This whole notion of loyalty to one’s country really has no meaning whatsoever, since countries always change, just as do people who live in them. The only loyalty worth anything is that to one’s values and principles.
– commenter Alisa
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I used to consider myself a patriot… no more. There is simply nothing to be proud about and we have the government the voters deserve. But I didn’t leave England, England left me. – Thaddeus Tremayne, overheard over dinner. August 12th, 2012 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The world’s energy problem seems to have been solved, but governments do not seem to have noticed. August 10th, 2012 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you think £2m for a project without any policy implications is expensive, just imagine how expensive it would have been with policy implications. – The IEA’s Kristian Niemitz on the Office for National Statistic’s venture in ‘happiness research’. August 8th, 2012 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Call me selfish, but the only life I want to ruin is my own. – A rather (I think) noble sentiment, expressed in a recently-shown-on-Brit-TV episode of the show by one of the 2 Broke Girls, the dark haired one who has always been poor as opposed the blond one who used to be rich. Find a bit more of the conversation during which this was said, by scrolling down here, to where it says “Brokeback Girls”. Lesbians eh? Wherever they look, they see more lesbians. Mind you, the brunette character is called “Max”. August 1st, 2012 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
If conservative Republicans can’t understand that fewer people want to associate with them because they lied when they said they favored a government that did less and spent less, nothing can save the party of Lincoln from eventual receivership. And if liberal Democrats can’t fully grasp that voters are turned off not by the color of Obama’s skin but by the failure of his presidency, they too will continue to see fewer and fewer people marching under their banner. July 30th, 2012 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Obama also wishes us to believe that, because successful producers learned something from government teachers, used government roads and bridges, employed government research, and the like, this means they don’t really own their success or wealth. Rational Americans know full well that the government funds such things by forcibly confiscating the wealth of producers. Rational Americans also know that a bum is as free to use a government bridge as is a successful business owner, but the business owner chose to apply his intelligence and work hard to build something great.” In some ways, Obama’s assertion that we don’t really deserve credit for, or earn, what we produce because of such factors is a bit like the idea that the guard-dog that protects our house owns it, not the owner. I get the impression that Obama’s comments are causing him quite a lot of damage, and I hope he continues to be pounded for them. July 20th, 2012 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. Quoted – I kid you not – near the end of this video interview by South African cricketer A. B. de Villiers. The three match series between England and South Africa, featuring six of the world’s top ten Test bowlers and eight of the top seventeen Test batsmen and which will will decide which team is ranked No 1 in the world, begins today at the Oval. July 19th, 2012 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
“It is the job of economists to point out trade-offs; it is the job of politicians and planners to deny that trade-offs exist.” – William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden, page 256. July 16th, 2012 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today’s SQotD is already taken, and in any case yesterday’s SQotD was also about banking, but here is more quotability, from regular quotee here, Steve Baker MP, writing for the Spectator Blog about the LIBOR scandal:
In the Cobden Centre round robin email flagging up this piece, the words “linked from Guido” were included in the email title. This stuff is not merely being said, relentlessly. It is getting around. Here is some further evidence of that, from the BBC:
And they go on to provide the answer given to them by Detlev Schlichter: yes. All of which confirms the Austrianism as Number 2 meme. LATER: More incoming from the Cobden Centre flagging up this programme, the first part (of two) of which will be shown at 9pm on Channel 4 this evening. Various Cobdenites contribute. Plus, see also this. July 12th, 2012 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We’d rather like people not to live on flood plains. Because, you know, their existence is evidence that that’s where it floods sometimes. Not being able to insure your house against floods if you live on a flood plain is what is known, in technical language, as a “fucking clue” that perhaps you shouldn’t be living there. Surely to God at least one person in government knows someone at Lloyds of London?” – Tim Worstall. I love it when he gets justifiably riled. July 12th, 2012 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Enough diagnosis. What is the cure? A change of personnel will not do it. The search for chief executives who are not motivated by greed and for regulators who are sufficiently god-like to know how to design rules that cannot be gamed will never succeed. The truth is, the financial system, like the whole of human society, was not designed in the first place; it evolved. And the answer is to allow a better one to evolve. July 11th, 2012 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
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