My idea of a good time, as you may have gathered, is immersing myself in the kind of stuff that would cure most insomniacs… Specifically, economic history and theory…
As I travel back through the days of Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, J. Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx and Adam Smith, I realize that, when it comes to economics, there are two distinct schools of thought; one advances the notion that the economy cannot effectively function without the helping hand of government (ala Keynes and, at the extreme, Marx), the other says the economy is best served in the hands of the private sector, leaving the individual free to pursue his own separate interests (ala Smith, Hayek and Friedman)…
Would you agree that the latter, whether or not you view it as the path to macroeconomic success, is simply human nature – that whether we’re pizza chefs or politicians*, each of us, in our own way, will always pursue our own separate interests? And is it not in the pizza purveyor’s self-interest to provide his customer with the absolute best pie he can profitably produce? It is if he hopes for repeat business… And is not the pizza purveyor’s profitability in the self-interest of the pizza lover? It is if he hopes for repeat pizza…
(*we