One of the peculiarities of the American Revolution was that its leaders pinned their hopes on the organization of decision-making units, the structuring of their incentives, and the counterbalancing of the units against one another, rather than on the more usual (and more exciting) principle of substituting "the good guys" for "the bad guys.".
You May Also Like / View all maxioms
One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most read more
One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
If "everybody knows" such-and-such, then it ain't so, by at least ten thousand to one.
If "everybody knows" such-and-such, then it ain't so, by at least ten thousand to one.
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to read more
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right.
The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing read more
The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.
The humblest citizen of all the land when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all read more
The humblest citizen of all the land when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of Error.
In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
To those who feel that their values are the values, the less controlled systems necessarily present a spectacle of "chaos," read more
To those who feel that their values are the values, the less controlled systems necessarily present a spectacle of "chaos," simply because such systems respond to a diversity of values. The more successfully such systems respond to diversity, the more "chaos" there will be, by definition, according to the standards of any specific set of values- other than diversity or freedom as values. Looked at another way, the more self-righteous observers there are, the more chaos (and "waste") will be seen.
Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that read more
Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that society is in some sense more than merely the aggregate of all individuals their adherents regularly pass by a sort of intellectual somersault to the thesis that in order that the coherence of this larger entity be safeguarded it must be subjected to conscious control, that is, to the control of what in the last resort must be an individual mind. It thus comes about that in practice it is regularly the theoretical collectivist who extols individual reason and demands that all forces of society be made subject to the direction of a single mastermind, while it is the individualist who recognizes the limitations of the powers of individual reason and consequently advocates freedom as a means for the fullest development of the powers of the interindividual process.
