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… is from page 6 of the original 1960 Harvard University Press edition of Frank Knight [2]’s collection of lectures, delivered in 1958 at the University of Virginia, titled Intelligence and Democratic Action [3]:
I recall a Republican campaign speech that exploited the hoary piece of nonsense that if Americans buy from foreigners, a foreign country gets the money and America the goods, but if they buy from Americans, America has the goods and the money both. Such reasoning raises the question whether there is any use in pointing out facts, whether one merely insults one’s own intelligence by casting pearls before, let us say, beings oblivious to their value.
DBx: A bit earlier (page 5) in this lecture, Knight referred to belief in the merits of protectionism and inflation as “two perennial examples of stupidity in economic ideas and policy.”
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