“The State is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”—Frédéric Bastiat

Professor Clyde Wilson’s observation that “history is not a mathematical calculation or scientific experiment but a vast drama of which there is always more to be learned” has important methodological implications. First, it implies that formal academic history credentials, while valuable, are not a necessary precondition for understanding history.

Brazil is often described as a constitutional democracy with a market economy: You can buy a home, start a business, sign contracts, and sue in court. Yet many Brazilians live with a quieter reality: ownership feels fragile. Property exists, but it comes with an asterisk. The rules say you have a right, then add conditions that let politics rewrite that right whenever it becomes inconvenient.

Javier Milei’s Davos speech marks a decisive break with a dominant political mindset: the belief that upholding and expanding political power justifies moral compromise and that political authority should be judged primarily by effectiveness rather than legitimacy.

[Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society by Robert J. Barro (The MIT Press, 1996; x + 191pp.)]