"In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes." - Mogens Jallberg

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"Examples of the perceived cheapening of a thing’s value by the very act of buying and selling it abound in everyday life and language. The disgust that accompanies the idea of buying and selling human beings is based on the sense that this would dramatically diminish human worth. Epithets such as “he prostituted himself,” applied as linguistic analogies to people who have sold something, reflect the new that certain things should not be sold because doing so diminishes their value. Praise that is bought is worth little, even to the person buying it. A true anecdote is told of an economist who retired to another university community and complained that he was having difficulty making friends. The laconic response of a critical colleague—'If you want a friend why don’t you buy yourself one'—illustrates in a pithy way the intuition that, for some things, the very act of placing a price on them reduces their perceived value."

--- Cost-Benefit Analysis: An Ethical Critique, Steven Kelman


"I find it hard to believe, looking around the modern world, that its major problem is that it suffers from an excess of rationality. The world's stock of ignorance if and will remain quite large enough without adding to it as a matter of deliberate policy."

--- Replies to Steven Kelman, James V. DeLong