The Martin Hutchinson Place
“The gates of Hell are open night and day Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies In this the task and mighty labor lies.” Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid, translated by John Dryden, published in 1697 when poetry was poetry, is a useful window on China’s […]
Economists David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens won the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” last week for their work on “real-world” experiments that drove a truck through market-driven economic theory. This was not surprising. Conventional wisdom among the “woke” intelligentsia is today a far more important driver of […]
This column recognizes that new products and services can have technical hiccups. Stephenson’s Rocket ran over a Cabinet Minister at its inaugural ceremony, killing him. The Hindenburg’s new transatlantic airship service burst into flames in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The first jet airliner, the Comet 1, kept blowing out its windows at high altitude. But the […]
“Every individual… neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it… he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many […]