The man of system . . . is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. . . . —Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759 If I was to identify one thing wrong with the current political landscape (and economic, for that matter), it would be the mistaken belief that there is no right or wrong in the world of politics. That is, many people seem to be of the bizarre opinion that, in the words of Jeremy Bentham , "pushpin is as good as poetry". This is, of course, compl...
Because Edmund Burke would have been a gamer....