Vice in abundance is easy to get;
Plato’s Republic, Book 2, 364d (pg 1004)
The road is smooth and begins beside you,
But the gods have put sweat between us and virtue,
“Once you have the means to live, you must practice virtue.”
Phocylides of Miletus, Plato’s Republic III, pg 1043
fiat is not a mistake. it was a response. it emerged from the wreckage of the twentieth century, shaped by mass death, political collapse, and the recognition that rigid systems amplify trauma rather than absorb it. elastic money was not designed to be virtuous. it was designed to prevent societies from tearing themselves apart under economic stress.
by that standard, it has largely succeeded. again and again, in 1929, the 1970s, in 2000, 2008 and in 2020, fiat absorbed shocks that would otherwise have produced mass unemployment, institutional collapse, and political extremism. the cost has been inflation, moral hazard, and periodic outrage. but the alternative was worse. history makes that clear.
Hugh Hendry
Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as the result of habit… we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2
He wants us to understand and debate His power: that is why He gave us free will.
Count of Monte Christo, pg 1194
There is, indeed, the rule of a master, which is concerned with menial offices – the master need not know how to perform these, but may employ others in the execution of them: the other would be degrading; and by the other I mean the power actually to do menial duties, which vary much in character and are executed by various classes of slaves, such, for example, as handicraftsmen, who, as their name signifies, live by the labour of their hands…Certainly the good man and the statesman and the good citizen ought not to learn the crafts of inferiors except for their own occasional use; if they habitually practice them, there will cease to be a distinction between master and slave.
Aristotle, Politics, Book III, Ch 4
This reminded me of our relationship with AI
There are three true forms of government: kingly rule, aristocracy, and constitutional government (polity), and three corresponding perversions – tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.
Aristotle, Politics, Book IV, Ch 2
Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers, and oligarchy in which the rich.
Aristotle, Politics, Book IV, Ch 4
Happiness is the realization and perfect exercise of virtue.