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Sunday, August 28. 2016

“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

John Maynard Keynes (of all people) as quoted at Zero Hedge's "We Are At A Point Where The Encroachment Of Government Power Has Historically Resulted In Rebellion"

Posted by The Barrister in Quotidian Quotable Quote (QQQ) at 15:32 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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"There has arisen in our time a most singular fancy: the fancy that when things go very wrong we need a practical man. It would be far truer to say, that when things go very wrong we need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a theorist. A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice, to the way things commonly work. When things will not work, you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning."

#1 James the lesser (Link) on 2016-08-28 15:52 (Reply)

Depends on who the practical man and theorist are. I would prefer a practical man to whack at current problems using methods that have worked previously, over a theorist steeped in doctrine that has failed over and over again to produce desired results (because the doctrine was never applied hard enough, the theorist says.)

#1.1 BillH on 2016-08-29 09:53 (Reply)

The problem is that the government, like all of us, act in their own self interest. The difference is the government has terrible power and the ability and will to misuse it. They have misused it for a number of decades now and most recently they have been misusing it to coverup past misuses. They have really made a mess of it. There will be hell to pay. And that even assumes that they don't choose to again massively misuse their power to make it even worse and that is indeed likely.

May you live in interesting times.

#2 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-08-28 16:07 (Reply)

Ironically, Keynes is the defunct economist that most anti-intellectual pragmatists employ.

#3 devilof76 on 2016-08-29 02:52 (Reply)

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Sunday, August 28. 2016

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