[T]he superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times, once it is debunked, takes away one of the bulwarks that every society must have against expenditure out of control. . . . [O]ne of the functions of old-fashioned religion was to scare people by sometimes what might be regarded as myths into behaving in a way that long-run civilized life requires.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
2 comments:
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Wittgenstein's Poker and Rousseau's Dog are both wonderful, stimulating, and above all easy reads. In Poker, the authors do us a great service by closely detailing fin-de-siecle Vienna and the effect assimilation had on its Jewish population (including Wittgenstein and Popper).
ReplyDeleteI preferred Dog, but that's most likely due to my preference for Hume over Wittgenstein. I find Wittgenstein fascinating but far too cryptic.
Not entirely sure why it sent me to my buggy beta dummy account ID, but there I am...
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