I'm not optimistic about reform in many, if any, policy areas at all. I think we'll make further progress by inventing new things that aren't much regulated yet and outracing bad policy. I look at so many policy areas - regulation, regulatory reform, health care reform - it's all failing, we're not making improvements, we're going backwards.

Beethoven and Michelangelo, who sold their artworks for profit, were entrepreneurs and capitalists.

Real cultural diversity results from the interchange of ideas, products, and influences, not from the insular development of a single national style.

What I would like to vote for is a candidate that is socially liberal, a fiscal conservative, broadly libertarian with a small l but sensible and pragmatic and with a chance of winning. Thats more or less the empty set.

The more information that's out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn't what's scarce; it's the willingness to do something with it.

Unintended Consequences is full of substance, it is one of the must-read books of the year, and once I finish it I will be giving it a second read through right away.

The lesson about food is that the most predictable and the most orderly outcomes are always not the best. They are just easier to describe. Fads are orderly. Food carts and fires aren't. Feeding the world could be a delicious mess, full of diverse flavors and sometimes good old-fashioned smoke.