Checking in...............................

 ..........................with Matt Ridley:

Market failure is a favourite phrase; government failure is not.

To put my explanation in its boldest and most surprising form: bad news is manmade, top–down, purposed stuff, imposed on history. Good news is accidental, unplanned, emergent stuff that gradually evolves. The things that go well are largely unintended; the things that go badly are largely intended.

Life is a Sisyphean race, run ever faster toward a finish line that is merely the start of the next race.

Random violence makes the news precisely because it is so rare, routine kindness does not make the news precisely because it is so commonplace. 

At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal.

. . .simplicity piled upon simplicity creates complexity.

. . .time always erodes advantage

But if there is one dominant myth about the world, one huge mistake we all make, one blind spot, it is that we all go around assuming the world is much more of a planned place than it is. As a result, again and again we mistake cause for effect; we blame the sailing boat for the wind, or credit the bystander with causing the event.

American presidential politics is entirely based on the myth that a perfect, omniscient, virtuous and incorruptible saviour will emerge from the New Hampshire primary every four years, and proceed to lead his people to the promised land.