Nostalgia combines regularly with manifest respectability to give credence to old error as opposed to new truth.

Genius is a rising stock market.

Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried.

If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is plausible to decrease waste, to make better use of stocks available, and to develop substitutes. But what about the appetite itself? The major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialised countries

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.

In the world of minor lunacy the behaviour of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.

Getting on the cover of TIME guarantees the existence of opposition in the future.