Anyone who denies the Law of Non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as to not be burned.
Ibn Sina.
(I think Vichy may have had this as a quote at one point in time)
I spent my first decade on the Internet debating atheists (as a devout Christian). I’m no longer a devout Christian but I can assure you that most of the atheists I debated were extremely confused, ideological and had a cornucopia of bungled metaphysics.
Here’s a simple question for you: If you were the Pope - and you had as your goal the conversion of the whole world to the Catholic faith - would you rather non-Catholics to believe in many deities (polytheism) or zero deities (atheism)? It seems to me that zero (atheism) is a lot closer to one (monotheism) than 10 or 100 (polytheism, multi-denominational religion, etc.) is.
Clayton -
It seems to me that zero (atheism) is a lot closer to one (monotheism) than 10 or 100 (polytheism, multi-denominational religion, etc.) is.
There’s numerically close and there’s conceptually close. You want the latter.
Thought this deserved a double post:
How many people here have read Mein Kampf, Hitler’s autobiography/political manifesto? If not, here are some interesting quotes:
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_kampf/mkv1ch02.html
I am firmly convinced to-day that, generally speaking, it is in youth that men lay the essential groundwork of their creative thought, wherever that creative thought exists. I make a distinction between the wisdom of age – which can only arise from the greater profundity and foresight that are based on the experiences of a long life – and the creative genius of youth, which blossoms out in thought and ideas with inexhaustible fertility, without being able to put these into practice immediately, because of their very superabundance. These furnish the building materials and plans for the future; and it is from them that age takes the stones and builds the edifice, unless the so-called wisdom of the years may have smothered the creative genius of youth.
…
everyone who has raised himself through his own efforts to a social level higher than that to which he formerly belonged. In the case of such a person the hard struggle through which he passes often destroys his normal human sympathy. His own fight for existence kills his sensibility for the misery of those who have been left behind.
…
The country lad who migrates to the big city feels attracted by what has been described as easy work – which it may be in reality – and few working hours. He is especially entranced by the magic glimmer spread over the big cities. Accustomed in the country to earn a steady wage, he has been taught not to quit his former post until a new one is at least in sight. As there is a great scarcity of agricultural labour, the probability of long unemployment in the country has been very small. It is a mistake to presume that the lad who leaves the countryside for the town is not made of such sound material as those who remain at home to work on the land. On the contrary, experience shows that it is the more healthy and more vigorous that emigrate, and not the reverse. Among these emigrants I include not merely those who emigrate to America, but also the servant boy in the country who decides to leave his native village and migrate to the big city where he will be a stranger. He is ready to take the risk of an uncertain fate. In most cases he comes to town with a little money in his pocket and for the first few days he is not discouraged if he should not have the good fortune to find work. But if he finds a job and then loses it in a little while, the case is much worse. To find work anew, especially in winter, is often difficult and indeed sometimes impossible. For the first few weeks life is still bearable He receives his out-of-work money from his trade union and is thus enabled to carry on. But when the last of his own money is gone and his trade union ceases to pay out because of the prolonged unemployment, then comes the real distress. He now loiters about and is hungry. Often he pawns or sells the last of his belongings. His clothes begin to get shabby and with the increasing poverty of his outward appearance he descends to a lower social level and mixes up with a class of human beings through whom his mind is now poisoned, in addition to his physical misery. Then he has nowhere to sleep and if that happens in winter, which is very often the case, he is in dire distress. Finally he gets work. But the old story repeats itself. A second time the same thing happens. Then a third time; and now it is probably much worse. Little by little he becomes indifferent to this everlasting insecurity. Finally he grows used to the repetition. Thus even a man who is normally of industrious habits grows careless in his whole attitude towards life and gradually becomes an instrument in the hands of unscrupulous people who exploit him for the sake of their own ignoble aims. He has been so often thrown out of employment through no fault of his own that he is now more or less indifferent whether the strike in which he takes part be for the purpose of securing his economic rights or be aimed at the destruction of the State, the whole social order and even civilization itself. Though the idea of going on strike may not be to his natural liking, yet he joins in it out of sheer indifference. I saw this process exemplified before my eyes in thousands of cases.
…
Let the reader try to picture the following:
There is a lodging in a cellar and this lodging consists of two damp rooms. In these rooms a workman and his family live – seven people in all. Let us assume that one of the children is a boy of three years. That is the age at which children first become conscious of the impressions which they receive. In the case of highly gifted people traces of the impressions received in those early years last in the memory up to an advanced age. Now the narrowness and congestion of those living quarters do not conduce to pleasant inter-relations. Thus quarrels and fits of mutual anger arise. These people can hardly be said to live with one another, but rather down on top of one another. The small misunderstandings which disappear of themselves in a home where there is enough space for people to go apart from one another for a while, here become the source of chronic disputes. As far as the children are concerned the situation is tolerable from this point of view. In such conditions they are constantly quarrelling with one another, but the quarrels are quickly and entirely forgotten. But when the parents fall out with one another these daily bickerings often descend to rudeness such as cannot be adequately imagined. The results of such experiences must become apparent later on in the children. One must have practical experience of such a milieu so as to be able to picture the state of affairs that arises from these mutual recriminations when the father physically assaults the mother and maltreats her in a fit of drunken rage. At the age of six the child can no longer ignore those sordid details which even an adult would find revolting. Infected with moral poison, bodily undernourished, and the poor little head filled with vermin, the young ‘citizen’ goes to the primary school. With difficulty he barely learns to read and write. There is no possibility of learning any lessons at home. Quite the contrary. The father and mother themselves talk before the children in the most disparaging way about the teacher and the school and they are much more inclined to insult the teachers than to put their offspring across the knee and knock sound reason into him. What the little fellow hears at home does not tend to increase respect for his human surroundings. Here nothing good is said of human nature as a whole and every institution, from the school to the government, is reviled. Whether religion and morals are concerned or the State and the social order, it is all the same; they are all scoffed at. When the young lad leaves school, at the age of fourteen, it would be difficult to say what are the most striking features of his character, incredible ignorance in so far as real knowledge is concerned or cynical impudence combined with an attitude towards morality which is really startling at so young an age.
What station in life can such a person fill, to whom nothing is sacred, who has never experienced anything noble but, on the contrary, has been intimately acquainted with the lowest kind of human existence? This child of three has got into the habit of reviling all authority by the time he is fifteen. He has been acquainted only with moral filth and vileness, everything being excluded that might stimulate his thought towards higher things. And now this young specimen of humanity enters the school of life.
He leads the same kind of life which was exemplified for him by his father during his childhood. He loiters about and comes home at all hours. He now even black-guards that broken-hearted being who gave him birth. He curses God and the world and finally ends up in a House of Correction for young people. There he gets the final polish.
And his bourgeois contemporaries are astonished at the lack of ‘patriotic enthusiasm’ which this young ‘citizen’ manifests.
…
reading had probably a different significance for me from that which it has for the average run of our so-called ‘intellectuals’. I know people who read interminably, book after book, from page to page, and yet I should not call them ‘well-read people’. Of course they ‘know’ an immense amount; but their brain seems incapable of assorting and classifying the material which they have gathered from books. They have not the faculty of distinguishing between what is useful and useless in a book; so that they may retain the former in their minds and if possible skip over the latter while reading it, if that be not possible, then – when once read – throw it overboard as useless ballast. Reading is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its chief purpose is to help towards filling in the framework which is made up of the talents and capabilities that each individual possesses. Thus each one procures for himself the implements and materials necessary for the fulfilment of his calling in life, no matter whether this be the elementary task of earning one’s daily bread or a calling that responds to higher human aspirations. Such is the first purpose of reading. And the second purpose is to give a general knowledge of the world in which we live. In both cases, however, the material which one has acquired through reading must not be stored up in the memory on a plan that corresponds to the successive chapters of the book; but each little piece of knowledge thus gained must be treated as if it were a little stone to be inserted into a mosaic, so that it finds its proper place among all the other pieces and particles that help to form a general world-picture in the brain of the reader.
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_kampf/mkv1ch03.html
Surely nobody believes that these chosen representatives of the nation are the choice spirits or first-class intellects. Nobody, I hope, is foolish enough to pretend that hundreds of statesmen can emerge from papers placed in the ballot box by electors who are anything else but averagely intelligent. The absurd notion that men of genius are born out of universal suffrage cannot be too strongly repudiated. In the first place, those times may be really called blessed when one genuine statesman makes his appearance among a people. Such statesmen do not appear all at once in hundreds or more. Secondly, among the broad masses there is instinctively a definite antipathy towards every outstanding genius. There is a better chance of seeing a camel pass through the eye of a needle than of seeing a really great man ‘discovered’ through an election.
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_kampf/mkv1ch10.html
in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_kampf/mkv1ch03.html
The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force. All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people. In no case have great movements been set afoot by the syrupy effusions of æsthetic littérateurs and drawing-room heroes. The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of glowing passion; but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others. It is only through the capacity for passionate feeling that chosen leaders can wield the power of the word which, like hammer blows, will open the door to the hearts of the people. He who is not capable of passionate feeling and speech was never chosen by Providence to be the herald of its will. Therefore a writer should stick to his ink-bottle and busy himself with theoretical questions if he has the requisite ability and knowledge. He has not been born or chosen to be a leader. A movement which has great ends to achieve must carefully guard against the danger of losing contact with the masses of the people. Every problem encountered must be examined from this viewpoint first of all and the decision to be made must always be in harmony with this principle. The movement must avoid everything which might lessen or weaken its power of influencing the masses; not from demagogical motives but because of the simple fact that no great idea, no matter how sublime and exalted it may appear, can be realized in practice without the effective power which resides in the popular masses. Stern reality alone must mark the way to the goal.
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_kampf/mkv1ch03.html
Only he who has experienced in his own inner life what it means to be German and yet to be denied the right of belonging to his fatherland can appreciate the profound nostalgia which that enforced exile causes. It is a perpetual heartache, and there is no place for joy and contentment until the doors of paternal home are thrown open and all those through whose veins kindred blood is flowing will find peace and rest in their common Reich.
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_kampf/mkv1ch04.html
If we consider the question of what those forces actually are which are necessary to the creation and preservation of a State, we shall find that they are: The capacity and readiness to sacrifice the individual to the common welfare. That these qualities have nothing at all to do with economics can be proved by referring to the simple fact that man does not sacrifice himself for material interests. In other words, he will die for an ideal but not for a business. The marvellous gift for public psychology which the English have was never shown better than the way in which they presented their case in the World War. We were fighting for our bread; but the English declared that they were fighting for ‘freedom’, and not at all for their own freedom. Oh, no, but for the freedom of the small nations. German people laughed at that effrontery and were angered by it; but in doing so they showed how political thought had declined among our so-called diplomats in Germany even before the War. These diplomatists did not have the slightest notion of what that force was which brought men to face death of their own free will and determination.
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_kampf/mkv1ch04.html
A State has never arisen from commercial causes for the purpose of peacefully serving commercial ends; but States have always arisen from the instinct to maintain the racial group
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_kampf/mkv1ch06.html
The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. If this principle be forgotten and if an attempt be made to be abstract and general, the propaganda will turn out ineffective; for the public will not be able to digest or retain what is offered to them in this way . . . What, for example, should we say of a poster which purported to advertise some new brand of soap by insisting on the excellent qualities of the competitive brands? We should naturally shake our heads. And it ought to be just the same in a similar kind of political advertisement. The aim of propaganda is not to try to pass judgment on conflicting rights, giving each its due, but exclusively to emphasize the right which we are asserting. Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side.
It was a fundamental mistake to discuss the question of who was responsible for the outbreak of the war and declare that the sole responsibility could not be attributed to Germany. The sole responsibility should have been laid on the shoulders of the enemy, without any discussion whatsoever.
