Ah, the 21st century....................

 But even as we consume more than ever before, big business faces a crisis of legitimacy. The pharmaceutical industry creates life-saving vaccines but has lost the trust of the public. The widening pay gap between executives and employees is destabilising our societies. Facebook and Google have more customers than any companies in history but are widely reviled.

-Sir John Kay suggests we read his newest book

The good life..........................

 

........................................well lived.

astray....................

 

. . . a man unaware of his ignorance will be led astray by his knowledge.

-Rob Firchau

Ah, democracy...................

 

A “democracy” where unelected bureaucrats have effective veto power is not a real democracy. 

-as cut-and-pasted from here

Ed. Note:  The history major in me bristles when I hear people talking about the U.S. as a democracy.  I suspect the Founding Fathers would share my bristles.  They created, and we should still be considered, a constitutional republic, which is a very different animal from a democracy.  Having said that, if you substitute "constitutional republic" for "democracy" in the above quote, the quote is still true.

Ah, history.........................

 

Everything feels unprecedented when you haven’t engaged with history. 

-Kelly Hayes, as culled from Morgan Housel's recent quote collection.

Ed. Note:  Been reading Walter Stahr's biography Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival and I can tell you for certain that politics in 1840 were just as messy as they are today.  I suspect by the time the author gets around to the late 1850s we will find the politics might have gotten even messier.