Poor even by comparison with some contemporaries, burdened with a hugely inefficient un-developed un-mechanised agricultural sector.

This may also be true for pre-industrial societies? I’m thinking Wallenstein …

How easily we take for granted what has got better, how much our political discourse calls regulation a cost when there were reasons behind all of it, and how we rarely hear the stories of success.

The willful negligence in economic understanding of what a lemons market imply is the key defining feature of so many anti-regulatory types.

Brazil!

Cool! I think Flann O'Brien, a life-long civil servant is a real master of capturing a farcical bureaucratic atmosphere. The various station procedures in The Third Policeman delight me on this front.

Almost a reply to /The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence/, both films talking about myth making and storytelling. /Unforgiven/ has a magnificent script but the great performances make it stick.

🎶Don't you remember?
We built this city
We built this city
We built this city on PHP

Harrison Ford’s acting, with only the back of his head to camera, when he learns of his partner’s death. Such a gem of film.