- Some people have that place they want to be, however, they are utterly unqualified to be there. I see this in my students in university: about half of the entering students each year have simply chosen wrong. They sometimes believe with all their hearts that they want and deserve to be in a particular degree program, but simply lack the necessary ability.

- Even if you have the right ambition, you have to at least be in the same neighborhood in order to reach your goal. A brilliant physicist may arise from the slums of London, because schools are, in fact, available; this is unlikely to happen from deepest Africa, for a woman in the Islamic world, or for a poverty stricken child in much of Asia.

- Finally, reality intervenes. I think here in particular of the arts, where commercial success has far more to do with luck than with ability. A look at casting shows reveals an astounding number of genuinely talented musicians, but there simply is not enough need for that many musicians; most will have to settle for music as a hobby, while they earn their livings some other way.

I agree about the length of this posting, and about how most of it should be hidden for display purposes to all but those who choose it. But, I do not know how to contrive this (here on New Samizdata) without risking something worse, like scrubbing rather than merely hiding it, or completely destroying it, or worse.

Perhaps one of those with overall editorial control might be able to sort this?

Imagine living in a world in which TFD2013 had already been and gone!

Being a man with a strict reign on my imagination (particularly concerning numbers, also economics and politics), I see this would indicate government expenditure of just over 13% of GDP.

I would like to see tax freedom day around the end of April. This is no more down to “the art of the possible” than it is to having a self-constrained imagination: it is down to what would be best for the people.

If government expenditure were thus limited, to around half of the economic activity of the non-government sector, that (in the modern world in which shared infrastructure and some shared process is rather important) might well be the right level of support: this as an overriding policy that limits all the others.

We in the UK are close to government expenditure being equal to all non-government economic activity; that is a disaster. All we are left with (one interpretation, my interpretation) from all our economic activity is what the government has done: all the rest being spent on paying for that.

Oh, and I really do like the ASI: Madsen Pirie and the others. I emphasise the link to Madsen’s personal website here, which lightens my every day.

Best regards