Surprise, surprise....................

     Rush found work on the committee frustrating.  When the group tried to enact price controls to fight skyrocketing costs for provisions and imported goods, he explained why such market manipulation wouldn't work.  He was flabbergasted that they wouldn't listen to him.  He tried reading aloud to them from the acclaimed history of England by his acquaintance David Hume, which explained how price controls there failed and made the economy worse.  But "the precedents of Mr. Hume had no effect" on his legislative colleagues.  He was almost unanimously outvoted.
     This episode made him realize that "men do not become wise by the experience of other people."  He was starting to think that "even our own experience does not always produce wise conduct, though the lessons for that purpose are sometimes repeated two or three times."

-Stephen Fried,  Rush:  Revolution Madness & The Visionary Doctor Who Became A Founding Father