Chris King

“for in every country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins.”
― Michael Lewis, The Real Price of Everything: Rediscovering the Six Classics of Economics

“Dare to think! Have the courage to use your own reason!’ is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment,” as stated in 1784 by the great German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant.1”
― Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism

“Compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute masters of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.”
― Michael Lewis, The Real Price of Everything: Rediscovering the Six Classics of Economics

“Stalin understood that in the Soviet economy, people had few incentives to work hard. A natural response would have been to introduce such incentives, and sometimes he did—for example, by directing food supplies to areas where productivity had fallen—to reward improvements. Moreover, as early as 1931 he gave up on the idea of creating “socialist men and women” who would work without monetary incentives. In a famous speech he criticized “equality mongering,” and thereafter not only did different jobs get paid different wages but also a bonus system was introduced.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty