blessed britons

It is not that we are frightened of oil being cut off by unfriendly local governments, but the profitability of the oil companies operations and the supply of oil to consumer countries including our own on acceptable terms, is most important for our economy and our balance of payments. This depends in part on the diversity of political control of the main sources of oil (eg if Iraq controlled Kuwait, we might all be held to ransom). This would be especially dangerous for the UK for we draw 60% of our oil requirements from the area.

— Rab Butler

mad world

Keynes compared the stock market to a competition in which the participants have to pick several pretty girls from a hundred photographs: ‘It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgement, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligence to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.‘ We are forced to make choices without having the knowledge that would enable us to make them; or, as John Gray has put it: ‘We are forced to live as if we were free.’

— Slavoj Zizek

Don't just do something, talk

mostly nuggets

blessed britons

mad world

poverty deaths