And what was the consequence of these half-measures? The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. As soon as our own propaganda made the slightest suggestion that the enemy had a certain amount of justice on his side, then we laid down the basis on which the justice of our own cause could be questioned. The masses are not in a position to discern where the enemy’s fault ends and where our own begins. In such a case they become hesitant and distrustful, especially when the enemy does not make the same mistake but heaps all the blame on his adversary. Could there be any clearer proof of this than the fact that finally our own people believed what was said by the enemy’s propaganda, which was uniform and consistent in its assertions, rather than what our own propaganda said? And that, of course, was increased by the mania for objectivity which addicts our people. Everybody began to be careful about doing an injustice to the enemy, even at the cost of seriously injuring, and even ruining his own people and State.
Naturally the masses were not conscious of the fact that those in authority had failed to study the subject from this angle.
The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. Its notions are never partly this and partly that. English propaganda especially understood this in a marvellous way and put what they understood into practice. They allowed no half-measures which might have given rise to some doubt.
Proof of how brilliantly they understood that the feeling of the masses is something primitive was shown in their policy of publishing tales of horror and outrages which fitted in with the real horrors of the time, thereby cleverly and ruthlessly preparing the ground for moral solidarity at the front, even in times of great defeats. Further, the way in which they pilloried the German enemy as solely responsible for the war – which was a brutal and absolute falsehood – and the way in which they proclaimed his guilt was excellently calculated to reach the masses, realizing that these are always extremist in their feelings. And thus it was that this atrocious lie was positively believed.
The effectiveness of this kind of propaganda is well illustrated by the fact that after four-and-a-half years, not only was the enemy still carrying on his propagandist work, but it was already undermining the stamina of our people at home.
That our propaganda did not achieve similar results is not to be wondered at, because it had the germs of inefficiency lodged in its very being by reason of its ambiguity. And because of the very nature of its content one could not expect it to make the necessary impression on the masses.
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_kampf/mkv2ch06.html
An orator receives continuous guidance from the people before whom he speaks. This helps him to correct the direction of his speech; for he can always gauge, by the faces of his hearers, how far they follow and understand him, and whether his words are producing the desired effect. But the writer does not know his reader at all. Therefore, from the outset he does not address himself to a definite human group of persons which he has before his eyes but must write in a general way. Hence, up to a certain extent he must fail in psychological finesse and flexibility.
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_kampf/mkv2ch15.html
Here at the end of this second volume let me again bring those men to the memory of the adherents and champions of our ideals, as heroes who, in the full consciousness of what they were doing, sacrificed their lives for us all. We must never fail to recall those names in order to encourage the weak and wavering among us when duty calls, that duty which they fulfilled with absolute faith, even to its extreme consequences.
In regards to the thread on the French Revolution (bold mine).
The Revolution was not directed against the established, but against the establishment in question, against a particular establishment. It did away with this ruler, not with the ruler – on the contrary, the French were ruled most inexorably; it killed the old vicious rulers, but wanted to confer on the virtuous ones a securely established position, i. e., it simply set virtue in the place of vice. (Vice and virtue, again, are on their part distinguished from each other only as a wild young fellow from a Philistine.) Etc.
To this day the revolutionary principle has gone no farther than to assail only one or another particular establishment, i.e. be reformatory. Much as may be improved, strongly as “discreet progress” may be adhered to, always there is only a new master set in the old one’s place, and the overturning is a – building up. We are still at the distinction of the young Philistine from the old one. The Revolution began in bourgeois fashion with the uprising of the third estate, the middle class; in bourgeois fashion it dries away. It was not the individual man – and he alone is Man – that became free, but the citizen, the citoyen, the political man, who for that very reason is not Man but a specimen of the human species, and more particularly a specimen of the species Citizen, a free citizen.
In the Revolution it was not the individual who acted so as to affect the world’s history, but a people; the nation, the sovereign nation, wanted to effect everything. A fancied I, an idea, e. g. the nation is, appears acting; the individuals contribute themselves as tools of this idea, and act as “citizens.”
