Sandeep

“However much history may be invoked in support of these policies (affirmative action), no policy can apply to history but can only apply to the present or the future. The past may be many things, but it is clearly irrevocable. Its sins can no more be purged than its achievements can be expunged. Those who suffered in centuries past are as much beyond our help as those who sinned are beyond our retribution.”
― Thomas Sowell, Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?

“the particular idea of endowing individuals with “rights” and then designing laws based on those rights only makes sense in a world of analytical thinkers who conceive of people as primarily independent agents and look to solve problems by assigning properties, dispositions, and essences to objects and persons. If this approach to law sounds like common sense, you are indeed WEIRD.”
― Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

“It is strange to me that most people assume companies will be imperfect (as they are), but they assume that government agencies will be perfect, which they are not.”
― Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

“Karl Marx suggested that people should produce according to their abilities but share according to their needs, and this maxim describes hunter-gatherers reasonably well. But the history of communism suggests that agricultural people don’t share very well outside their family. The problem with the Marxist utopia is that people can free-ride on the efforts of others. If you are required to share with me, then I’m tempted to put in a little less effort because I know your hard work will leave me well fed. Once you see me slacking off, you don’t want to be a sucker, so you slack off a bit yourself, and pretty soon everyone is barely working. The free-rider problem is a vicious circle and can quickly destroy a productive community if there is no way to police everyone’s contribution.”
― William Von Hippel, The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy