You can travel from one end of the industrialized world to the other and almost the only people you will find engaging in backbreaking toil are people who are doing it for sport. To find people whose day's toil has not been lightened by mechanical invention, you must go to the non-capitalist world.

Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive.

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?

If China don't free up the political side, its economic growth will come to an end - while it is still at a very low level.

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

It all would have been much better if individuals saved for their own old age.

The problem is that, in a world of floating exchange rates, as Italy was before the euro, if one country is subjected to a shock which requires it to cut wages, it cannot do so with a modern kind of control and regulation system. It is much easier to do it by letting the exchange rate change. Only one price has to change, instead of many.