And another.
The laborer will utilize society for his egoistic ends as the commoner does the State. You have only an egoistic end after all, your welfare, is the humane liberal’s reproach to the Socialist; take up a purely human interest, then I will be your companion. "But to this there belongs a consciousness stronger, more comprehensive, than a laborer-consciousness." “The laborer makes nothing, therefore he has nothing; but he makes nothing because his labor is always a labor that remains individual, calculated strictly for his own want, a labor day by day.” In opposition to this one might, e. g., consider the fact that Gutenberg’s labor did not remain individual, but begot innumerable children, and still lives today; it was calculated for the want of humanity, and was an eternal, imperishable labor.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/context3.htm
In conspiracy books, government bureaucrats — CIA, FBI, military — are very malevolent, and very competent. They carry out their evil schemes with stainless steel efficiency: forging and planting evidence, intimidating witnesses, subverting potentially hostile investigations, killing off people who “know something” dangerous to them. And while they leave a lot of suspicion in their wake, they somehow have never left any hard evidence that would prove a conspiracy beyond doubt. Yet these are the same guys who not only couldn’t win the Vietnam War, they couldn’t even knock off Castro.
“Of course, the Marxians say, every crisis must be worse and worse; the Russians, they say, have no trade cycle. Of course the Russians don’t; they have a depression all the time.” - Mises
I think his birthday is this week so,
One of the more chilling quote I know of:
"Что делать? "
“Shto delat’?”
“What to do?”
Vladimir Lenin,( taken from the Chernyshevsky novel of the same name).
Arguably unworthy of this thread, but I recently watched “Neon Genesis Evangelion” and greatly enjoyed it. It also honestly has some of the greatest undertones of individualistic self-determination that I have ever seen. Literally the entire series could be taken as an allegory for the breaking of tradition and blind authority in favor of individual action, as well as a description of the systems which facilitate, and prevent this from happening. Honestly what it makes me think of the most is existentialism.
From an event inside the main character’s mind at the end of the series:
Do they think the same about the truth that 2+2=4?
I am a big believer in the influence of self hate on ones life, causing great destruction. The book Compassion and Self Hate, by T. I. Rubin, lays it all out [albeit in biggish size words].
Rubin writes that it takes heroic effort to be rid of self hate, so Shinji better be prepared to be in for the long haul.
Due to this Shinji continually chases after many of the same ghosts throughout the series, either being blinded by his own weakness and refuses to act, during which time his friend is almost killed because of his refusal to fight. The alternative is Shinji’s blind adherence to authority because of his refusal to fully think for himself, killing his lover (although it was probably the right thing to do) for all the wrong reasons: I.E because he is ordered to do so, rather than accepting that it had to be done. This in turn leads to greater self hate and violence against one of the very people he is hoping to save against himself
The concept of “truth” is used entirely in the area of self-happiness and personal opinion. Are rainy days bad? Depends on who you are, and you must decide whether or not this is the case, rather than accepting the “common” view of the matter. Even if you reach the same conclusion, you have finally reached it for all the right reasons, which is the only way that one can truly be happy with ones decision.
Random quotes I have saved over the years, not related to economics unfortunately, but I thought I’ll share them anyway.
The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. – Aldous Huxley
It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.
–Baudouin I
Call on God, but row away from the rocks. – Indian proverb
It is technology at its purest: utter simplicity generating infinite complexity. Paul Mungo/Bryan Glough
One must be forever drunken, if you would not feel the horrible burden of time that bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease, with wine, with poetry, with what you please, be drunken without end. Baudelaire
Amy Goodman said when I saw her speak at the college here, “You have to ask, If we had state controlled media, would it be any different?”
“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education,
and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way
if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” - A. Einstein
“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.”
