“Boredom is a powerful incentive to come up with bad ideas, especially for intellectuals. "Capitalism," says Irving Kristol, "is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived." The reason it's so unromantic is that it doesn't tell people what to do and that can be very frustrating for intellectuals who want to tell people what to do. Indeed, court intellectuals have always been more influential where the people are less free, because when an intellectual persuades a dictator or a socialist prime minister (a small distinction to be sure), their advice gets translated into reality. When an intellectual says, "It would be a better society if all beer was free" a free-market politician would, or at least should, say "Maybe, but what can I do about it?"”

—  Jonah Goldberg

2000s, 2001, Free-Market Boring…Losing Consciousness (2001)

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Jonah Goldberg89
American political writer and pundit 1969

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“Capitalism is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived.”

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As quoted in "Free-Market Boring…Losing Consciousness" http://web.archive.org/web/20010105/www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg012401.shtml (24 January 2001), by Jonah Goldberg, National Review

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“Most people are not intellectuals — a fact that intellectuals have terrible trouble coming to terms with.”

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