… offers a Higgsian truth that I hope (without hope) is taken to heart by whichever “prancing pony” wins tomorrow’s presidential election; it is from pages 56-57 of volume II of the 1873 Thomas Nugent translation of Baron de Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws:
Trade is in its own nature extremely uncertain; and it is a great evil to add a new uncertainty to that which is founded on the nature of the thing.
