more food gloom, including people in Haiti buying sugar-flavoured mud to eat. and you’ve got to love the news reports stating that this might mean political trouble, starving people not being enough impetus for your average westerner. as bob marley said, a hungry man is a angry man. and yes, in other news (again), i ate at a rather nice michelin-starred restaurant in berlin this week (the quail consumme was rather good).
i was thinking about this the other day and considering something i’d read in a farewell to alms. i’m going to get this all wrong, but in this book clark says that, actually, an oligargical leadership (like a monarch) that wastes resources on ridiculous things is actually much better than some egalitarian regime spreading wealth. in the latter scenario population rises in line with resources and the standard of living never increases. in the former, the economy generates greater resources than it requires to sustain its population and, stastistics show, standards of living are higher.
i had a conversation the other day about someone spending 5m building a house. apparently it’s going to be really nice.
