Why governments' attempts to pick winners produce more losers than winners.
"Foreigners believe in individualism, but we are individuals. We aren't the servants of any state. On the contrary, the state serves us. And poorly, too. I think we should give it notice. For foreigners the state is an entity. For us it's an appliance, like a gas furnace. And to spend all day thinking about central heating is an odd thing to do except in very cold weather", Parliament of Whores, Preface to the British Edition
"By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland?", The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Ch.II