Of course, corporations and governments have a right to something for their money. They pay the wages. But they don't have the ethical right to literally purchase the copyright of a citizen's potential contribution to society. In a democracy they should not have the legal right to silence the quasi-totality of the functioning élite in order to satisfy a managerial taste for control and secrecy.

Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created

Venereal: From Venus, the goddess of love, this word refers to the reality of desire. With the rise of Protestantism and science, the word disease was tacked on in a revealing combination of categorization and moralizing. Which disease? The disease of love.

Simplicity is no longer presented as a virtue. The value of complex and difficult language has been preached with such insistence that the public has begun to believe the lack of clarity must be a sign of artistic talent.

Our belief in salvation through the market is very much in the Utopian tradition. The economists and managers are the servants of God. Like the medieval scholastics, their only job is to uncover the divine plan. They could never create or stop it. At most they might aspire to small alterations.

Governments produced by the most banal of electoral victories, like those produced by the crudest of coups d'état, will always feel obliged to dress themselves up linguistically in some way.

Educating the masses was intended only to improve the relationship between the top and the bottom of society. Not for changing the nature of the relationship.