“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”
—Ancient Persian Mass
“On the topic of labels, you [an environmentalist] repeatedly call me a member of “the right”. Again, on what grounds? I am not a reactionary in the sense of not wanting social change: I make this abundantly clear throughout my book. I am not a hierarchy lover in the sense of trusting the central authority of the state: quite the opposite. I am not a conservative who defends large monopolies, public or private: I celebrate the way competition causes creative destruction that benefits the consumer against the interest of entrenched producers. I do not preach what the rich want to hear — the rich want to hear the gospel of Monbiot, that technological change is bad, that the hoi polloi should stop clogging up airports, that expensive home-grown organic food is the way to go, that big business and big civil service should be in charge. So in what sense am I on the right? I am a social and economic liberal: I believe that economic liberty leads to greater opportunities for the poor to become less poor, which is why I am in favour of it. Market liberalism and social liberalism go hand in hand in my view.”
-Matt Ridley
He in whose head or heart or both the State is seated, he who is possessed by the State, or the believer in the State, is a politician, and remains such to all eternity.
“The State is the most necessary means for the complete development of mankind.” It assuredly has been so as long as we wanted to develop mankind; but, if we want to develop ourselves, it can be to us only a means of hindrance.
Can State and people still be reformed and bettered now? As little as the nobility, the clergy, the church, etc.: they can be abrogated, annihilated, done away with, not reformed. Can I change a piece of nonsense into sense by reforming it, or must I drop it outright?
Henceforth what is to be done is no longer about the State (the form of the State, etc.), but about me. With this all questions about the prince’s power, the constitution, etc., sink into their true abyss and their true nothingness. I, this nothing, shall put forth my creations from myself.
I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction.
-Newton’s Principia (General Scholium, 1713)
Hypotheses non fingo: I contrive no hypotheses
“As it is, however, they seem to have read backwards the
parable of the talents. Not to the agent of proved efficiency
do they consign further duties, but to the negligent and
blundering agent. Private enterprise has done much, and
done it well. Private enterprise has cleared, drained, and
fertilized the country, and built the towns; has. excavated
mines, laid out roads, dug canals, and embanked railways;
has invented, and brought to perfection ploughs., looms,
steam-engines, printing-presses, and machines innumerable;
has built our ships, our vast manufactories, our docks; has
established banks, insurance societies, and the newspaper
press; has covered the sea with lines of steam-vessels, and
the land with electric telegraphs. Private enterprise has
brought agriculture, manufactures, and commerce to their
present height, and is now developing them with increasing
rapidity. Therefore, do not trust private enterprise. On
the other hand, the State so fulfils its judicial function as
to ruin many, delude others, and frighten away those who
most need succor; its national defences are so extravagantly
and yet inefficiently administered as to call forth almost
daily complaint, expostulation, or ridicule; and as the nation’s
steward, it obtains from some of our vast public
estates a minus revenue. Therefore, trust the State. Slight
the good and faithful servant, and promote the unprofitable
one from one talent to ten.”
“Most people think the state is a necessary evil. They are half right. It is not necessary.”
‘Rational expectations ’ remains for me a sort of monster living in a cave. I have never
ventured into the cave to see what he is like, but I am always uneasily aware that he may
come out and eat me. If you will allow me to stir the cauldron of mixed metaphors with a
real flourish, I shall suggest that ‘rational expectations ’ is neo-classical theory clutching
at the last straw.
Observable circumstances offer us suggestions as to what may be the sequel of this act
or that one. How can we know what invisible circumstances may take effect in time-tocome,
of which no hint can now be gained? I take it that ‘rational expectations ’ assumes
that we can work out what will happen as a consequence of this or that course of action.
I should rather say that at most we can hope to set bounds to what can happen, at best
and at worst, within a stated length of time from ‘the present ’, and can invent an endless
diversity of possibilities lying between them.
I fear that for your purpose I am a broken reed"
G L S Shackle
Mises on education:
“It is not generally realised that education can never be more than indoctrination with theories and ideas already developed. Education, whatever benefits it may confer, is transmission of traditional doctrines and valuations; it is by necessity conservative. It produces imitation and routine, not improvement and progress. Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them”
This packs a hell of a punch to any asshole intellectual whofancies himself a “radical”