“The product of over-civilisation is shamelessness.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News May 2, 1908, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (9-10/22)
In my latest National Post column I ask whether Jagmeet Singh and other prominent Canadian politicians can possibly be the buffoons they appear to be, and answer sadly yes.
“Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power.”
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times September 8, 2009 [h/t Marc Morano for bringing it to my attention at an Economic Education Association of Alberta conference on Nov. 11, 2022]
“The key to any good policy, Prescott summarized, was to make a commitment and stick to it. ‘What I am going to describe for you is a revolution in macroeconomics,’ Prescott wrote in the American Economist in 2006. The essay further distilled theories from a seminal 1977 paper by Prescott and Kydland, titled ‘Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans’... ‘You should not think in terms of controlling the economy,’ Prescott said in 2004. ‘That leads to bad outcomes. You should think in terms of committing to good policy rules.’… ‘Economists like simplicity. It’s one of our most endearing traits,’ he wrote in a 2006 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. ‘As soon as you complicate things by getting between a man and his intentions you create all sorts of distortions that are often suboptimal (and are the devil to model). Taxes excel at these shenanigans. And those distortions don’t end when the grim reaper comes calling. Ashes to ashes, dust to trust.’”
The obituary of Edward Prescott, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics, in the National Post November 14, 2022
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the federal Liberals, including Katie Telford in her Friday non-testimony, are violating Robson’s First Rule of Crisis Management over Chinese election meddling: When criticism erupts, take time to ponder honestly whether you did something wrong.
“Life resembles a game in which you are continually dealt ‘cards’ of enormously varied sorts, from very specific events or objects to rules large and small for playing the game. But some people are dealt things so horrifying that they never dare tell anyone they have them, and sit staring at them all through the game, not knowing how to play them or get rid of them, and hating them and the game.”
An insight that came to me in December 1987. [If you have such cards, trust the compassion of a fellow player and talk to them.]
“Working hard at something that doesn’t work doesn’t make it work.”
John Alston on PBS June 21, 1992
“There’s just gotta be a place up ahead where men ain’t low-down and poker’s played fair. If there weren’t, what are all the songs about? I’ll see y’all there and we can sing together, and shake our heads over all the meanness in the Used-To-Be.”
The last words of Buster Scruggs as he approaches heaven with his harp and the duet fades out, in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.