A Quote by Clay Shirky
Any system described by a power law [...] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average.
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Law Number V: One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output. Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average output.
You can never do merely one thing. The law applies to any action that changes something in a complex system. The point is that an action taken to alleviate a problem will trigger several effects, some of which may offset or even negate the one intended.
The power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power... Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.
We have power... Our power isn’t in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems... they have power... but it’s not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings.
Primitive superstition lies just below the surface of even the most tough-minded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it who are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects.
Below the 40th latitude there is no law; below the 50th no god; below the 60th no common sense and below the 70th no intelligence whatsoever.
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful.
There are some effects of the biome. Compact bodies tend to conserve heat relative to linear ones. This can affect average height as well as body proportions. The study participants Europeans and Americans do not fall into the range where this effect is powerful, however.
Your earning ability is largely determined by the perception of excellence, quality, and value that others have of you and what you do. The market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance. It pays average rewards for average performance, and it pays below average rewards or unemployment for below average performance.
Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?
A word is used "correctly" when the average hearer will be affected by it in the way intended. This is a psychological, not a literary, definition of "correctness". The literary definition would substitute, for the average hearer, a person of high education living a long time ago; the purpose of this definition is to make it difficult to speak or write correctly.
The education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. [I]t is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system ... than to correct by penal statutes the ill effects of a bad system. ... The education of youth ... lays the foundations on which both law and gospel rest for success.
[Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.
Any rule, not existing in the nature of things, or that is not permanent, universal and inflexible in its application, is no law, according to any correct definition of the term law.
There can be no tolerance in a law-system for another religion. Toleration is a device used to introduce a new law-system as a prelude to a new intolerance... Every law-system must maintain its existence by hostility to every other law-system and to alien religious foundations or else it commits suicide
...When a man first awakens, it sometimes takes several moments before he starts thinking clearly." "And here I thought it took several years, perhaps a lifetime for the average man's intellect to kick in.
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