ludicrous to compare music that Mozart would have composed but didn’t to economic outputs that would have been produced but weren’t. Pairs of Crocs are not easily compared to the Prague Symphony. But because the individuals whose creativity and efforts are suppressed, and in some cases completely stymied, by governments’ economic interventions number today in the billions, the total quantity of That-Which-Was-Possible-But-Will-Never-Materialize is inconceivably vast.”
Indeed so.
I would like to return to Boudreaux’s focus on music. Think about the loss of life among composers and performers in that greatest of governmental follies — war. For example, George Butterworth was a very talented composer who was killed in the British Army’s disastrous Somme Offensive in 1916.
Government does much to lower the well-being of people, both economically and culturally.