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… is from page 212 of Russ Roberts’s ingenious and moving 2014 book, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life [2]:
The world is a complex place. When you strive to impose your will on a piece of the system, not every knob you turn will have the effect that you imagine or desire.
DBx: Hoping that the likes of Elizabeth Warren and other “Progressives” will grasp and accept the wisdom of this insight is simply too futile. Their entire worldview is that of the wise, compassionate, and scientifically rigorous social engineer crafting the stupidly dormant or self-destructively chaotic masses into fine form. But is it too much to hope that ‘conservative nationalists’ such as Oren Cass and Daniel McCarthy might grasp and accept this wisdom, and to understand that it counsels against their hopes for the success of protectionism and other attempts at industrial policy?