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.

People feel better because Donald Trump says all kinds of things no one else would say and we get certain tendencies out of our system. So if attacking immigrants, say, is a substitute for doing something worse, there's at least a scenario under which that's a better alternative than something else that might have happened.

My view of the internet is that it is way overrated in what it’s done to date but considerably underrated in what it will do.

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.

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

To get a person's real opinion, ask what she thinks everyone else believes... If people truly hold a particular belief, they are more likely to think that others agree or have had similar experiences. [People] tend to assume that other people have had life histories at least somewhat similar to their own. When we talk about other people, we are often talking about ourselves, whether we know it ourselves.

Marshall Jevons is the pioneer for integrating economics and detective fiction, and The Mystery of the Invisible Hand is another fine effort in this genre.