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From ancient times to the present, politicians, bureaucrats, and interest groups have gained resources and control over the public by playing to people’s fears of various “crises” and by offering “solutions” that often only make problems worse.
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America’s most provocative humorist, P. J. O’Rourke, has read pioneering economist Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776, “so we don’t have to”—and the results are as entertaining as they are enlightening.
