third hand

Lynne Kiesling comments on and provides excepts from P.J. O’Rourke’s Adam Smith column which quotes Adam Smith. Good read.

“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence,” Smith told a learned society in Edinburgh (with what degree of sarcasm we can imagine), “but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice.”

How then would Adam Smith fix the present mess? ... The answer to a decline in the value of speculative assets is to pay less for them. Job done.

Seems pretty simple. They had bubbles and speculation in Adam Smith's day - The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, so Smith knows what he is talking about.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

There is an old saying, "Learn from others mistakes. You don't have time to make them all yourself." There is nothing new. All these mistakes have been made before - many times, in fact. But sadly, there are those who are arrogant enough believe that it is different this time.