One doesn't like instabilities in markets; they may be damaging, but probably not fatal, as the October '87 crash showed. It turned out to be essentially inconsequential. So if that's true, I'm not very worried about the welfare of those who are investing any more than I am about the welfare of those who go into casinos.

It seems to me that at least as far as the financial markets are concerned, there is increasing evidence against rational expectations, even at the macro level.

One way of looking at Impossibility Theorem is that we proposed some criteria for what a good system should be: what is it you want from a voting system, and impose some conditions. And then ask: can you have a voting system that guarantees that?

One thing I learned from meteorology is that being an actual science was no guarantee of exactness.

The health care provisions are presumably for individuals. And whoever pays for them, whether it's paid by the individual, state, whatever, the value is an individually based value. It has nothing to do with employment.

I think the development of the venture capital system has been an example of something which is a successful improvement in risk-bearing. It doesn't exactly remove the risks at the beginning, but at least creates greater rewards at a slightly later stage and therefore encourages, say, small companies to engage in technologically risky enterprises.

We have to be more modest in what we claim.