Maggie's Farm

"The demand for racism is outstripping the supply."

Somebody said that. 

Via Cafe Hayek:

"Since the discouraging fiasco in the Garden of Eden, all the world has been a place conspicuous in its scarcity of resources, contributing heavily to an abundance of various sorrows and sins. People have had to adjust and adapt to limitations of what is available to satisfy unlimited desires. Some individuals and societies have been much more successful than others in thus making do.

The study of economics deals with this yoke of scarcity and the modes of behavior intended to minimize the pains and maximize the gains of getting along—behavior which is restricted and channeled, sometimes helpfully and efficiently but often hurtfully and wastefully, by the social ground rules and institutions we adopt and have had imposed upon us.

To survive (much less to prosper a bit) in this vale of tears has required enormous, unrelenting effort. The vast variety of economic activity—bidding and offering in the market, producing and consuming currently, and saving and investing for the future—typically entails coordinated decision making and labor. But even seemingly simple operations of production and distribution can require contributions by many people, most of whom never meet or directly communicate with each other and are located in scattered corners of the world.

Consider this book. Thousands of people—in addition to the authors—contributed to placing this book in your hands. Some made paper; some made ink and glue; some edited the manuscript; some printed, warehoused, promoted, and distributed the product. No single person completely planned and supervised all that, and no one was a specialist in performing each of the myriad tasks. Yet, you have the book."

From the opening paragraphs – of Armen Alchian’s and William Allen’s Universal Economics (2018; Jerry Jordan, ed.)

"I think then that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world. I am trying myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain . . . I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. . . . Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing."

Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy In America, via Kimball's  Notes on the Great Realignment

"If God only loved those of us who are perfect, He would have no one to love."

Same applies to us, and to our fellow men and women. Best rule of relationships is to forgive eachother's faults and flaws. Best hope for relationships is to hope people do the same for us. 

"How does it happen that even today a couple of ordinary French stonemasons, or a carpenter and his apprentice, can put up a dovecote or a barn that has more architectural perfection than the piles of eclectic stupidity that grow up at the cost of millions of dollars on the campuses of American universities?”

Thomas Merton, “The Seven Story Mountain” (via We Are the Barbarians Living in the Ruins of a Superior Civilization

 “Kids are the best. You can teach them to hate the things you hate. And they practically raise themselves, what with the Internet and all.”

- Homer Simpson, via On Great Art 

The condition and characteristic of an uninstructed person is this: he never expects from himself profit, or advantage, nor harm, but from externals.

The condition of a philosopher is this: he expects all advantage and all harm from himself. The signs of one who is making progress are these: he censures no man, he praises no man, he says nothing about himself as if he were somebody or knew something. When he is impeded or hindered, he blames himself. If a man praises him he ridicules the praiser to himself and if a man censures him, he makes no defence. He removes desires from himself, and transfers aversion to those things which are contrary to nature. He employs a moderate attitude towards everything; whether he is considered fooling or ignorant he cares not.  

In a word, he watches himself as if he were an enemy and lying in an ambush.

- Marcus Aurelius, The Enchiridion 

h/t Moonbattery