Source: Niskanen Center
by Dan Davies
“And as with science research grant administration, so with quite a lot of the modern regulatory state. It is a hard thing to accept that you might be part of a system that impedes overall prosperity, or that your primary income stream may come from acting as a type of bridge troll representing some legally privileged party that must be paid off to get out of people’s way. Rent extraction is, of course, what the other guy does; even hereditary landlords prefer to construct a story about themselves as custodians of the shared patrimony. But in the nicest and mildest possible terms, Klein and Thompson are trying to deliver the same message in 2025 as Teles and Lindsay were in 2017: The system isn’t working as intended. There are too few people rowing and too many pretending to steer.” (10/14/25)
https://hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/what-happens-when-chinese-resolve