Free Lunch Quotes
Some politicians tell their constituents that they compromise but not on principles. This is illusory and often disingenuous as well. In a democracy there are many sets of principles that conflict with others just as deeply and frequently held. Even many of the principles of the U. S. Constitution conflict with other constitutional principles. If politicians never compromised on principles and ideals, there would be no operational government unless it were a theocracy or a dictatorship where there were only one set of principles in the society. The more democratic a society is the more its politicians must compromise with their fundamental principles and ideals.
Three years after he wrote this essay, the U. S. Economy suffered the Meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession where the major American banks had much too small capital bases to survive so the Federal Reserve and the taxpayer bailed the banks out. Much of the problem was if a consumer or a business borrows money from a bank, he/she must have a capital base at least equal to the amount borrowed. But under the modern American banking system, if a bank wants to borrow from the people, the bank doesn’t even have to have a capital base of as much as ten percent of what it borrows and often has considerably less.
